The Next Pearl Harbor Could Be a Drone Strike
Executive Summary
The rise of drone warfare represents a transformative threat to U.S. national security, particularly to the nation’s aging fleet of strategic bombers. Drawing on recent lessons from Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb—where a small number of kamikaze drones successfully destroyed Russian Tu-95 bombers—this memo warns that the United States is similarly vulnerable to low-cost, high-impact attacks.
Current oversight mechanisms are inadequate. The Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) program is severely understaffed and outdated, unable to detect or investigate complex foreign land holdings. Additionally, many U.S. airbases face a $130 billion maintenance backlog, leaving them physically vulnerable to even small-scale drone incursions.
Without urgent reforms, the United States risks a strategic air disaster that could unfold with the same suddenness and effectiveness seen in Ukraine—crippling America’s ability to project power and defend its interests.
Introduction
Drone warfare is poised to revolutionize the modern battlefield. Belligerents in Ukraine, Syria, and Mexico have used drones to devastating effect in recent conflicts. Originally used to surveil enemy combatants and provide artillery fire support, their use has expanded with the growth of “kamikaze drones,” single-use drones outfitted with explosive payloads that are flown by a human operator into their target.
Ukraine used these kamikaze drones to devastating effect in “Operation Spiderweb.” Carried out by the SBU, Ukraine’s foreign intelligence agency, Ukrainian agents smuggled kamikaze drone components into Russia, assembled them, loaded them onto tractor trailers, and paid unwitting truck drivers to deliver them to sites near Russian airbases. Operators in Ukraine then remotely launched the drones and piloted them into Russian strategic bombers.
The operation was a devastating success. Somewhere between 11 and 13 Russian bombers were destroyed, including 6 TU-95s, the backbone of Russia’s bomber fleet. Many of these aircraft are irreplaceable, built by long-shuttered factories during the Soviet era.
The United States is in a similarly vulnerable position. Decaying bases and poor inventory management mean that even a minor attack on a U.S. airbase would have repercussions across the U.S. strategic air fleet, while Chinese-linked entities and individuals have bought up numerous properties near U.S. airbases, providing a potential launch pad for the exact sort of drone attack mounted by Ukraine.
Problem
American strategic air power faces comprehensive threats at low altitude: the Chinese government has numerous potential bases to launch an attack on United States Air Force installations, and the United States cannot either adequately respond or quickly repair its strategic bombers.
Foreign land ownership near airbases is the most significant threat to the security of America’s strategic bombers. Ukraine was able to mount Operation Spider’s Web with a handful of rented warehouses near airbases. Companies and individuals linked to the Chinese Communist Party own thousands of acres of land near airbases.
Despite this rapid buy-up, the United States lacks the bureaucratic knowledge to adequately monitor, much less regulate, CCP land ownership. Although the Department of Agriculture is supposed to monitor foreign land ownership in the United States, the Secretary of Agriculture is not a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, meant to monitor and regulate every other aspect of foreign involvement in the U.S. economy.
Both the federal government and states have attempted to step up and combat this problem. Legislators in Texas passed landmark legislation in May prohibiting Chinese nationals and corporations(among others) from purchasing farmland within Texas. Just this week, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced that the federal government would also prohibit farmland purchases by Chinese companies and individuals.
This approach is incomplete. The Department of Agriculture has failed to adequately track foreign land purchases in the United States. The Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) program has not been audited since 1989 and employs only two people to monitor millions of acres of farmland. In one particularly embarrassing instance, the AFIDA program failed to account for CCP-tied billionaire Sun Guangxin’s purchase of thousands of acres of farmland.
Another issue is that the AFIDA program cannot do the forensic work required to make sense of the dizzying web of shell corporations used to facilitate foreign agricultural purchases. The most recent report found that entities based in the notorious tax haven of the Cayman Islands owned 636,946 acres of farmland, more than four times the amount publicly owned by Chinese investors. Without additional investigative work, there is no way of knowing what proportion of this agricultural land is owned by entities connected to China or other hostile states.
The U.S. government’s failure to adequately monitor Chinese farmland purchases is especially alarming given how Ukraine staged drone attacks from seemingly civilian properties. That risk is compounded by the deteriorating state of the aging B-52 fleet, poor management of spare parts, and bases with critical infrastructure problems.
Both America's and Russia’s strategic bomber fleets were constructed at the outset of the Cold War and both countries downsized their arsenals as the threat of nuclear war became less significant. Russia’s inventory dropped from 500 Tu-95s to around 50, and the United States from 750 B-52s to 76. The primary threat to losing a strategic bomber is not the loss of personnel or the financial cost of replacement; it’s that replacement is impossible.
Even minor damage to a bomber could harm American combat readiness. A 2023 report from the DoD’s Office of the Inspector General found significant mismanagement across the B-52 program. The Air Force does not have a systematic Bill of Materials (BOM) that lists all replacement parts and their current inventory. Replacement parts in high demand are supposed to be tracked by the Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Sources list (DMSMS), but the DMSMS list is missing dozens of frequently needed parts.
Because of the comprehensive shortages, crews have resorted to “cannibalizing” other B-52 bombers to keep them airworthy. This adds another vulnerability: if active airframes are also sources of spare parts, then destroying airframes means shrinking the supply of spare parts, grounding other bombers.
All of these issues are magnified by the poor state of security and infrastructure on American air bases. In December 2024, a number of drones flew around Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, closing its airspace for four hours. The intentions and identities of the operators remain unknown. Another swarm loitered around Langley Air Force Base, grounding its fleet of F-22 fighter jets. In both cases, the Air Force was unable to disable or deter the drones.
Security planning for U.S. airbases should learn from the Ukrainian experience, which has involved a combination of radio-jamming technology and small arms meant to destroy or disable surveillance and attack drones. Given the recent incursions, anti-drone equipment should become a part of the standard arsenal for security forces, and anti-drone tactics a part of broader security planning.
Solution
Congress should:
Include the Department of Agriculture in the statutory list of members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Strengthen the ability of the Department of Agriculture to investigate shell corporations used to disguise land ownership by hostile aliens and entities.
Adopt language in the NDAA that fully funds deferred maintenance on bases.
The Department of Defense should:
Begin an effort to identify, inventory, and purchase (as needed) spare parts for B-52 bombers, including developing a comprehensive Bill of Materials for the B-52 bomber.
Incorporate anti-drone measures into its base security planning and purchase effective anti-drone weapons.
Conclusion
The poor state of base infrastructure makes them even more vulnerable to Chinese drone attacks. The United States now faces a $130 billion backlog of deferred maintenance. If aircraft hangars are already in dilapidated condition, then it would only take a minor effort by Chinese drones to cripple the United States’ ability to operate its strategic bombers
Without comprehensive efforts to manage Chinese land ownership near U.S. bases, secure an adequate supply of parts for B-52 bombers, and protect and harden U.S. bases for potential drone attacks, then the United States is vulnerable to the same sort of low-cost, high-intensity attack which crippled Russia’s strategic bomber fleet.
