Israel Is Shooting Down A Lot Of Its Own Drones

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are knocking down a substantial number of their own drones in the course of operations, a U.S. Marine Corps officer has disclosed. This underscores serious challenges that air defense forces in the U.S. military also face in telling friendly and hostile drones apart as uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), as well as loitering munitions become ever more ubiquitous even in operations involving very small units.

Marine Lt. Col. Michael Pruden, head of the Marine Air Command and Control Integration Branch of the Air Combat Element Division within the service's Combat Development and Integration Command (CD&I), provided details about the IDF's experiences to The War Zone and other attendees during a talk at the annual Modern Day Marine exposition yesterday.

"Something interesting that comes from Israel, 40 percent, 40 percent [this figure was repeated for emphasis], of the UASs... knocked out" by Israel are instances of "friendly fire," Pruden said.

In his talk, the Marine officer laid out a core problem as his service sees it: "How am I putting a small UAS in the sky, thousands of these things, and not telling anybody about it, especially your ground-based air defense and counter-UAS [elements]?"