Tom Karako
Senior fellow and director of the Missile Defense Project at CSIS. Frequently quoted defense analyst on U.S. air- and missile-defense posture and, increasingly, counter-drone capability.
In April 2026 commentary on the JIATF-401 C-UAS surge, Karako argued the U.S. drone problem had been “artificially divided” between overseas combat and homeland threats and that increased investment, while “dramatically overdue,” reflects a long-anticipated requirement (src-counter-drone-middle-east-jiatf-2026-04). He suspects Coyote interceptors and Merops systems have done “the lion’s share of the drone killing” in CENTCOM.
”Super Bowl bubbles all year round” framing (April 2026)
Per src-army-counter-drone-marketplace-stateside-2026-04, Karako frames the stateside C-UAS problem set as needing ubiquitous sensing + mobile air defense across many simultaneous high-profile events — FIFA World Cup 2026, America 250, the 2028 LA Olympics — rather than the once-a-year Super Bowl precedent:
“It used to be that we just did the Super Bowl once a year with that kind of cap. But we need lots of Super Bowl-style bubbles over lots of things all year round.”