Growing Drone Threats Lead To Army Modular Shelter Kit Improvements

Yahoo

09-06-2025

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) says it has developed upgrades for a family of modular, rapidly deployable protective structures to improve their ability to shield against drone attacks. The announcement follows Ukraine's unprecedented covert drone attacks that destroyed multiple Russian bombers and other aircraft at several bases across that country. The Ukrainian attacks had already underscored a heated debate about whether or not the U.S. military should be building more hardened aircraft shelters and other fortified infrastructure to improve its defenses against uncrewed aerial threats, as well as cruise and ballistic missiles, as you can read more about here.
USACE's Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) quietly shared news about the anti-drone updates to the Modular Protective System-Overhead Cover (MPS-OHC) in a recent post on LinkedIn. MPS-OHC was originally developed during the Global War on Terror era in response to indirect fire threats like artillery shells, rockets, and mortar rounds that U.S. forces were facing in Afghanistan and Iraq. The modular structure system first began being employed operationally in the early 2010s. The full MPS family includes other modular structures designed to help provide force protection against other threats, including suicide bombers.
'The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) has improved the Modular Protective System-Overhead Cover (MPS-OHC) to better defend against drone attacks, which are increasingly targeting infrastructure, key assets, and critical resources in conflict areas,' ERDC's LinkedIn post reads. 'In April, the MPS-OHC underwent validation testing to its improvements for use in the Indo-Pacific region. These upgrades – including stronger armor, a new armor arrangement and easier setup on shipping containers – demonstrated a near perfect success rate in protecting against explosive threats.'
In addition, 'the updated design can withstand direct hits and is quick to assemble without the need for a concrete foundation, making it ideal for rapidly changing situations. The system is scalable to protect a variety of assets and is already in use now with contracts awarded to send these systems to forward deployed soldiers,' the post added. 'ERDC researchers are creating guides on how to employ the system depending on the drone threat level and working to make upgrade kits widely available.'
TWZ has reached out to ERDC for more information about the upgrades to the MPS-OHC.
MPS-OHC does already offer a relatively simple and low-cost way to add additional layers of top-down defense against indirect fire threats already mentioned. The structures come in kits packed in standard shipping containers, the primary components of which are armored 'roof' elements covering areas up to 52.5 feet by 15 feet. Kits, some of which also come with their own wall units, can also be combined to create larger structures. As seen in the chart below, the costs per kit range from $57,000 to $359,000, depending on their exact configuration.
'The roof panels are composed of an inexpensive concrete core material combined with a tough elastic outer layer,' according to ERDCWERX, a non-profit 'innovation hub' that is partnered with ERDC. 'This panel eliminates penetration of fragments and debris from natural disasters, explosions, and even munitions.'
The modular roof panel design also allows for at least some degree of tailorability to expected threats, according to a separate ERDC fact sheet.
As such, the modular structures can be used to protect critical assets and equipment, non-hardened structures/containers, unprotected weapon systems, etc,' according to the fact sheet. 'The MPS-OHC can be assembled with no equipment and requires no special tools for up to a 30-ft span. Only a standard military 10k forklift is required for 30-ft to 52.5-ft spans.'
Specialized engineering units are not required to erect the structures, either, the fact sheet adds.
At the same time, uncrewed aerial threats are not limited to top-down attacks. The kinds of first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drones Ukraine used in recent covert attacks on Russian airbases have a demonstrated ability to get inside buildings through any sufficiently sized openings. Many larger kamikaze drones also dive onto their targets at lower angles, rather than attack straight down. As seen earlier in this story, at least in their original configurations, the MPS-OHC kits present wide open fronts and backs, as well as significant gaps on the sides.
Ukrainian drone operators located a concentration of Russian hardware inside a large warehouse somewhere in the south of Ukraine, preparing for an assault.The very skilled drone operators sent in several drones and eliminated several MBTs, IFVs, trucks and more. In the end, the… pic.twitter.com/jgcqibiJRD
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) February 20, 2024
Russian correspondent hides from a Ukranian drone … it looks for him like in a scary movie. pic.twitter.com/XPPQGzDzn0
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) September 11, 2024
How the 'stronger armor' and 'new armor arrangement' for the MPS-OHC may address these and other issues is unclear.
It is interesting to point out here that U.S. Air Force officials at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia have at least been looking into the possibility of adding retractable netting to open sunshade-style aircraft shelters at that base to address lower-end drone threats. Leadership at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina has also expressed interest in using an unspecified type of 'passive barrier' to provide additional counter-drone protection. Notably, both sides of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine have been making extensive use of nets and other kinds of add-on physical defenses to help shield armored vehicles, forward positions, and static structures against drone attack.
Though Ukraine's recent attacks on Russian air bases offer a particularly glaring example, the threats posed by even weaponized commercial drones to critical assets and infrastructure, and well away from established battlegrounds, are not new, as TWZ regularly points out. Even lower-end uncrewed aerial systems are set to grow ever more capable of navigating to designated areas and finding targets on their own with limited, if any human intervention, thanks heavily to advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning. This, in turn, will only present additional challenges for defenders, as you can read more about in this past feature.
What Ukrainian forces recently demonstrated in Russia with the use of weaponized commercial-type drones to conduct mass attacks on fragile aircraft exposed in the open on flightlines is a nightmare scenario that TWZ has been specifically highlighting the threat of for years now, as well.
СБУ оприлюднила нове відео зі спецоперації «Павутина»: кадри показують шлях одного з FPV-дронів від вильоту з даху модульного будинку до ураження літака
https://t.co/jI4mlF9IUhpic.twitter.com/YrY9xSvqXA
— СБ України (@ServiceSsu) June 7, 2025
More recently, a tangential debate about whether or not the U.S. military should be investing more in hardened base infrastructure, particularly new reinforced aircraft shelters, has also emerged around a shift toward preparing for a potential high-end fight in the Pacific against China. That focus is underscored by ERDC having directly linked to the MPS-OHC upgrades to the Indo-Pacific region in the LinkedIn post. Large established air bases would be prime targets for Chinese forces, in general, in such a conflict.
The U.S. military does have hardened aircraft shelters and other fortified infrastructure at a number of bases, including in South Korea and Japan, but has not made significant investments on this front since the end of the Cold War. In January, the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., published a report assessing that any aircraft parked in the open and fuel storage facilities at key airbases like Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, or Langley Air Force Base in Virginia could be neutralized by 10 enemy missiles, each with a warhead capable of scattering cluster munitions across areas 450 feet in diameter. The graphic below offers a divisual depiction of the areas such attacks could cover.
U.S. military officials, especially those from the Air Force, do not dispute that there will be a need to fight from bases under attack during any future major conflict, such as one with China. However, they have often pushed back against major investments in new hardened facilities, typically citing cost, and arguing in favor instead of more active defenses like surface-to-air missiles. Work now to establish a new and expansive air and missile defense architecture on Guam is a choice example of this 'active' defense focus.
'We've always known that hardening our bases is something that we need to do. And so we have that actually, in our budgets, to be able to get more resilient basing, and we have some hardening for the shelters, and we have some more survivable capabilities of our bases forward,' Gen. David Allvin, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, said at a conference put on by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank las tweek. 'Right now, I don't think it's where we need to be.'
'It's something that we haven't necessarily been ignoring, but it's been a matter of resource prioritization,' he continued, questioning whether it would be an optimal use of funding 'if all we're doing is playing defense and we can't shoot back.'
'So, we will have the need for bases, the main operating bases from which we operate,' Air Force Gen. Kevin Schneider, head of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), also said at the Air & Space Forces Association's (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium in March. 'The challenge becomes, at some point, we will need to move to austere locations. We will need to disaggregate the force. We will need to operate out of other locations, again, one for survivability, and two, again, to provide response options.'
In line with Allvin's comments, Schneider added that these were all things that 'cost money' and force the Air Force to 'make internal trades,' such as 'do we put that dollar towards, you know, fixing the infrastructure at Kadena [Air Base in Japan] or do we put that dollar towards restoring an airfield at Tinian.'
Though certainly not a silver bullet solution, Army MPS-OHC kits with added features to provide additional defense against drone attacks might provide one option for readily improving physical defenses at air bases and other facilities at a lower cost than traditional hardened structures. The MPS-OHC kits that exist now are orders of magnitude less expensive than new hardened aircraft shelters, which can cost millions of dollars apiece, though they also do not provide anywhere near that level of protection, especially against more powerful direct hits. The baseline kit options that exist now are also not large enough to readily hold a tactical jet, but it is possible they could be adapted to act as an aircraft shelter, especially if combined together.
Still, in general, as TWZ has noted in the past, even unhardened shelters could provide at least a modicum of protection against drones with smaller warheads, cluster submunitions, and shrapnel from other munitions. Fully enclosed shelters of any kind would also make it harder for enemy forces to know where exactly to strike, potentially prompting them to waste valuable resources against empty targets.
In the meantime, the U.S. military general downplaying of physical hardening at its bases is increasingly at odds with global trends. In recent years, China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, in particular, have been steadily constructing additional hardened and unhardened aircraft shelters, as well as even more robust facilities, some of which are built underneath mountains. Russia's construction spree began well before Ukraine's recent covert drone attacks, but had been largely focused on bases closer to the front lines, including on the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Protective shelters for warplanes are also being constructed by the Russians at the Saki Air Base in the Crimea.https://t.co/jWXUH50SYM https://t.co/vHMLoRm8i4 pic.twitter.com/GW1MuqLnyw
— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (BlueSky too) (@Archer83Able) June 9, 2025
The U.S. military also continues to lag behind in the development and fielding of counter-drone capabilities intended for use by forces downrange and at home. Inside the borders of the United States, an array of often obtuse laws and other regulations present further challenges for expanding counter-drone defenses, as you can read more about here. Passive defenses like hardened shelters and MPS-OHC kits are notably not subject to these stipulations, increasing their potential attractiveness for domestic use, at least in the near term. The U.S. military has been pushing for new counter-drone authorities within the U.S. homeland, as well.
The recently announced upgrades to the MPS-OHC kits are an example of a new U.S. counter-drone capability that is actually in the process of being fielded, at least on some level, and one aimed at addressing increasingly glaring gaps in terms of physical defenses.
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