At the 2024 Contra UAS Segurança interna Europa conference, Leo McCloskey, VP of Marketing at Echodyne, called for a shift in the economics of engagement to better counter the rising threat of drones. According to McCloskey, the current model puts defenders at a financial and strategic disadvantage, and without a change in approach, it will be difficult to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated attackers.
“You want to spend less in defence than they do in attack,” he explained. However, the reality is often the opposite, with defenders forced to spread resources thinly across multiple potential targets, while attackers can exploit the element of surprise.
“The challenge is the attackers have the ‘white-piece’ advantage. They can move first, and you won’t know where they are going to move. But in defence, you sort of know where they are going to point, because you know where your assets are.”
To counter this, McCloskey advocated for a fundamental shift in how defence resources are allocated and coordinated, especially on the civilian side, where the complexity of overlapping jurisdictions further tips the balance in favour of attackers, compared with military efforts.
“[The civilian side is worst] because there is a lot more red tape. You have states, regions, cities and a lot of overlapping authorities that you have to work your way through,” he said, emphasising that this bureaucratic complexity increases the attacker’s advantage.
The need for coordination
McCloskey suggested shifting the economics through improved efforts for information sharing and cooperation between agencies at all levels.
“I think of the civilian side as nothing to do with capability and everything to do with information and how we share it,” he explained. “If you think about all the sensors out there and what you do to put together a system, you have lots of choices, but then you have a location that doesn’t really coordinate with anything else, and no one really knows what is going on.”
Gaps in coverage can be easily exploited by attackers, so it is critical that C-UAS efforts are not undermined by a lack of integration between sensors and systems across different locations.
McCloskey drew on Metcalfe’s Law, which states that the value of a network is directly related to the number of users, to explain value of coordinated networks in maximising defence capabilities, noting that “the more we have agencies cooperating across traditional boundaries, the better we will be positioned to stop that committed attack.”
This approach could help to shift the economic burden by improving efficiency and reducing redundant efforts, ultimately giving defenders the advantage in engagement economics.
