Review – S 4515 Introduced – Combating Foreign Terrorist Drones

Back in June, Sen Romney (R,UT) introduced S 4515, the Combating Foreign Terrorist Drones Act of 2024. The bill would required DOD to provide to Congress an “intelligence assessment of foreign terrorist organization acquisition of unmanned aerial systems.” No new funding is authorized by this legislation.

Moving Forward

While Romney is not a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration, his sole cosponsor {Sen Rosen (D,NV)} is a member. This means that there may be sufficient influence to see the bill considered in the Committee. I suspect that there will be substantial bipartisan support for the bill. Unfortunately, this bill is not politically important enough to be considered by the full Senate. This bill, however, would be well suited for consideration as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act which the Senate should take up in September.

Commentary

This bill is primarily aimed at drones that would be likely to be encountered by DOD personnel overseas. Part of the reason for that is the political restrictions on DOD operations in CONUS. In many ways this makes the assessment much more difficult because of the lack of authority (even to gather information) the Federal government has on overseas vendor and manufacturers of drones. While this bill cannot target terrorist drone attacks in this country, the efforts by DOD (and the intelligence community) to prevent foreign terrorist from using UAS on troops stationed overseas will have a potential beneficial affect on countering drone attacks here.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, including suggested added language to include UAS control system intelligence in the assessment report, in my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-4515-introduced - subscription required.

Bills Introduced – 12-08-15

With both the House and Senate in session yesterday there were 27 bills introduced. Of those, three may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 4187 To require certain entities who collect and maintain personal information of individuals to secure such information and to provide notice to such individuals in the case of a breach of security involving such information, and for other purposes. Rep. Schakowsky, Janice D. [D-IL-9]

HR 4188 Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2015. Rep. Hunter, Duncan D. [R-CA-50]

S 2372 A bill to require reporting of terrorist activities and the unlawful distribution of information relating to explosives, and for other purposes. Sen. Feinstein, Dianne [D-CA] 

HR 4187 is yet another breach notification bill. I’ll check it for any ICS references (unlikely) otherwise it probably will not get mentioned again.

The CG Authorization Act has already been published by the GAO (an indication that the House leadership intends to move forward with consideration sooner rather than later). A quick check of the section listings shows no specific mention of chemical safety, chemical security or MTSA so I will not be doing my normal analysis of the bill. I will, however, keep an eye on it as it meanders through the legislative process for any interesting amendments.

The Feinstein bill is not one that I would typically cover in this blog, but it does strike a personal cord as it looks like it is one of those knee jerk reactions to terrorist attacks that cause so many unforeseen problems down the line. The fact that Feinstein is the Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and her co-sponsor is the Chair means that this bill is likely to be going places.