Protecting critical infrastructure has long been a question of securing access from the ground – the assumption was that if you could control who entered a site, you could control most of the threats it faced.
But recent conflicts have proven that highly sensitive sites now face threats from three dimensions spanning both physical and digital.
One of the biggest threats is the rapid rise of commercially available drones – cheap and accessible devices that can easily bypass the traditional checkpoints historically employed at these secure sites.
Newer drones are playing an increasing role in warfare, now that they’re able to fly farther, stay airborne longer and carry sophisticated payloads.
World governments are getting ready to tackle these changing risks and the rules are becoming ever more stringent. China, for example, recently tightened controls on drone ownership. Other governments have imposed more identification requirements, geofencing measures and new operational categories.
Futureproofing infrastructure against drone strikes
But I worry that regulation alone might not solve the problem, and many of the same questions we’ve been asking about telecoms equipment now apply to the drone industry. Who built the technology, where does the data go, who can access it…?
As we move from basic camera-equipped consumer drones to fully autonomous commercial fleets spanning critical infrastructure, logistics, emergency response and more, I think more needs to be done to secure both sensitive physical locations and the data that these drones now possess.
To better understand how governments, operators and infrastructure owners should prepare for this shifting landscape, I turned to MyDefence UK Director Liam Hutcheson, who shares his thoughts on regulation, security and infrastructure protection.
- China has recently moved towards more restrictions on drone usage and ownership. Given the dual use of the technology, does the move surprise you and do you think others will follow the example of China and roll out more strict drone control?
Not entirely. China’s move reflects a tension every drone-mature nation is grappling with: the same technology enabling precision agriculture and emergency response can equally be used for surveillance, smuggling or targeted disruption. Longer endurance, better cameras and swarm coordination only intensify that challenge.
What it signals is that governments are becoming less comfortable leaving drone activity largely unregulated. We are already seeing the same direction in Europe and the US with Remote ID mandates, geofencing requirements, granular operational categories. The UK reinforced its class-marking regime for 2026.
Whether others match China’s specific restrictions will depend on their security posture, economic reliance on the sector and enforcement appetite. But the broader trend is consistent: tighter oversight, stronger identity requirements, more defined exclusion zones.
From our perspective, regulation is necessary but only half the answer. Rules work when operators comply. COTS drones can easily be, and are being, modified to circumvent restrictions on usage and ownership, undermining even well-designed frameworks. Remote ID is a good example: meaningful, but only if receiver infrastructure exists to read it. Without detection capability running alongside the regulatory framework, you get rules that look credible on paper but cannot be enforced in practice.
- The US rolled out a blanket ban on Chinese drones (and non-US routers). Before that they targeted ZTE, Huawei and a slew of Chinese tech manufacturers citing security reasons. Can (and should) drones and by extension unmanned vehicles and in the near future robots be vetted to ensure that systems meant to protect the nation are not double-agents?
Yes and the pattern with ZTE, Huawei and now DJI tells us something important. The concern goes beyond the device itself to what it is connected to and who can reach it. A drone is not just a flying camera. It records location, footage, flight history and operator identity. All of that data has to go somewhere, and knowing where is not always straightforward.
That risk does not stop at drones. Autonomous ground vehicles, logistics robots, inspection platforms – anything networked in a sensitive environment poses the same question.
The supply chain adds further complexity. A system assembled in one country may still depend on software, components or cloud infrastructure originating elsewhere.
Vetting at the point of purchase is not enough. These systems can be updated after deployment, which means their behaviour can change. What is needed is persistent visibility into what is actually happening around a facility; detecting unexpected signals, unauthorised transmissions or activity that does not match what a system is supposed to be doing. That is exactly the kind of awareness that RF-based detection provides, and it applies equally to hostile third-party drones and to your own fleet.
- How far are we from the day one human operator will be able to safely manage fleets of autonomous drones for civilian or defense purposes? What are the bottlenecks that need to be removed in order for this to materialise?
A single operator can already manage small fleets for infrastructure inspection and logistics, and that capability is maturing quickly. The gap is widest in urban or contested airspace where conditions change fast and the cost of error is high.
From our perspective, the missing foundation is airspace awareness. The same detection infrastructure that protects a site from hostile drones is what gives a fleet operator the picture they need to operate safely. Those two requirements are not separate problems. Sites that build airspace awareness in from the start will be the ones where one-to-many operation becomes viable first, for security and for operations alike.
- Data centres are rapidly becoming a target of choice, as we’ve seen in the Iran conflict a few months ago. From your vantage point, what does a fully secured airport or power station or data centre look like in 2030? Is that even possible given the near endless vectors enemies can use?
A fully secured critical site in 2030 does not look like a single technology. It looks like a layered system with a clear chain of detection, assessment and response. For drone threats that means persistent airspace monitoring through radio frequency detection, radar, acoustic and optical sensors working together, feeding a common operating picture that security teams can act on in real time.
At an airport or power station you would expect geofenced enforcement zones, direct alert integration into control room systems and pre-authorised response protocols. Equally important is what happens after an incident. Evidence collection, chain of custody and the ability to reconstruct exactly what occurred when a drone appeared. This information must include what the drone did and how the site responded. Regulators and prosecutors need a clear evidential record, and that has to be built into the system architecture, not added as an afterthought.
What the recent Iran conflict and incidents like Gatwick show is that the gap between a capable adversary and an unprepared defender is still dangerously wide. The sites investing in detection infrastructure now are the ones that will be credibly protected by 2030.
- What are the main concerns when you port military anti-drone capabilities to a civilian setup? What are the challenges of deploying ‘active mitigation’ (like jamming or intercepting) in densely populated or commercially active environments?
Military counter-drone systems are built for environments where neutralising the threat is the primary objective. Civilian environments have a different set of constraints entirely: spectrum co-existence and the risk of disrupting legitimate activity nearby.
A further challenge is the lack of a clear line of responsibility and the absence of a common, centralised overview of airspace activity. Questions of jurisdiction become particularly complex in a non-military context. That said, detection in a civilian setting can actually be more reliable and effective: denser infrastructure, fixed sensor placement and the ability to correlate multiple data sources mean that understanding what is happening in your airspace is often more achievable than in a battlefield environment.
Take jamming as an example. In a civilian context, jamming will disrupt emergency services communications, aviation systems or medical equipment within range. A jammer does not distinguish between the drone it is targeting and everything else sharing that spectrum.
The answer is not to rule out active mitigation, it is to build the framework that makes it usable responsibly. High-risk sites should have access to proportionate responses, but only within a clear and accountable structure. That starts with operators being able to show they understood what was happening in their airspace before they acted; what they saw, how they read the situation and why they responded the way they did. Without that foundation, the argument for stronger powers will not land with regulators or in court. You have to be able to see and evidence what is happening before you can justify doing anything about it.
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desire.athow@futurenet.com (Desire Athow)
