A photo of a remote controlled aircraft similar to what the Justice Department said Ferdaus plotted to fill with explosives and fly into the Capitol and Pentagon. Now run by the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization (abbreviated JIAMDO and pronounced “jye-AM-doe), Black Dart’s existence was revealed in 2014, and select media were invited for a day last year “just to let everybody know that the Department of Defense is aware of this problem, we’re concerned about it and that we’re working on it,” Gregg said. The Defense Intelligence Agency conducted the first Black Dart exercise in 2002 under a veil of secrecy, and the annual event stayed veiled through 2013. The military has largely kept its work on the problem quiet to prevent hostile actors from learning what defenses and countermeasures the US possesses. Ferdaus also supplied cellphone detonators for IEDs to people he thought were agents of al Qaeda but turned out to be working for the FBI. Former Northeastern University student Rezwan Ferdaus is now serving 17 years in prison for plotting to pack C-4 plastic explosives into 1/10 scale radio controlled models of F-4 and F-86 fighter jets and fly them into the Capitol and Pentagon. “I’d say for the Department of Homeland Security, it’s one of the biggest concerns,” Gregg said. Arm it with plastic explosives, radioactive material, biological or chemical agents, and it can be crashed, kamikaze-style, into a target. APīut anyone can buy a Group 1 drone for a couple of hundred dollars and put it to nefarious use. Former Northeastern University student Rezwan Ferdaus is serving 17 years in prison for plotting to pack C-4 plastic explosives into drones. The United States enjoyed a near-monopoly on armed drones for much of the past 15 years, but with more than 80 countries now buying or building drones of their own, and with terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and ISIS known to have used unarmed drones in the Middle East, that advantage has evaporated.įew countries and no terrorist groups are likely to emulate the complex and costly US system of undersea fiber-optic cables and satellite earth terminals in Europe that allows crews in the United States to fly drones carrying missiles and bombs over Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Target practice The drones that Black Dart participants will attempt to shoot down. And there was a report last week that British officials are worried ISIS may try to bomb festival crowds using small drones. Or how in Japan last April, a nuclear-energy foe landed a drone carrying radioactive sand on the roof of the prime minister’s residence.
Gregg also could have mentioned how, to protest government surveillance, the Pirate Party of Germany flew a small drone right up to the podium as Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke in Dresden two years ago. In the wake of those events, he said, “Even though we’ve been looking at, it’s taken on a new sense of urgency.” 26 and sightings of unidentified small drones flying over nuclear reactors in France. Gregg cited the quadcopter that a drunk crashed onto the White House lawn in the wee hours of Jan. Scott Gregg, because of worrisome incidents since the last exercise. Previous Black Darts have covered threats to troops overseas and targets at home posed by drones of all sizes.īut small drones are this year’s focus, said the director of this 14th edition of Black Dart, Air Force Maj. The military categorizes Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) by size and capability, from Group 5 drones that weigh more than 1,320 pounds and can fly above 18,000 feet like the Reaper, down to Group 1, mini- and micro-drones less than 20 pounds that fly lower than 1,200 feet. A drone landed on the roof of Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe’s residence on April 22nd. That’s the unofficial motto for this year’s edition of the military exercise Black Dart, a two-week test of tactics and technologies to combat hostile drones that begins Monday on the Point Mugu range at Naval Base Ventura County in California. In October and November, French security officials were investigation a wave of drones that illegally flew over more than a dozen nuclear plants across France. On January 26 a recreational quadcopter accidently crashed into a tree on the White House grounds.