Drone Warfare and Securing America’s Military Against Emerging Threats with Senator John Boozman

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In Operation Spiderweb, Ukrainian forces smuggled drones deep into Russia and used them to attack grounded aircraft. This tested a fundamental assumption about warfare: that physical distance from the frontline can guarantee safety from enemy strikes. Asymmetric warfare, waged with capabilities such as long-range drones, can change the strategic fundamentals of a conflict at relatively low human and material cost. American military planners now face the urgent question of how to secure installations and bases, both in the United States homeland and abroad, against this new threat.

Join Senator John Boozman (R-AR), chairman of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee, for a conversation with Senior Fellow Timothy A. Walton and Center for a New American Security Senior Fellow Thomas Shugart on how to mitigate these risks and accelerate the fielding of forces and infrastructure that retain US advantage.

Senator Boozman will take audience questions. Breakfast will be served at 8:30 a.m., and the event will start at 9:00 a.m.

Event Transcript

This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.

Timothy Walton:

Good morning and welcome to the Hudson Institute. I’m Timothy Walton. I’m a senior fellow in Hudson’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, and I’m delighted that you’ve made the time to join us for a conversation this morning.

I’m joined by Tom Shugart, who’s a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and who co-authored this report with me titled, Concrete Sky, which examines the need to enhance the resilience of US and Allied Airfields in the Western Pacific and beyond, including against drones. And then of course, I’d like to welcome our distinguished guest, Senator John Boozman of Arkansas. Senator Boozman was elected after an illustrious career as an optometrist and among his many assignments, he’s chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. He’s a tenured member of the Appropriations Committee and serves as chairman of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. As a son of an Air Force Master Sergeant, defense is not new to Senator Boozman. And today he’s going to discuss how recent threats are upending many of the long-held assumptions we’ve had regarding defense. He’s been a champion also of Arkansas’s role as a pillar of the arsenal of democracy that we have here in the United States. And I think we’re also going to have an opportunity to discuss how there are new opportunities for the United States to evolve how we’re pursuing defense and defense priorities.

Our plan is for Senator Boozman to offer opening remarks, and then Tom and I are going to join him for a conversation before then opening the floor to your questions.

Senator Boozman, please, the floor is yours.

Senator John Boozman:

Well, thank you and it’s a really honor to be here today and discuss this so very important topic. I think of all the things that we can discuss in the military, probably this is the most pressing area that we have. It’s not a new area, but has become, I think, much more apparent. These guys, Tim and Tom, were kind of leading the charge when it wasn’t popular to discuss, but especially after the event where you had the Ukrainians defeat the Russian Air Force essentially without having an air force through drone technology.

I was with a friend of mine from the House of Representatives yesterday, that I served with there. I was in the House for nine years. He was on the Intelligence Committee and high up, but he’s been gone for a while. And so he started talking about this. He asked me what was going on. I told him I was coming over here to learn, really to learn like you all, from these guys, what’s going on, what they feel like the answer to this question is. But he said, well, the great thing that we have are two oceans and we don’t have to worry about that stuff.

And again, it doesn’t take long to get out of touch with what’s going on in today’s world. So it’s really important. We appreciate you guys for having us. And as was said, I’ve been on the MILCON, being chair or ranking member of military construction since 2019, and it is amazing how things have evolved so rapidly in the last year or two as a result of the war in Ukraine. So I look forward to the questions and certainly look forward to your questions in the audience as we discuss, as I said earlier, I think one of probably the most important topic that we could delve into regarding how do we protect ourselves from this new occurrence, these cheap weapons that are so precise and yet so, so very cheap. So let’s get started.

Tom Shugart:

Okay, great. Well, again, thanks for joining us Senator and for your attention to this topic, which I certainly think is important. So related to some of what you mentioned already and perhaps some of the misconceptions that still exist out there. How would you say that Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb and Israel’s attack on some Iranian forces, which also involve drones from inside the country, how do you think those undercut some of the strategic assumptions that distance provides sanctuary?

Senator John Boozman:

Yeah, I think it really woke up our military leaders to the fact that we’re so vulnerable. I think it woke our nation up, hopefully. And again, it’s great to have people like you that are thinking about these things, have been thinking about it. But the idea that the Ukrainians could defeat a Russian Navy without having a navy through using HIMARS, things like that, fairly cheap precision missiles, getting close in the sense of transporting. And certainly we’re very, very vulnerable to China in that regard, with all that they transport into our country. The list goes on and on. So it’s not only protecting aircraft, it’s protecting people, it’s protecting fuel supplies, the list goes on and on. So it has dramatically changed the way we think.

Now I have the opportunity to visit with a lot of the military brass, especially this time of the year because it’s the appropriation season. So we’re in the process of we’re going to mark our bill up this week. And so they all come in and talk. And this is really the number one topic that they’ve asked me about. If you listen to any of the hearings lately as I question them, it’s always the first thing I ask, what has changed in the sense of the events that have happened in this respect?

Timothy Walton:

Yeah, thanks Senator. I’d like to point out there is this new set of events in terms of what took place in Ukraine and Iran. At the same time, many US airfields, other critical infrastructures, power plants, ships, et cetera, have been surveilled, in some cases sort of harassed, by unidentified aerial phenomena, many of which seem to be drones. And this has been going on for almost five years now.

Senator John Boozman:

Drives you crazy.

Timothy Walton:

Yep. And DOD’s answer is, well, we’re not exactly sure what it is, or it might be compartmented in terms of what the answer is. Do you think these recent attacks will actually start to catalyze action? And what are the changes in authorities or capabilities you think are necessary?

Senator John Boozman:

I think so. And again, in talking to the military, both in hearings and personally, a question that I’ve asked is what do you need for us to give you? What authorities do we need to give you so that we can counter this stuff? And what they want is the ability right now, the legal authority, to enforce the perimeter around the base and enforce the . . . And I don’t understand why they don’t have the ability to do it inside the base now, but they don’t seem to. So they want that ability.

Also, you have to have equipment in order to take these things down. You could shoot a multi-million dollar interceptor and tear up a lot of stuff in the area, but you need microwaves, you need the jamming equipment, you need all of the different devices that we’re working on right now to bring these things down immediately and do it in a low cost way. You can’t spend, you could, but you don’t want to have to spend 1,000 times the cost with the interceptor as to what’s coming in. So it’s something that simply has to be done. I’ve asked for language. I wish we could get something in the appropriations bill this year. I haven’t looked as far as the DOD authorization what’s in there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s not language, perhaps. But we’ve got to give them the authority to protect their installations. And to be honest, I don’t understand why we’re not doing that.

Timothy Walton:

President Trump’s discussed Golden Dome to defend in many cases it seems like against long range threats that could be mounted against the US homeland, but it seems like this is a threat that also needs to be addressed as part of that portfolio. And you’re talking about high-power microwaves, systems that maybe could generate lethal effects and actually knock down the attack, right? Just it seems like jamming or just tracking the attack as it’s coming in and attacking your airfield or space situational awareness site or whatever it is, isn’t good enough anymore.

Senator John Boozman:

Right. Lasers, all of this technology that we’re in the process of developing right now, again, to have a cheap interceptor system is vital. And it is something that we go through phases where you have to spend a lot of money, this is almost like a moonshot type thing. We need to spend whatever it takes in order to do this, to protect ourselves. It’s just as simple as that.

Tom Shugart:

I agree 100 percent senator. And I think that what I’ve advocated is what I call a concrete dome. I mean, it’s time to start pouring concrete. I think that all the efforts . . . And I saw the Air Force General for Military Construction in front of your committee, and he was asked very specifically about the Ukraine attack. What are we doing? And the response was multifaceted threat, multifaceted approach. That’s great. FBI, FAA, whatnot. That’s all great. But I’m skeptical that we can count on that. All that’s succeeding ultimately. And I worry that almost any defensive system we come up with could ultimately be overwhelmed by numbers. And I fail to see any assured means of protecting our truly vital assets, like B-21s, B-2s, potentially ships pier-side other than passive protection.

And this is not a threat also that it’s just going to be limited to drones. I mean, the DOD has said China’s testing intercontinental range conventional weapons now. So we need to worry about that too. There is no sanctuary anymore. And I think we have to get a lot more serious about . . . I mean, we need to start pouring concrete. I mean, I don’t see any other way. Electromagnetics, great, Russians are doing fiber optic drones. You get a few drone defender systems out there, fine, they’ll launch 1,000 drones from containers next to the base.

We have to remember too, China has container ships in our port every day that are owned by Costco shipping, which is a DOD-designated PLA military company. I mean, the fact that we even allow at that scale, those sorts of potential vectors of attack into our system now, having identified them as the pacing adversary still is I find frustrating. So I agree that I think some very substantial out of the norm, no longer business as usual, moonshot-type approach is. I think it’d be necessary, not as a long-term thing but just to get defenses in place that are really impenetrable.

Senator John Boozman:

And I agree totally with the fact that we need to harden our resources. And as you point out, that’s going to take time and it’s going to take a lot of money, but it is something that we need to do. Really a combination of all of those things, but it simply has to be done. I read your report, which was excellent, and I was really surprised at the . . . I wasn’t surprised, I was even surprised at the lack of hardening that we’ve done in the last several years because again, I’ve been part of approving these things. But what did you say? We’ve only done like two in the last several years?

Tom Shugart:

We counted in the Western Pacific. China has built almost 400 hardened shelters within 1,000 miles of Taiwan. They have 134 air bases now within 1,000 miles of Taiwan. In the entire Western Pacific, as far as we could tell, and nobody’s told us we missed anything, the US Air Force bases have added 22 hardened shelters. Two of them are pretty far up in Northern Japan, well outside of 1,000 miles from Taiwan. The other 20 are in South Korea, which I’m not sure if we’ll get to use those or not, so near zero effective hardening within.

Now to be clear, there may be other aspects of the base that have gained resilience. There may be additional fuel facilities and whatnot. That’s great. Resilience is super. But the things that we could count as open source researchers, which is additional ramp area and additional hardened shelters, that’s the progress we’ve seen, which is not a great deal.

I think certainly this is an area where we could make significant progress. When I look at Japan, for example, where most of our bases are, they’re really good at pouring concrete. I mean, they can build infrastructure like crazy in their civilian sector. They had just boosted their defense budget by a tremendous amount, potentially in ways that are limited by their defense industry. That looks like an opportunity for me to take some of that extra commitment and funding and let’s start protecting our facilities. I mean, they’re in Japan, so that seems like a logical way to go.

Timothy Walton:

And the Japanese are starting to do a lot more hardening, military construction of their own, building some bunkers, in some cases right across where the US base is, so it seems like an opportunity for us to do a two-for-one deal and get the same project going there.

Hardening though, to some degree, almost seems like a bad word, right? Like passe of, well, I’m going to just build this hardened facility.

Tom Shugart:

I think this is supposed to be my next question, right?

Timothy Walton:

Okay. Well, I’ll let you take it. Go ahead.

Tom Shugart:

So Senator, even though in the Cold War thousands of hardened shelters facilities were built, the military services, including but not limited to the Air Force, have largely refrained from fielding passive defenses, especially hardening in the last few decades. There seems to be a view, which Tim was starting to mention, that hardening is passe in part because US forces were able to destroy Iraqi hardened aircraft shelters in the first Gulf War.

However, hardened shelters, hardened fuel stores and the like reduce the susceptibility of infrastructure to attack. They drive up enemy salvo size and complexity and make it so that our active defenses don’t have to be perfect. Notably encountering Iranian attacks on Israel, US forces recently operated from bases in Israel, Jordan, and other bases in the Middle East that were largely hardened and defended by active air defenses. Yet there seems to be, as we discussed, a lack of a similar approach in the Indo-Pacific, and even less so in the continental US.

As we discussed, China’s building extensive hardened facilities, and by our calculations, enough airfield hardening and enough concrete to pave a four-lane highway from Washington DC to Chicago.

Senator John Boozman:

That’s amazing.

Tom Shugart:

So how can Congress help the military services to reframe their paradigm on how hardening is not a bad word? How can we work to enhance passive defenses into military construction projects in general, and should passive defenses be incorporated into Golden Dome? Should it have a concrete foundation?

Senator John Boozman:

Well, it’s a different world now, and we’re in a situation in Ukraine where we’ve reverted back to trench warfare like in World War I. So it’s a different world. Not only do we need to harden, but I think the hardening capability is going to have to be different than it has been in the past.

I was in Kuwait after the Gulf Wars, and when you go there and you see that the shelters that were built by the French to harden the Kuwaiti planes, and the Kuwaitis had a lot of money, they had a lot of planes, but Iraq went in and immediately bombed them, or we did. We went in and bombed them so the Iraqis couldn’t use the planes. And after the war was over, the Kuwaitis were suing the French because it didn’t work because we were able to penetrate, and that they had told them that they were guaranteed not to for that not to happen. And they said, well, the guarantee was against everything but United States munitions. So not only do we have to come up with hardening, but we have to be able to figure out how to withstand even more lethal weapons than were used during that time. So it is something that we simply have to do. We’re talking about Golden Dome and all of those things, but we do need to get back to the basics.

And it’s not only hardening planes, but right now they’re saying that in Ukraine, the war is essentially static. The lines are static, and the reason being is there’s so much drone activity that literally, there’s an article this week about the fact that a single soldier could go out and he would be attacked by a drone because again, the prevalence is so great.

So it’s just a different way of doing it. So you not only have to harden against, as the guys mentioned, all the fuel and all that, but just keeping people somewhat safe in these conditions. So I think you’re right. I think we need to be pouring some concrete and figuring out a recipe with that that will withstand some of the stuff that we’re seeing.

Timothy Walton:

And there’s great resistance I think to investing a lot more into passive defenses. There’s a famous Patton quote that said, “Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of mankind.” And so if the goal is trying to create a perfect defense that can outlast any attack, like the American munitions in Kuwait, that’s probably not going to work. But if you combine your passive defenses with your active ones, you drive up the salvo size, the attack complexity, and in the meantime you’re using this to be able to go on the offensive, that’s how we can actually get the initiative in places like the Western Pacific.

I think most people thought they were coming to a drone conversation, but they’re coming to an even cooler conversation here on concrete and construction. And I’d like to go a little further on that subject. You are chair of the subcommittee on military construction. What are some of the opportunities you view to get things going faster, drive down cost also?

Senator John Boozman:

In visiting with the military or visiting with the brass, the thing that they want is flexibility. They understand that probably the idea of committing to these massive, multi, multi-years, decade years of contracting with a particular defense entity, some sort of new system or whatever, probably with warfare changing the way it is, that’s probably not going to work. So they want flexibility. They want to be able to change.

They also want to be able to actually buy cheaper things. The drones now that we’re using cost millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think the Ukrainian drones are $500 to $1,000, and they’re being made in people’s homes and mass-produced, and as we’re seeing, very, very effective. So they’re seeing that and they want to be able to do that.

The other problem that we’ve got is just a lot of the things that the military in their construction has to adhere to are different than the private sector. So they’re politically pushed into all of these different things, Davis-Bacon, all of these different rules concerning labor and things that really drives up the cost.

Another problem that we see as we build overseas, not only do we have to adhere to the overseas standard for building in Germany, then we have to build to the German rules of building. We also still have to build to the rules of American building here, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It really drives up the cost. So we need some common sense. We need to be able to work with the military to give them the flexibility that they need so that we can take the dollars in this age of austerity, and when you’re $37 trillion in debt and with inflation, things are so, so very expensive, running almost a $2 trillion deficit every year, it is an age of austerity, and it’s going to get worse. So we have to make those dollars stretch as far as we can.

It’s sad because we talk about hardening, sites that need to be hardened. We have all kinds of sites right now where we’ve got multi-million dollar equipment, planes and things sitting out in the open that aren’t covered at all. So there’s just a lot that we need to do. Military construction, MILCON has been underfunded for many, many years, and it’s hard to keep up with what we’ve got, much less go forward. So we’ve got to put some dollars in that coffer and make it such that we can go forward with some of these things that you all are suggesting.

Tom Shugart:

Perhaps that’s a good opportunity for some sort of legislative relief or from some of those requirements or maybe an emergency declaration. And I could see a valid point for having seen what we’ve seen happen in Ukraine and Israel, that this is a national security emergency to some degree and a legitimate one.

Senator John Boozman:

I agree. We’ve seen emergencies called for less.

Tom Shugart:

Certainly, far less. I mean, what are we going to do if we don’t take that kind of drastic action. Imagine what it’s going to be like the day after that happens to us.

Senator John Boozman:

No, exactly. And hopefully that’s not what it’s going to take.

Tom Shugart:

Hopefully not. We think that’s the kind of thing we can deter by having, if the adversary sees, hey, this may not work, then they don’t try.

Senator John Boozman:

Right.

Timothy Walton:

And we’re doing some research on what are some of the existing and revised authorities that could be used to accelerate the pace of construction, lower costs by getting economies of scale, bundling or using contractor-owned, contractor-operated projects where maybe the contractors can execute a project and they provide the services of a facility for a prolonged period of time.

Well, one of the tensions though would be, I think as in your appropriations role, is we want to give DOD more leeway, more flexibility in terms of how they execute projects, in some cases, use sub-military construction activities, repair facilities, authorities, and the like, but sometimes DOD then uses the funds in areas that it wasn’t appropriated for. We see the border wall construction, a significant amount of funding was taken for that.

Moving forward, how do you think Congress is going to try to provide some guidance to I think encourage maybe a positive conversation on this front, but I think it also applies more broadly where the administration provided a pretty convoluted budget that requires the reconciliation plus the base, and it’s hard to make sense of what’s what moving forward, especially if things are fiscally tight.

Senator John Boozman:

I agree. And things go back to things that happened decades ago, or whatever, and then you react and you put in rules and things, and then those rules never change. But the military desperately wants flexibility, so they’re asking for pots of money where essentially they’re saying, “We need money to solve this problem, but we don’t know exactly how to solve it right now. So give us the ability to draw from a pot as we do that.” And you say, “Why is that?” Well, the budget is so convoluted, and we do such a poor job now of getting the budget out in a speedy time.

Usually we’re into March before we even have the budget, which was supposed to be done in October, done. And so right now, we’re in the appropriations process for ‘26, which starts in October. We’ll work through that. But those dollars, again, I would not be surprised at all if we didn’t have another . . . Well, we will have a continuing resolution in October. The question is how long will it go? So it’s really difficult for them to plan. It’s difficult for them. If they come in in January, you’re talking about not getting any dollars for a year and a half.

So we do need the flexibility. The process of how we appropriate money is a little bit unwieldy right now. And to be honest, if you look at defense, they’ve not done a great job as far as their audits and things like that, of accounting for the dollars that we’ve given them. So that makes it such that they need to tighten up, they need to do a better job as we give them these authorities so that they’re accountable for the dollars that we give them. And we make sure that, what we all want, is to make sure that the taxpayers are being spent in an appropriate way.

Timothy Walton:

Tom, I think it’s one more question before we open up the floor to you, but I would encourage you to think of any questions you may have.

Senator John Boozman:

I’ll be glad to answer any easy questions.

Timothy Walton:

So Senator, although we have focused our discussions so far on defenses, largely, it is important to keep in mind the relative balance of offensive to defensive investments, and ensure that we continue to spend on forces and impose dilemmas on adversaries, like China, so that we can fight an away game instead of only defending the country.

Now, it is possible that Golden Dome may reduce funding available for offensive capabilities, given limited budgets, yet not provide a sufficient level of defense in some ways that we discussed. How are you considering this balance shifting, and how do we ensure the nation continues to invest in offensive capabilities as well?

Senator John Boozman:

No, I think that’s really important. A great question, and I think we need to do both, but in investing in Golden Dome, you’re talking about spending many, many billions of dollars. And the question is now, to their credit, the militaries are looking at systems that, offensive systems, like drones, that they want to actually purchase off the shelf and use rather than going through all the procurement process and all of this and that, that might take years to develop. They want the stuff now, and want to do it in a very cheap way. So we don’t want to put all of our eggs in one basket, and again, with the dollars the way they are now, that could happen.

Before I went to MILCON, I was the chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Appropriations. And so we had TSA, the people at the airport underneath us. And literally we’d be in a situation where TSA would ask us for an upgrade to their computer systems that did the screening, just an upgrade to the electronics. And so you go through the appropriations process and all that and you figure out what you need, and that’s probably a year and a half in itself, getting that done. By the time they get it and get it installed, you’re talking about two years. Literally the system, the electronics would be outdated by the time they put it in. So you run into all these crazy things that are part of the process.

But no, we can’t put all our eggs in one basket. And we have seen, people laughed when we talked about interceptors when we first came out. Reagan talked about that, and it is remarkable what they can do. The Israeli system, a Patriot system, the Israeli system is truly remarkable. So it can be done, but it is going to take a lot of effort and a lot of money.

Timothy Walton:

We look forward to your questions. I’d ask if you could please identify yourself and ask a question, and we have a microphone that will be brought up to the front, and the first question here.

Daniel Balson:

Thank you so much. This is such a fascinating discussion. I really appreciate being here. Daniel Balson, I’m with Razom for Ukraine, a pro-Ukraine advocacy organization.

And actually I was just in Kyiv, and I had the pleasure of visiting a drone manufacturing facility. I was to the folks who were working there. And I mean some of the things, I think it was a really paradigm shifting event for me because some of the things that they’re doing really look like the cutting edge of magic. They were telling me about how they’re using detonators with magnetometers that you can fly the drone under a car, calibrate the drone. Two days later, the car starts, moves, disrupts the magnetic field, the drone goes off. I mean, it’s a mine with wings. They’re using sonograms to track exact detonation sequences at certain altitudes.

And I asked the person, I said, “Okay, well, you must be flooded with requests from Israelis, from Taiwanese, and from Americans who are trying to come in here and see what you’re doing, figure out how you’re doing it.” He said, “No, I mean, not really. There’s just not a lot of people here.”

So my question is how do we facilitate that kind of learning between the US and its allies and between our allies themselves to make sure that all of this knowledge and information that the Ukrainians are gaining, that we’re paying for, that the Israelis are gaining, that we’re paying for, that this is disseminated and comes to the benefit of the US?

Senator John Boozman:

Well, that’s not very encouraging. But, it is. It’s sad, but true. But I do think that that’s the flexibility that the services you’re asking for, and the Army in particular from an offensive standpoint is really interested in that type of technology because not only is that effective and does a tremendous job, but it’s really the way that they’re doing it is really cost-effective. You can build a whole bunch of those for one of our equivalents.

So that’s something that I need to pound. I’m sure the guys with their work are doing the same. I know they are doing the same thing. How do we take our dollars and stretch them? But sadly, the things that are going on in Ukraine are horrible. It is a good laboratory for weapons and systems, and the Ukrainians have been really remarkable in how they’ve adapted and done so much with so little. So it’s just a remarkable story.

But that’s the kind of thing that I think they would like to be able to grab some dollars and then start doing themselves without having to go through this big production type thing with all the specifications and all of this. You need specifications and things, but what you need mostly is stuff that works and that’s what’s happening. How long were you over there?

Daniel Balson:

I was over there for about two weeks in Kyiv and Odessa, and other parts of the country.

Timothy Walton:

Very good. It seems like there are these broader force design implications as well that you alluded to before, how the Ukrainians are defeating the Russian Navy without having much of a Navy. Those are the opportunities I think, where we can lean more into as well. Even if it’s not the perfect system, we could start to field some systems, adapt them for those dilemmas.

Senator John Boozman:

No, I think that’s right. And the other thing is that we need to be encouraging countries like Taiwan that again simply don’t have either the room or the wealth or whatever for these systems, these bulky systems and things to go to the HIMARS and this and that, that have been so effective. Nobody ever dreamed that these would be so effective against really things that they weren’t thought to be designed for. So to really encourage those, our allies to go down that route rather than the big systems that are fancy and nice, but maybe not as cost-effective.

Timothy Walton:

Another question here in the front, please.

Rebecca Herman:

Hi, thank you so much to you all. My name’s Rebecca Herman. You mentioned that the military has this demand to buy cheaper US-made drones. Do you see any opportunities for Congress to take the lead and help there, and if so, what might that look like?

Senator John Boozman:

I do see the opportunity for Congress to help, and really what we’ve done is ask them, and they’re trying to figure out what authorities they need to go forward. And I believe there’s some money in the Defense Authorization bill, some pots for them to use this way to give them some discretion. And I think that that’s something that we really need to work on.

And they need to figure out, you do need to be held accountable. You do need to have rules on how you’re going to do that, and they’re in the process of figuring that out. So yeah, it’s something that I think Congress will be committed to doing. Roger Wicker and his counterpart do a tremendous job.

The nice thing about defense and military construction, things like that, is it’s really very bipartisan. Both groups work together very well. Senator Reid is excellent. And again, Roger Wicker is excellent too, and they work together very well, as is the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Timothy Walton:

Another question in the white shirt in the center, please?

Mislav Tolusic:

Hi, Mislav Tolusic with Marlinspike, venture firm investing in dual-use technologies. And so the first time I looked at a drone company was back in 2010, ‘11, ‘12, and the reason why we declined to invest was because of FAA. And if you were to ask me back then how long was it going to take for FAA to sort this whole thing out, I’d probably say a couple of years. I never would’ve dreamed that 10, 15 years, we’re pretty much in the same spot. So my question to you is it seems like we’ve got this piping that’s made for taking technologies from the military and then percolating its way into commercial space. Now we’ve got the flow in the opposite, and that’s basically what’s going on with the DJI and all of those other drones in Ukraine. We can’t replicate that because we have this three-letter agency that’s basically putting kibosh on all of that, and I haven’t heard much about regulatory reform, and how do we think about those civilian agencies that are preventing the flow going in the opposite direction?

Senator John Boozman:

No, I think that’s an excellent point, and it needs to be done and hopefully it will be done. That’s something that I’d like for the military to say, “This is a national emergency.” And then again, if we need to, as was pointed out earlier, those are the kind of things that we need to act on, because you’re right, it’s been very, very cumbersome and things really haven’t changed. So I think that’s going to come, but it can’t come too soon. You’re right, it’s stifling development.

Timothy Walton:

Another question here on the side, please.

Karen Thornton:

Good morning. I’m Karen Thornton. I’m with the Acquisition Innovation Research Center, and we are working with the Department of Defense on a talent pipeline for DOD for civilians, and I think it’s an area that we’re falling behind China as well in developing STEM talent that can be part of the acquisition workforce, to have that digital literacy that we need to buy the drones, to be technically savvy about how we support our war fighters on the front lines. And I’m wondering what your views are on how we can make further investment in our universities and vocational schools to make sure the US has the talent that it needs.

Senator John Boozman:

No, I think that’s so important and it really is the key going forward, because technology innovation is going to be the differences in us succeeding or not succeeding, and we’ve always done a great job of that, so hopefully we will continue to invest. I know Arkansas is doing a much better job from a vocational standpoint. There are so many entities now that work with the high schools, the community colleges and things where you can get co-credit, get students over to a college, a university setting where they see this isn’t magic. “I can succeed. Even though nobody in my family has ever gone to college, this isn’t magic,” and I think we really are having some success in that area.

The other thing is that those are good jobs, they pay well, and for the right individuals, it’s a fun thing to do. So we just have to do whatever it takes to encourage that, but it does need to be something that is something that we from a national standpoint focus on. But I think we are doing better, but we still got a ways to go.

Timothy Walton:

It seems like maybe at a broad level, it’s one of the opportunities where we need to take the work increasingly to the places where there are workers, states like Arkansas and others where there is a pool of talent that could actually do the work. Because we’re finding so many of the other defense industrial sites are just tapped out in terms of personnel. They can’t produce as much because they don’t have the people to do the work, yet there are states that could do more, especially if they get upgraded in terms of some of those skills.

Senator John Boozman:

It’s really interesting, Camden, Arkansas is one of the big defense hubs in the country right now, right at the very top. Also, Mississippi County and Arkansas is the biggest steel producing county in the country with the most modern steel plants in the world. So you wouldn’t think that, but it really is doing well in that regard, so it’s good. There is a large talent pool throughout the country that we need to tap, and that’s really what the president’s talking about in some degree, is trying to bring a lot of this stuff back where we start to make things again.

Timothy Walton:

A question here at the front, please.

Paul Litwin:

Good morning. Paul Litwin, I’m with Red Cat, the largest US publicly traded drone manufacturer. I’d love to hear your thoughts, particularly on supply chains. Just last night, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security put on public notice a section 232 investigation of Chinese drone imports to the United States. One of the things that we’ve discovered in our company is it’s not just about supporting the US drone manufacturers, but also the components and the sourcing for batteries, motors, everything that goes into drone manufacturing. What are your thoughts on the broader drone manufacturing ecosystem in the United States and making sure that not just drones are manufactured and assembled here, but also the critical components going into them are from US or allied countries rather than China or other adversaries?

Senator John Boozman:

Do this for us, and you’re the expert on that. Take a second and tell us your problem and how we need to solve it.

Paul Litwin:

I think the largest problem we’ve encountered is cost competitiveness. We’ve made a priority to source majority from the United States, and if not the United States, from partner and allied countries. Currently, China has been dumping a lot of materials, not just drone components, but for the commercial market, it’s very cheap to get a DJI drone, very cheap to get an Autel drone. If you want to do it correctly and American made, it’s going to be very hard to be cost competitive, and I think a government signal to the commercial industry, to the private sector is saying, “We want you to buy US drones. We want you to buy us components.” I think that is the most critical first step.

Senator John Boozman:

Are you able to source what you need?

Paul Litwin:

We are currently, but yet again, I think cost is right now the biggest issue. And to your point, I think it’s natural for customers to blink when they see a drone costing $30,000, but that’s the price to pay for being made in America and having all the components made in America right now.

Senator John Boozman:

Right. No, I think that in visiting with the military, they want the ability to buy off the shelf stuff, and so certainly that would be helpful to people like you and others. And then too, as they do that, then I would think the cost would come down also as you get bigger and bigger.

Timothy Walton:

Well, Senator Boozman, thank you very much really for coming, joining us, sharing your thoughts, and I think a really forward vision of not only addressing this great threat of drones, but also the opportunities that they can provide to the United States.

Senator John Boozman:

Well, we appreciate you guys. We appreciate your work and the stuff that you’ve done so far has been very, very helpful. We look forward to hearing more from you, and you all know more about the aspect of what needs to be protected, I think, than anybody, and you just jumped out and saw a need and fulfilled the research, which again, is going to be very, very helpful.

Timothy Walton:

Thank you, sir. Please join me in thanking Senator Boozman.