The United States Army has simulated a large-scale drone attack to help bolster the defence department’s ability to detect and defeat enemy drones in the National Capital Region.
Army Lt. Cols. Brian Reynolds, Chief of the Mission Assurance Division and Jesse Burnette, Joint Staff Director of Operations, designed the exercise which was hosted by the Joint Task Force-Military District of Washington from November 17 – 21. The Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, Marines and local police joined the Army for the exercise.
Pilots launched drones from locations in the north of Fort McNair, in the east of the installation and in the south near the National War College, as an insider threat. The planners also used another post on Hains Point between the Potomac River and the Washington Channel as an invasion point.
“Colonel Burnette and I had this idea to test our systems in a true live threat scenario,” Reynolds said. “All these systems are tested in a perfect world scenario out in a desert or out in a very remote area, rarely are they tested in the situations and environments that they operate in. To our knowledge, this is kind of the first time that’s ever been done.”
At each location pilots tested the Unmanned Aircraft Systems’ (UAS) ability to hover, orbit and invade in real time during daylight hours. Testers then conducted a sensor check across each participating installation. At night, planners tested the same capabilities while studying mitigation and defence tactics from Fort McNair’s sensors to handheld devices used by the post’s military police units.
The UAS began launching at about 9:30 a.m. each day of the exercise until about 3 p.m. Pilots then began the same test from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. The tests studied whether Fort McNair, Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling and the Washington Navy Yard could detect and mitigate UAS threats.
After evaluating the results, the data will be used to build a larger exercise for 2026. Reynolds and Burnette hope to identify gaps or weaknesses in the defence department’s counter-UAS capabilities in the National Capital Region and use that capability in neighbouring installations. The planning team also hopes to achieve the ability to attack, identify and monitor aerial activity at the counter-UAS level in the DC metro area as well as the continental United States.
“The small drone problem has stymied countries from Denmark to [the US], Russia-Ukraine, and in the Levant, and in the National Capital Region,” Burnette said. “But an argument could be made for the rest of the Western world that [counter-UAS] is singular in its ability to defeat such incidents should they occur. And the aim of this exercise is to test our defences.”
Reynolds, who has a background in law enforcement, held planning sessions for nearly 60 days with Burnette, an infantry officer, to prepare for the exercise. To conduct the tests, they had to seek permission from government agencies including the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Security Administration.
“We’re not overlapping our capabilities and then integrating those into one common operational picture,” Reynolds said.” We’re sharing the early warning system of our capabilities and then sharing that amongst the interagency at both the federal, the state, the local, the tribal and the territorial levels.”
The soldiers believe that the DC metro region provides the ideal testing ground with its challenging geography and collaborations with more than 40 national and government agencies. It is also home to one of the country’s busiest airports, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
“If you could solve this problem here, you could probably solve it anywhere,” Burnette said. “To be able to operate successfully in that environment is a challenge in and of itself.”
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Image: An officer scans their surroundings during nighttime activities at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., Nov. 17-21, 2025. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. James Heffron)
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