CBO — Protecting US Installations Against Drones Could Cost Billions

Summary

A July 9, 2026 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, covered by Stars and Stripes, estimates the Pentagon would need up to **$7.4billion\ast \ast topurchaseandinstallamultilayered[[counter-uas|counter-drone]]defense—radar,RFdetection/defeat,kineticinterceptors,handheldsystems,andcommand-and-control—acrossthe100mostimportantof824trackedU.S.militaryinstallations.Sustainmentwouldaddroughly$500 million/year, with full system replacement every four to five years. The CBO evaluated five options and selected the layered approach as offering the most comprehensive defense, citing recent drone attacks in the Middle East and Ukraine — including a March 2026 Iranian strike that killed six U.S. service members in Kuwait — as the threat driver. The report also finds the industrial base sufficient, citing 135 vendor responses to a DoD counter-drone demonstration RFI, and notes DoD already spends $300M+/year on C-UAS R&D.

Key Claims

• Protecting 100 installations with a multilayered C-UAS defense could cost as much as $7.4billioninpurchase/installcosts,plus$500M/year in maintenance.
• Per-installation cost for the scalable, comprehensive option could run up to $74milliontopurchase/installand$5 million/year to maintain.
• Individual system purchase costs range $75,000–$10 million; installation costs range $0–$8 million.
• Benchmark scenario covers a 5-by-5-mile area per base, protecting command staff, family housing, barracks, and critical infrastructure.
• 824 U.S. military installations are tracked in the Bureau of Transportation Statistics database.
• DoD already allocates $300M+/year for C-UAS research, testing, and development.
• 135 vendor responses to a DoD RFI on a counter-drone demonstration indicate a sufficient industrial base and enough competition to restrain price growth.
• A March 2026 Iranian drone attack killed six U.S. service members at an operations center in Kuwait during the opening hours of the U.S.-Israel strike on Iran.
• Ukrainian surface-drone operations disabled at least 40% of the Russian Black Sea Fleet as of June 2025, illustrating drone-driven shifts in military posture that inform the CBO’s threat framing.

Notable Quotes

“That many vendors offer comparable systems also suggests that there is enough competition to keep prices from rising appreciably as DoD buys more systems.” — CBO report

Drones “have been used to collect intelligence and attack people, vehicles, and critical fixed locations in the Middle East and Ukraine.” — CBO report

Related Pages

• jiatf-401
• counter-uas
• anduril
• stars-and-stripes
• congressional-budget-office