High over Alaska last summer, the Pentagon experimented with new, secret prototypes: Micro-drones that can be launched from the flare dispensers of moving F-16s and F/A-18 fighter jets. Canisters containing the tiny aircraft descended from the jets on parachutes before breaking open, allowing wings on each drone to swing out and catch the wind. Inch-wide propellers on the back provided propulsion as they found one another and created a swarm.
The experiment was run by the secretive Strategic Capabilities Office, a Pentagon organization launched in summer 2012 to figure out how to best counter growing strategic threats from China and Russia. The specifics of what the mini-drones can do are classified, but they could be used to confuse enemy forces and carry out surveillance missions using equipment that costs much less than full-sized unmanned aircraft. Video reviewed by The Washington Post shows the tiny aircraft, which weigh about a pound each, moving in packs and gaining situational awareness after sitting inert in the flare canisters.
SCO’s staff labored in the shadows since its inception, with virtually everything it did withheld from the American public. But the shroud of secrecy was lifted partially in recent weeks. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter for the first time disclosed last month the existence of some of the office’s projects while previewing his proposed 2017 budget. He called for $902 million in funding for SCO in 2017 — nearly twice what it received this year, and 18 times what it started with.
Carter’s disclosures raised some questions in the Pentagon about whether he had revealed classified information while previewing his 2017 budget. But in a rare interview, the director of SCO said the secretary sought a green light to disclose snippets of the mini-drone experiment in Alaska and a few other programs as part of a broader effort to get the attention of potential adversaries.
“I have been in the classified, black world for my whole career, so all of this is new for me and I really wish I could go back,” said the director, William Roper, a physicist who previously worked in missile defense. “You can’t win wars if everything is outside the doors, but you can’t deter wars if everything is behind them.”
The story of SCO — pronounced “Skoh” — is one that underscores the Pentagon’s efforts to move beyond more than a decade of counterterrorism operations and combat in Iraq and Afghanistan to prepare for new strategic threats. The office initially called the Pentagon home, but was later moved a few miles away to a larger space in the same building in Virginia that houses the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), perhaps the Defense Department’s best known agency focused on futuristic technology.
But DARPA and SCO are different organizations with different missions, both Roper and DARPA officials said. DARPA, created during the Cold War in 1958, is focused on looking for ways to revolutionize military operations with new inventions and technology. It has an annual budget of about $3 billion. SCO is charged with creating new “trick plays” for the Pentagon through creativity and engineering, using old weapons, teaming existing equipment together or adding new commercial technology.