The conflict with Iran has generated two notable counterattacks, both because of the nature of the targets and the technology used to strike them. The first U.S. military casualties came as a result of a drone strike on an American military tactical operations center in Kuwait. Three Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have also been damaged in drone attacks.

Eric Jacques is leading a cross-disciplinary effort at Virginia Tech, in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to design ways to protect people and infrastructure on the ground from drones without relying on costly and dangerous active electronic countermeasures. These recent incidents highlight to him how rapidly threats are developing.

“Every time there’s an incident like this, it reiterates that this is changing the dynamic of warfare and terrorism,” he said, referencing earlier models of drones used by ISIS in Iraq. “These are much more sophisticated, but still fairly low-cost devices that are easy to conceal and phenomenally effective. They can bypass most fortifications and pinpoint targets with very high accuracy.”

At a cost of $30,000 to $50,000, Iran’s Shahed drones are also significantly cheaper than the defense measures used against them, which can be 25 to 30 times more. This “hugely asymmetric” dynamic — and the fact that outside a war zone, proprietors can’t use kinetic defenses to shoot drones out of the sky — is why Jacques and his team are focused on passive, defensive measures.

“Defenses that work quite effectively are distance and standoff,” he said, highlighting netting, obstacles, and other obstructions, as well as using camouflage and concealment. “Because blast energy decreases with distance from impact by the power of three, even buying yourself five extra feet can make an enormous difference.”

But even with the news from abroad, Jacques worries the reality of the threat hasn’t set in for Americans.

“It’s going to take a kind of 9/11-type event for people to really see investment and that this is a real thing we have to worry about,” he said. “There’s a lot of technologies, great ideas, and flashy presentations. But I don’t think those ideas have been met with the reality of deployment.”

Read more about Jacques and his team’s work here.