“The threat continues to use [unmanned aircraft systems] as (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) platforms,” said Army Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, director of the office. Some have compared the impact of small and relatively cheap drones to the improvised explosive devices that have killed and maimed thousands of military members and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., who as head of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East oversees the theater most affected by the rise of IEDs, said the emergence of drones is changing the battlefield in a similar way. “The growing threat posed by these systems, coupled with our lack of dependable, networked capabilities to counter them, is the most concerning tactical development since the rise of the improvised explosive device in Iraq,” the general said in an address Monday to the Middle East Institute.