Unmanned Systems: Savior or Threat

By Dr. Terence M. Dorn

The threat of an attack involving an unmanned system armed with a weapon of mass destruction is a present one. With two million drones projected to be flying US skies in 2020, unmanned aircraft systems in the air domain pose a significant challenge to the nation’s security. Other technological advancements, such as artificial intelligence, combined with unmanned systems, have transformed the threat’s very nature, yet the skies are not the only domain of concern. The technology is also developing rapidly in unmanned undersea and surface systems, expanding potential weapons of mass destruction delivery options. This publication is an examination of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), unmanned surface systems (USS), and unmanned undersea systems (UUS). The technological innovation that led to the global commercialization of UAS is underway with USS and UUS. Until recently, no known scholarly studies existed that examined the vulnerabilities of one sector of US critical infrastructure to attack by UAS until A Phenomenological Examination of US Nuclear Power Plants to Attack by Unmanned Aerial Systems was published late in 2020. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), there had been fifty-seven UAS incursions over twenty-four US nuclear power plants in the past five years, representing one of sixteen sectors of US critical infrastructure (Gardiner 2016; Rogoway and Trevithick 2020; Hambling 2020). Federal departments and organizations have largely ignored the threat potential that UAS pose despite the strategic guidance laid out in the 2017 National Security Strategy of the US. The nation’s national security demands a close examination of the vulnerabilities and is immediately working to close those security gaps. This publication will focus on the emergency of new UAS capabilities and highlight the latest technologies, capabilities, and the significant national security threat implications that UAS, USS, and UUS platforms represent to US critical infrastructure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662451737

Book preview

Chapter 1

What If

Imagine, if you will, a warm, sunny fall day near the nation’s capital. You and your family are having a picnic on the banks of the Potomac River near Washington, DC. Overhead, flights fly in and out of Ronald Reagan National Airport. Nearby, the Washington Football team hosts a football game against the Baltimore Ravens in a stadium packed with eighty-two thousand fans. There is much unhappiness within the US caused by the political games played over the past four years, and divisions and unrest remain. Over key federal government buildings located within Washington, DC, several UAS swarm their targets. Some have Amazon markings, which people have grown accustomed to in a short period, and they do not give them another thought. UAS delivery, even in the nation’s capital, has become commonplace and very routine. Today, some of those UAS are carrying small explosives, while others carry the necessary equipment to initiate a cyber and radio frequency (RF) attack against the government’s computer networks, nearby banks, and other components upon which our nation’s critical infrastructure relies.

Today is indeed going to be a horrible day. A simultaneous attack launched by unmanned surface systems (USS) against buildings and key intersections within Washington, DC, brings traffic to a halt. Large autonomous trucks drive into key entrances, and inside their cargo areas, explosives are triggered. Fertilizer material makes for great explosives, as we, unfortunately, learned from the actions of Timothy McVeigh, a domestic terrorist responsible for the 1995 bombing that killed 168 people, injured 680, and destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (Federal Bureau of Investigation 1995; Federal Bureau of Investigation 1996). It is unlikely that hijacked passenger airplanes’ resurgence will occur in the near term within the US. In the eastern half of the US, most of the nation’s ninety-six nuclear power plants are located. Bad actors intent on crippling the US will focus their efforts not on the nuclear power plant reactor building itself but the soft targets inside and outside the facility. They are the likely targets on this sunny day. Bad actors target the transmission network beginning at the nearby electric substations and include the power lines that convey the nuclear power plants’ energy to the metropolitan areas that require it each day. The fallacy of green energy was demonstrated in the winter of 2020–2021 when solar farms and windmills were shut down by ice and snowstorms. Gasoline and diesel-powered helicopters and trucks were used to spray deicing material on the snow-covered solar panels and frozen windmill rotors. The true target of a bad actor intent on bringing down the electrical grid of the nation would be against natural gas refineries which produce 35 percent of the nation’s daily electrical requirements, followed by coal plants at 27 percent, and nuclear at 19.7 percent (Energy Information Agency 2019). There are multiple nuclear power plants located near Washington, DC, all of which are located near major waterways. No one pays attention to the fishermen cruising the rivers and the sunbathers with scantily clad girlfriends slowly making their way north. What isn’t apparent to observers is the USS and UUS in tow behind the Targa nineteen-foot Combo Tournament boat, all powered via tethers from the boat. The USS and UUS await their preprogrammed order to attack by swimming into the large water induction pipes that extract water from the waterway into the plant to provide cooling to the facility. The reactor rooms are sealed, and it possesses its water supply, but the water does provide power and cooling for everything else in the facility. If this is not possible, they will be reprogrammed to attack nearby freighters and other critical infrastructure near the waterways.

Present-day unmanned systems are faced with a contradictory relationship between their small degree and the likelihood of detection and the small degree of lethality that a single unmanned system represents. Unlike the far larger military versions, modern UAS cannot transport large amounts of explosives (Kreps 2019). Limited UAS strikes can directly impact a nation’s economy. If the unmanned system successfully attacks a congested target, such as a packed stadium, it is unlikely to kill more than a small number of fans. What the attack, or what simultaneous attacks across the city, would create is a sense of fear in the citizens, terrorism having been brought to their very doorsteps, and uncertainty in the government’s ability to prevent such attacks and protect its citizens. A more reasonable course of action for a bad actor is to utilize manned and unmanned system operating as a team (MUM-T). A regular manned helicopter or small Cessna can fly over or near targeted areas and dispense dozens, possibly hundreds of UAS. Reinforcing the vulnerability of citizens while lambasting a government to the global community thanks to media outlets is one way a nonstate actor can attack and win a short-lived, partial victory against the US. If nonstate actors can produce chemical or biological agents or had access to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear material from nations who lost control of them, this would present an even more significant, long-term threat to the US. The federal government has yet to acknowledge the threat posed by UAS, and it has barely noticed USS and UUS’s capabilities and the threat platforms that they pose.

Attack 1: DHS designated a defend-at-all-costs asset within the metropolitan Washington, DC, area, and it is attacked by multiple large UAS carrying multiple smaller UAS, all capable of independent action against multiple targets.

Depiction courtesy of Reagan National (www.flyreagan.com/dca/dca-reagan-national-webtrak-ops-noise-portal)

As it flies toward its preprogrammed release point, the mother ships follow well-established low-level transit routes (LLTR) in an attempt to blend in with airliner traffic in and out of Reagan National and Joint Base Andrews. The confusion and inaction on the part of the FAA controllers would be long enough for the mother ships to divert and begin to drop their smaller drones. Payloads could include explosives, chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) agents. Suppose all began an immediate dispersal of CBRN. In that case, the widespread coverage might not be adequate, but the panic and media coverage would more than guarantee a key victory for the terrorists. Ronald Reagan National Airport flight routes are depicted on the map (above).

Map courtesy of Google Maps (www.google.com/maps/place/Joint+Base+Andrews, +MD/@38. 8019829,-76.9762994,11.25z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b7bdb52dcb20fb:0xb31f9c33c237 69e!8m 2!3d38.7965203!4d-76.8836261) Depiction courtesy of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/animated-pwr.html

Attack 2: Multiple UAS engage in attacks on multiple nuclear power plants on the east coast. By launching multiple UAS in a coordinated and simultaneous fashion, the terrorists would conduct overflights of essential plants within a given region and overwhelm the first responder and law-enforcement assets. The dispersal of powder or liquids would cause panic only if the plant workers on the ground observed it. Assuming that they possessed CBRN agents and had a dispersal unit affixed to the UAS, the plant workers would walk through the contaminated area (i.e., parking lot, facility grounds) and carry the agents into the plant. The air-conditioning units would also take in contaminated air and force it into and throughout the plant’s multiple buildings. The standard operating procedure (SOP) for nuclear power plants would be such that once the alarms of a possible radiological leak were to occur, the plant would be shut down, and all personnel would be immediately evacuated. If the terrorists could target a specific region and attack multiple plants operating within it, the electrical grid could be overwhelmed, and rolling blackouts would ensue.

Depiction courtesy of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/animated-pwr.html)

The map shows the location of the ninety-nine operating nuclear power plants within the US. These ninety-nine nuclear power plants provide 19.7 percent of the US daily electrical requirements. A US nuclear power plant has a nuclear reactor in a dome-shaped structure, and cooling towers usually flank it. A terrorist plan to attack one or more US nuclear power plants would be highly likely to succeed. Currently, there are no tactics, techniques, and technologies to deter, deny, disrupt, or destroy the threat that UAS pose to nuclear facilities. This shortfall includes the threat posed by UAS dropping explosive ordinance and mitigating the effects of a UAS overflight in which radioactive, biological, or chemical agents were released on the employees and compound.

For many years, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) argued that confinement facilities are safe, even from commercial jetliner attacks. Their rationale is based on the 1988 Sandia Laboratories test of a Phantom II jet strapped to a moving sled, accelerated to 470 miles per hour, and then slammed into a ten-foot-thick slab steel-reinforced concrete similar to nuclear reactor walls.

Image courtesy of the Energy Justice Map (www.energyjustice.net/map/nuclearoperating)

This test’s fallacy is that the Phantom’s fuel tanks were filled with water, not jet fuel. The two commercial airliners that brought down the Twin Towers in New York City did not destroy the buildings by flying into the buildings at 400 miles per hour and destroying the buildings’ internal support structure; rather, the collapse of both Twin Towers occurred because of the ensuing fire caused by jet fuel exploding that burned at two thousand degrees Fahrenheit that resulted in much of the large steel concrete reinforced girders melting, becoming compromised, and giving way. While the nuclear reactor may very well be safe because of its ten-foot-thick steel-reinforced walls and dome, the plant’s turbines, generators, condensers, and spent fuel rod facilities are not built to that same standard. They are often thin-shelled facilities that would be vulnerable to an attack from above by explosive-laden UAS.

This what-if is an introduction to the nefarious uses of UAS in our modern world. Thanks to the remote identification (RID) system of UAS in our skies system that the FAA will enact within the next two years, UAS overflights of people, cars, homes, day and night, will be all too common.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_plant)

Despite all of the best intentions, the FAA continues to devise solutions that will keep honest people honest and do nothing to counter a bad actor’s intentions who have nefarious objectives in mind.

Attack 3: Either multiple UAS or a swarm of miniature drones, each equipped with a few grams of explosive CBRN agents, or fentanyl, could disperse them from above an open stadium that is filled with spectators during a sporting event. If it is announced ahead of time that a key government official will be in attendance, media coverage will increase. The UAS could be launched out of a briefcase, multiple briefcases, backpacks, large purses, or vehicles inside or outside the stadium. This opportunity would involve the minimum risk to the terrorists and allow them to conduct the attack from a safe distance far away from law enforcement and what would undoubtedly be a vast panicked crowd. The same agents could be launched from a USS, land or atop the water, passing outside the stadium. The Washington Football Team FedExField is located near the Capital Beltway in Prince George’s County, Maryland, US. It is five miles east of Washington, DC, and can seat eighty-two thousand.

Map courtesy of Google (google.com/search?q=Washington +football+team+stadium+pic+duri ng+ 2021+game&tbm=isch&chips =q:washington+football+ team+ stadium+pic+during+2021+game,online_chips:fedex+field&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjN2ZazyMfvAhWGg3IEHQc1AbsQ4lYoAXoECAEQGw&biw=1690&bih=770)

Chapter 2

Introduction

It is seemingly a daily or weekly announcement that more advanced and affordable UAS with increased capabilities, such as faster battery charging, greater flying range, increasingly highly sophisticated sensors, increase even more. While this is a fantastic opportunity for consumers and hobbyists, it is also an escalation of threat platforms that bad actors could utilize to launch attacks. We are witness to frequent incidents of terrorists utilizing commercially available sUAS to drop explosives (Iraq, Syria), harmful substances (Japanese prime minister’s building) while conducting surveillance of law enforcement and government facilities (the southwest border of the US), and possibly pulsed energy and RF jamming. UAS have been referred to as unmanned aircraft systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, and drones, but whatever the moniker,