Vice News reports that “exercise Black Dart is the US military’s largest live-fly, live-fire counter unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) exercise. This year’s annual exercise was the 10th, and the first time any press were allowed access. The fact that Black Dart has been a relatively secret deal up to now makes a certain amount of sense. There’s already a fair amount of hush-hush on drones in general, and Black Dart is about drones and cutting-edge military technology.”  

“VICE News got access to the exercises this year to film an episode of our show War Games, and it gave us the opportunity to dig in to the US military’s counter drone efforts and what they mean. Most of our time at Black Dart was on the flight line, observing the launch and recovery of the different drone species buzzing off the California coast, doing their cute little drone things.”  

“Black Dart is fundamentally bizarre. Not because the US military wants to figure out how to counter drones — that’s perfectly reasonable. Current and potential opponents have or are acquiring UAVs of various sorts, so getting a leg up is an obvious thing to do.”