Abstract
Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) platforms, commonly referred to as drones, are a realistic and increasingly common option utilized by persons and/or groups to effectively facilitate, directly and indirectly, acts of terrorism. Much research has gone to demonstrate the tangible threat these systems present when used for illicit and malicious purposes, but less attention has been directed at how this dynamic issue is being addressed by policy, legislation, program, mandate, or other means. This study sought to examine the overall confluence of discourses and events that have contributed to the development and evolution of policy by the Federal Government regarding Unmanned Aerial Systems and Counter – Unmanned Aerial Systems interests within the United States, and how factors internal and external to legislative and regulatory institutions shape the evolution of policy development in newer and emerging areas of public and national interests. Inductive qualitative discourse analysis was performed on 64 unique sources from 2003 to 2022 and these sources were analyzed for their thematic content. The data collected consisted of unclassified and publicly available government documents, codified government legislation, and government co-opted regulatory reports. The results of this study suggest that the combination of rapid technological proliferation of UAS platforms and increasing uses of these platforms for a myriad of terror purposes globally has had a significant shift on policy direction and initiatives by the United States Federal Government as a direct response to these factors.