United States lawmakers say the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) needs more power to safeguard the country’s nuclear stockpile from emerging threats. Their concern: Drones.
A bipartisan group introduced legislation in March 2025 to give the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semiautonomous DOE agency that manages the nuclear stockpile, the authority to build and develop technology to counter unmanned aerial systems. The NNSA’s missions include servicing U.S. nuclear weapons when they are not on missiles and bombers and making safety and security upgrades to warheads, according to a February 2025 report by National Public Radio.
The bill, called the Nuclear Ecosystem Drone Defense (NEDD) Act, comes in the wake of a series of unauthorized flights observed near nuclear facilities. “[T]he Department of Energy lacks the authority to intercept these drones and investigate their origins and intentions, allowing them to freely gather sensitive data for malign purposes,” Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei said in a statement. “This bill empowers us to counter these threats in real-time and ensure they are not equipped to undermine our national security.”
Amodei sponsored the legislation along with Reps. Susie Lee, Chuck Fleischmann and Seth Moulton. Companion legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Senate.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can bar drones from airspace over nuclear facilities, but sightings of them near such sites are common, according to the news website FedScoop. Amodei said there have been a half-dozen incidents alone near the Nevada National Security Site “where we maintain America’s nuclear weapons ecosystem,” FedScoop reported.
While the NNSA has the power to defend infrastructure that houses nuclear material, it needs the ability to protect other nuclear-related systems, lawmakers said, according to FedScoop. The Nevada television station KOLO reported that the bill also seeks to:
- Expand the covered assets to include facilities that house components for nuclear weapons and vehicles that transport the components or nuclear weapons.
- Allow the DOE to acquire drone technology similar to that of U.S. competitors to evaluate counterdrone systems.
Drone flights over nuclear facilities have been increasing, nearly doubling from the 12 reported in 2019 to 23 in 2023, according to a 2024 report by The War Zone, a defense news website, which used data provided to it by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). “Even small drones can deliver payloads able to cause damage, and flying over these sites can provide insights into security protocols … as well as network vulnerabilities and more,” The War Zone reported.
In June 2021, the NNSA said it had deployed a counterdrone system for its Y-12 National Security Complex near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. In 2024, the NNSA said it was continuing to invest in systems meant to track drones approaching its nuclear facilities.
“Our adversaries,” Moulton said in a statement, “should not be able to fly a drone over anywhere in this country that makes part of a nuclear weapon.”