Joint Interagency Task Force 401 hosted its second interagency summit last month to speed cooperation against drone threats, the War Department said Sept. 9.
More than 200 leaders and experts from 75 departments and agencies took part. The task force, set up in August 2025 as the department’s lead counter-unmanned aircraft office, said the meeting built on its first full year of work and was meant to get capabilities to warfighters, federal partners and local law enforcement faster.
Talks focused on a shared picture of air traffic over sites tied to national security. Breakout groups covered five practical problems: preparing for major events and critical infrastructure; reporting, jurisdiction and information sharing; authorities, policy and legislation; access to counter-drone tools and the marketplace for those systems; and testing, standards and integration.
Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, the task force director, said the threat has already rewritten the battlefield. “Drones have fundamentally changed the operational environment,” Ross said. “To meet this challenge, we must outpace our adversaries by working together to deliver capabilities quickly. This summit is one way we are synchronizing a whole-of-government effort to secure our borders, defend the national airspace and protect the American people.”
He told attendees to leave with assignments, not only notes. “My charge for this summit is for each of you to walk away with specific actions to address problems,” Ross said. “We are all in this together, and it will take all of us working together to effectively counter the threat of drones and keep our warfighters and the American people safe.”
The department said the task force is running a directed-energy pilot at several military installations to test high-energy lasers, high-power microwaves and other systems in operational settings. Officials also said the group is moving emerging counter-drone tools from trials toward field use.
The summit ended with a pledge to keep sharing information across agencies and to cut delay between a new system and the units that need it.
