22 NEWSWEEK.COM NOVEMBER 26, 2021
tems,” “unmanned aircraft systems” or simply, UAS.
“I kind of wonder what could you do if you had a
couple of small UAS and you fl ew into a crowded
stadium,” the U.S. military offi cial tells Newsweek.
While “no specifi c knowledge” of an active threat
was discussed, the offi cial says “there is concern giv-
en the proliferation of small, portable drones, that
explosive drones could cause a mass casualty event.”
It wouldn’t be the fi rst time the nation had been
caught off guard by a threat looming right in front
of authorities. “It’s just like I had no specifi c knowl-
edge before 9/11 that people could hijack planes
and crash into buildings, but Tom Clancy wrote a
book about it,” the U.S. military offi cial says.
When the political thriller Debt of Honor was
released in 1994 depicting a hijacked airlinerADAPTABLE
Clockwise from top:
Agricultural drones
being tested in Turkey;
the controls of a police
drone used for security
at May’s G7 summit in
Cornwall, England; and
the cloud over lower
Manhattan following the
collapse of the World
Trade Center towers on
September 11, 2001.wenty years after the worst attack ever
to occur on U.S. soil, it’s not just large passenger
planes that are keeping defense offi cials and experts
up at night. They are just as worried about the threat
from smaller, readily available unmanned aerial sys-
tems capable of carrying deadly payloads.
Drones are not tomorrow’s weapons of mass
destruction. The arsenals of the world’s armies are
already full of them. Meanwhile, it is getting eas-
ier and cheaper to outfi t commercially available
models with a range of weapons, making them
increasingly tempting options for terrorists and
other violent non-government groups.
One U.S. military offi cial who requested anonym-
ity paints a potential nightmare picture involving
small drones, referred to as “unmanned aerial sys-