Fresh counter-drone equipment is bound for Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, arriving within weeks under a Pentagon push to harden the country’s busiest launch range.
The capability will come from Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Defense Department’s dedicated counter-drone organization. Col. Brian Chatman runs Space Launch Delta 45, the East Coast launch arm of the Space Force. He told Defense One that Cape Canaveral sits at the top of the task force’s investment list, speaking during the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
A radar built for jets, not quadcopters
The gap he describes is one of scale. The Cape’s radars follow aircraft from a Cessna up to the largest airliners, but they struggle to resolve something the size of a hobby drone. Chatman said a new injection of capability would arrive in the very short term, without naming the systems or suppliers.
Cape Canaveral is the busiest launch site in the country, flying 109 rockets last year. Vandenberg Space Force Base in California supported 66. The White House wants 1,000 launches and re-entries a year by the end of the decade, which multiplies the exposure of pads, fuel farms and flight-termination sites.
Analysts have been flagging the vulnerability for months. The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies warned in June that the bridges linking the cape to the mainland are an inviting target, and that an attack there could stop launches from the East Coast.
Counter-drone batteries are increasingly part of base defense rather than an add-on. Joint Interagency Task Force 401 fields its systems at the direction of combatant commanders, which means launch ranges now compete for the same interceptors and sensors as overseas bases.
