General Gregory Guillot, Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, addresses the headquarters staff for the first time on Feb. 5, 2024. (Department of Defense photo by Joshua Armstrong)
SMD 2024 — The new(ish) head of US Northern Command is pushing to put defense against uncrewed aircraft systems into his job jar, arguing that NORTHCOM could play a key role in integrating service operations to protect Defense Department facilities.
“In the NORTHCOM AoR [area of responsibility] the responsibility for defending against UAS rests with the services over the installation, and then with [the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice] for other areas of critical infrastructure,” Gen. Gregory Guillot explained in a keynote today at the annual Army Space & Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Ala. “At this time, NORTHCOM does not have a formal role in defending against UAS because of the way we operate in the NORTHCOM AoR, versus … the INDOPACOM or EUCOM or Central Command.
“However, I do think that there’s a potential for NORTHCOM to assume a significant role in helping synchronize all the capabilities of the services and the interagency helping provide training, readiness building, and then perhaps even a fly away kit capability, where, if there’s a threat at a base with installation or an interagency partner requested [help because] it doesn’t have sufficient capability, we could fly in with that capability, address the threat and then go back into some sort of alert status,” he added.
Guillot said that NORTHCOM has been looking at the issue and “making proposals to see if there is an increased role in the UAS fight.”
Further, he said, the command also is planning a demonstration/exercise in late October or early November “where we’re going to bring a lot of capabilities in and show that we can share information in the counter-UAS realm, like we can in the air domain for example, and then have a series of effectors, non-kinetic and perhaps low-collateral kinetic capabilities, to defeat these threats that are growing and growing at a pace that I don’t think anybody expected.”
By “low-collateral kinetic capabilities,” Guillot explained that he in part is talking about directed-energy systems, noting that he’d like “to see more effort” on these types of weapons not just to counter UAS, but also to defend against cruise missiles and other emerging threats such as hypersonic systems.
“There’s a lot of momentum going in this direction, and NORTHCOM would like to be part of that, NORAD as well,” he said, because both commands “have to make sure that we can build a tailored defense system for the homeland that can tie in a number of sensors, [and] communicate and share data freely across a number of military and interagency partners.”
Guillot, who took over NORTHCOM-NORAD in February, noted that he has just wrapped up his first 90-day review — with his top priority, like that of his predecessor Gen. Glen VanHerck, ensuring domain awareness especially in the far north. But the pressing need for counter-UAS capabilities, he said, is also high on his list of concerns.
As a result of that review, Guillot also is considering how NORTHCOM might be able to release some of its air assets — “the fighters, tankers and AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System planes] that sit on alert” — back to the services to help improve readiness. The key, he stressed, would be “having the right triggers and authorities” to bring those assets back to NORTHCOM in the event they were needed.
