Why some bases can't stop drones overhead

The document is a final management advisory from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, report number DODIG-2026-045, dated 20 January 2026 and titled "Immediate Attention Required to Protect DoD Covered Assets Against Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)." It's posted publicly in redacted form. It came out of a broader evaluation of how the department handles drones at installations in the United States and its territories. For that evaluation the inspectors visited 10 installations and activities where drone incursions had occurred and interviewed officials from 31 DoD organizations and 4 other government organizations.

What "covered" means

The law is section 130i of title 10 of the U.S. Code, "Protection of certain facilities and assets from unmanned aircraft." It lets the Secretary of Defense authorize people to take a specific list of actions against a drone: detect, identify, monitor and track it; warn the operator; disrupt control of it, including by "interfering, or causing interference with" its control links; seize or take control of it; and "use reasonable force to disable, damage, or destroy" it. That is the domestic legal basis for jamming a drone over a U.S. base.

The catch is the object of the sentence. Those actions are authorized to protect "a covered facility or asset," and nothing else. As the Inspector General summarizes it, a site is covered only if it is identified by the Secretary of Defense through a risk-based assessment (in consultation with the Secretary of Transportation), sits in the United States or its territories, and is "directly related to one of nine mission areas." At the time of the evaluation those nine were nuclear deterrence, missile defense, national security space, protection of the presidential line of succession, air defense of the United States, combat support agencies, special operations activities, high-yield explosive munitions, and major ranges and test facilities.

One caveat the report states in a footnote, and that headlines skipped: every installation retains "the inherent right to self-defense" against "a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent," regardless of 130i status. So "not covered" doesn't mean a base must watch an attack happen. It means the base lacks this statute's authority to act against the much more common case, a drone that is simply there, looking.

What the watchdog found

The report's first concern is that the department never gave clear policy for deciding what counts as covered. Its examples:

• Luke Air Force Base, Arizona. The report says F-35 training there covers "approximately 75 percent of the world's F-35 pilots," yet the base "is not designated as a covered facility or asset." The reason: "because training is not explicitly listed as one of the nine covered mission areas, DoD officials told us that training is not covered. Therefore, the installation officials cannot use C-UAS capabilities to prevent UAS activity while training on the F-35s."
• Air Force Plant 42, Palmdale, California. A government-owned, contractor-operated site that works on military aircraft and produces the Global Hawk. The Under Secretary for Policy's list showed it as not covered; the Air Force's list showed it as covered; Air Force officials told inspectors it was not covered; and "DoD officials could not tell us whether or not it is covered." When drones flew over the plant in August 2024, Air Force officials said the facility "was denied coverage during the active incursions."
• The Navy's shipbuilding supervisor at Newport News. A contractor-operated site for carrier and submarine work, also not designated as covered. Navy officials added that even with covered status, the site's security forces were contractors who did "not have the authority to operate C-UAS systems under section 130i."

Underneath the examples is a bookkeeping problem. The department built its covered list in 2018, then delegated the job of maintaining it to the military services. As of May 2025, the report says, the policy office and the services "maintained separate lists," and "the lists differ on which facilities and assets are designated as covered."

The second gate: the paperwork

Being covered isn't the end of it. A site also needs operational approval, which comes through a "section 130i package," a consolidated set of forms proving testing, outside coordination, and safety and legal reviews. The inspectors found that a May 2020 Deputy Secretary of Defense memo requires officials to buy and field counter-drone equipment and test it in an operational setting before they submit the package, and to coordinate with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission first. In other words, a base has to spend the money before it learns whether it may use what it bought.

The services also run the process differently. The report says package complexity "differs drastically by Service, making it difficult to deploy C-UAS capabilities," and that officials inside the same service gave different interpretations of which capabilities were approved. Its blunt conclusion: "a large percentage of installations do not have operational approval to use C-UAS capabilities." The root cause it names is "over 20 policies" on counter-drone use, most of them secret, some of which "contradict one another."

The single recommendation is to have Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Army-led counter-drone task force created in August 2025, review the existing policies and issue one consolidated policy defining roles and authorities, the requirements for covered designation, and "a standardized and streamlined process for section 130i packages." The Secretary of the Army, responding for the Secretary of Defense, agreed. The Inspector General marked the recommendation "resolved but will remain open" until the consolidated policy is issued.

What has changed since

The report is a snapshot, and the ground was already moving when it came out.

• The statute itself. The current text of 130i, as compiled by Cornell's Legal Information Institute, reflects amendments by the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 119-60, section 1707, signed 18 December 2025). It now names "contractors of the Department of Defense" among those who may be authorized to act, the exact gap Navy officials described at Newport News. Its list of mission areas also includes a new catch-all for other DoD property closed to the public, "determined by the Secretary on a site by site basis to be critical to the national defense" and certified to Congress and other agencies. The amendments also require an annual public report summarizing detection and mitigation activity under the section, and the authority now ends on 31 December 2030 unless renewed.
• Department policy. DefenseScoop reported that a policy signed on 8 December 2025 expanded commanders' defensive area around installations, explicitly treated unauthorized drone surveillance over installations as a threat, and authorized senior service leaders to designate facilities as covered. A task force spokesman told the outlet the Inspector General's report was "based on information gathered in some cases 18 months ago." I have not seen that policy; it isn't public, and I'm relying on the reporting for its contents.

So the honest summary isn't "bases are defenseless today." It's that the evaluation documented a system where the authority to act depended on which list you checked, and that both the law and the policy have since been rewritten aimed at that exact problem. Whether the fixes closed it is the next thing to find out, not something either side has shown yet.

Where my background comes in

I ran counter-IED electronic warfare in the Army, overseas. There, the questions about a jammer are physical: can it reach the link, at what power, without blinding your own radios. At home, the first question is legal, because transmitting to break a drone's control link inside the United States collides with aviation law and federal communications law. That's why 130i exists as a carve-out, and why the package process makes a base line up the FAA and the FCC first. Reading this report, the thing that stands out to me is that the hardware was rarely the bottleneck. It's an authority problem wearing a hardware costume. The cost of defending a base matters, but a jammer nobody is permitted to key is just inventory.

How to read the next headline

• "Base X can't defend against drones." Ask which kind of can't: no equipment, no covered status, or no approved package. The report shows all three are different failures.
• "The military shot down / jammed a drone at home." Ask under what authority: 130i, the separate DHS and FBI authority in 6 U.S.C. 124n, or self-defense against a hostile act.
• "New rules fix the drone gap." Check whether the consolidated policy the Inspector General asked for has actually been issued, and whether the first public annual report under the amended statute has appeared.

What I could not confirm

The redactions. Parts of the advisory, including some findings and consequences, are blacked out as Controlled Unclassified Information. I've used only the unredacted text.

Current status of the named sites. I couldn't find a public statement on whether Luke, Plant 42 or the Newport News site is covered today.

The December 2025 policy. Its contents come only from DefenseScoop's reporting. I haven't read it.

The amendment history. The editorial notes to the compiled statute credit Public Law 119-60 with adding the site-by-site mission area. The compiled text lists one further mission area (support for responding to nuclear, radiological, biological or chemical incidents) whose origin I didn't trace, so I haven't leaned on it.

Not my research. I had no role in this evaluation. My published work is in microwave spectroscopy. Every quotation above is from the Inspector General, the statute, or the outlet named.

The signal

A base can own a counter-drone system and still be barred from using it. Under 10 U.S.C. 130i, the authority to track, jam or take down a drone at home attaches only to "covered" facilities, and the Pentagon's own watchdog found the lists of covered sites disagreed, training wasn't covered, and approval required buying and testing gear first. Congress and the department have since widened the law and rewritten the policy. The thing to watch now isn't how many jammers get bought. It's whether the authority to switch them on finally matches the places drones keep showing up.