WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is developing a system that can counter small, explosive-laden autonomous drones, which the Pentagon believes will pose a danger to U.S. troops in combat zones in the future.

The system is known as the Mobile Force Protection program and is overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It is an integrated prototype system that can detect pre-programmed drones up to 200 pounds using methods beyond electronic jamming.

The current method of sighting and tracking a drone in flight is by tracking the radio frequencies between the drone and its operator. However, suicide drones may be pre-programmed with coordinates of the targets so that it can navigate without radio control, making them more difficult to track using existing methods.

The system is designed to protect mobile assets, such as convoys carrying important cargo, because they are more complicated to defend than stationary targets. The same system could also be adapted on maritime operations such as small naval riverine crafts.

“When you’re more than a couple hundred meters out, you can’t tell what that thing is carrying,” Marine Lt. Col. Dave Sousa told the Washington Post. “You can’t tell if it has a GoPro camera...You don’t know what it is. So you’ve got to detect, track and ID, and then there’s how you’re going to deal with that threat.”

Sousa said shotguns, sniper rifles, water cannons, mini-rockets and lasers are being considered as ways of eliminating enemy drones.

The first phase of the project could begin in May and is expected to last about 12 months. The third and final phase of the project will focus on countering a large raid of autonomous drones.