C-sUAS and the Criticality of Detection

By Major Dennis "Chip" Stanford

August 11, 2026 | Air Defense Artillery Journal, 2026 E-Edition

Read Time: < 9 mins

The Detection Fight

It is 0300 and the brigade command post (CP) radios are alive with reports from units occupying attack positions. With surprisingly little contact with adversary reconnaissance elements, the commander begins to optimistically believe the operation is going according to plan. Suddenly, the first report of possible enemy small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) echoes across the CP. Within minutes, radios erupt with reports of units being decimated by enemy indirect fire and one-way attack sUAS.

It is now 0400, and the brigade CP is attempting to determine if there are any combat capable maneuvers remaining. What began as an opportunity to showcase the brigade’s offensive capability has become an operational debacle. Fortunately for all involved, the only price to pay was the administrative reporting for reconstitution while training at a combined training center. Elsewhere in the world, events such as this occur in real time with lasting consequences.

The modern battlefield has been transformed through the seemingly unrestricted proliferation of sUAS. Where nations previously had to invest significant funds towards state-of-the-art capabilities to operate in the air domain, sUAS provide access to the air domain at minimal cost. These systems increase risk to all ground forces, regardless of location in the operating environment. Whereas the air domain was the purview of the Air Force and Army Air Defense, the air and land domains will forever be operationally intertwined.

The requirement to implement counter-sUAS (C-sUAS) measures in all phases of operations is driving change throughout the U.S. Military. In order to be successful against a proliferated and adaptive threat, organizations must excel at the point of contact: detection. The detection fight has emerged as the most critical step in C-sUAS operations for disrupting sUAS or defeating adversary sUAS or both. However, mastering the detection of sUAS and associated actions is only the beginning. Understanding battlefield decision cycles, friendly force and adversary information requirements provide the foundation of understanding the criticality of the C-sUAS detection fight.

Failure to plan and prepare for the detection portion of C-sUAS operations is akin to preparing for defeat. Planning cycles must account for the risk associated with enemy capabilities and the action-reaction-counteraction fight that will continue between enemy sUAS and friendly C-sUAS operations.

Criticality of Detection

ATP 3-01.81’s reporting and engagement flow chart is predicated on the successful detection of adversary sUAS. Ineffective detection capabilities linked with communication capacity will increase the probability of enemy sUAS achieving their commanders’ end state and having catastrophic negative impacts to friendly forces. An absence of detection capacity at echelon prevents the execution of effective C-sUAS procedures.

Within the doctrinally-defined passive defense tasks in ATP 3-01.81, early warning (detection) is expanded upon to include the requirement to:

Disseminate early warning of air threats to the low-est echelon. Early warning from the highest to the lowest echelons is essential to countering the UAS threat. Upon detection and classification of enemy UAS, the brigade must relay alert information on lo-cations, altitudes, and time to surrounding ground forces. This information will be vital to the ground forces protection.2

FM 3-0’s emphasis on the modern operating environment being transparent is validated by the volume and mass of sUAS throughout the battlespace. Survival on modern battlefields requires the ability to detect the enemy prior to being detected. Additionally, units must be able to communicate detection in a timely manner to enable effective responses at echelon. Detection enables the implementation of effectors and timely decisions. Failure to establish capable, redundant, and flexible detection will result in friendly-force early culmination and deny friendly-force commanders’ freedom of maneuver.

While planning for the implementation of detection capabilities, commanders and leaders at echelon must appropriately frame what is feasible and required. Detection requirements for a Light Infantry Platoon and Abrams Platoon differ significantly in operational requirements and available resources. Alternatively, an Armored Brigade with a Divisional Air Defense Battery has improved capabilities to any brigade that lacks the same supporting unit. Once requirements are understood, implementation of capabilities becomes the priority for planners.

Detection capabilities are founded upon the effective use of a sensor that is able to provide an operator warning of a potential aerial threat. Within C-sUAS operations, sensor capabilities have expanded beyond legacy air-space radars. Passive sensors such as acoustic and radio frequency (RF) capabilities have proliferated the C-sUAS enterprise. Once employed in a coherent manner, units must facilitate the communication of their sensors. Localized detection may support the owning unit but fails to share situational awareness and understanding throughout friendly formations. Organizations must account for the impact of quality and breadth of information received from specific types of sensors in support of detection efforts. A failure to facilitate communication of detection information prevents adjacent units and higher headquarters from initiating potential decision cycles.

Decision Cycles, Enabling the Commander

Within an operating environment that requires decisions made in minutes or seconds, Colonel (R) John Boyd’s OODA Loop provides an appropriate framework for understanding the information required to make decisions.3 Despite being sourced for aerial combat, it has applicability to C-sUAS. Enemy sUAS operators and friendly forces are executing simultaneous OODA loops, seeking to act at a pace faster than each other. sUAS have generated a significant challenge to friendly-force attempts to retain the initiative and sustain operations.

The “observe” step initiates an OODA loop and provides the cognitive equivalent of situational awareness. An individual or organization is aware that an event is occurring but has not applied analysis to the event, therefore only possessing situational awareness. This step serves as the foundation of a commander’s understanding of a situation. Orientation permits the application of intuition and data from information sources, which permits a commander to pursue understanding. Regardless of an organization’s assessment of an enemy’s likely course of action, data is required for analysis to proceed to knowledge, thereby enabling appropriate orientation. Once commanders can assess a situation, they are able to become oriented to an event and achieve situational understanding.

From an enemy perspective, the availability of information from hundreds of sUAS increases access to relevant information across their operating environment. An example of the volume of sUAS on battlefields is the 2024 reporting of a Russian battalion observing hundreds of sUAS in their sector during a 24-hour period.5 The asymmetry of available information provided to enemy formations further cements the importance of an effective detection capability.

Additionally, overmatch of sUAS versus C-sUAS systems generates risk that U.S. forces have not faced in a modern operating environment. Therefore, effective C-sUAS detection must provide early warning prior to the enemy receiving sUAS-sourced data that can be rapidly analyzed for relevant intelligence. Preventing information overmatch driven by an overwhelming number of sUAS requires an understanding of a framework that outlines rapid decisions for commanders.

Staffs must deliberately plan and prepare for the impacts of enemy sUAS on friendly operations, providing feasible decisions, triggers, and branches to operations. With rapidly tailorable sUAS, contingencies based upon the assumed failure of a tactic, technique, and procedure or standard operating procedure (TTP or SOP) or a C-sUAS system reduces decision timelines for leaders and commanders. Detailed centralized planning and permissive decentralized execution provide opportunities for leaders and commanders to sustain decisions at a rate equal or greater to the adversary.

Situational awareness and situational understanding are key components of the commander’s role in the operations process. In accordance with FM 5-0, a commander must “understand an operational environment and the problem.” Absent accurate understanding, a commander’s cognitive process for providing direction to subordinate leaders is flawed and inherently ineffective.6

As previously discussed, awareness and understanding have distinct differences in relation to the depth of knowledge and corresponding grasp of events in an operating environment. FM 5-0 expands on understanding to include:

To understand something is to grasp its nature and significance. Understanding includes establishing con-text—the set of circumstances that surround a partic-ular event or situation. Understanding an OE and its associated problems is fundamental to establishing a situation’s context and visualizing operations. Planning, the integrating processes, and running estimates all help commanders develop situational understanding.7

In context of C-sUAS operations, detection is the operational driver of enabling effective and complete understanding by friendly-force commanders. When provided with timely and relevant information, commanders at echelon can make deliberate decisions to establish conditions favorable for friendly forces. However, it must be re-affirmed that localized detection that is absent in the dissemination of information is a recipe for failure. Commanders and leaders adjacent and throughout an organization’s chain of command (CoC) must receive relevant detection information.

Conclusion

Returning to the fictional vignette of a brigade suffering a catastrophic scenario during training, effective detection allows for the prevention of such events. Regardless of available C-sUAS effectors, detection is the foundation of any unit’s ability to, at a minimum, mitigate the threat presented by enemy sUAS. With an effective detection methodology and procedures emplaced, the brigade would have been able to rapidly respond to threat courses of action and sustain their efforts to transition to the offense. However, to prepare large formations to execute such efforts will require leaders and personnel to understand the required synthesis of cognitive frameworks such as a commanders’ visualization process, the OODA Loop, and how to communicate detection throughout their formations while conducting large-scale combat operations.

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