{"id":163728,"date":"2026-02-13T21:37:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T21:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/163728\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T21:37:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T21:37:19","slug":"why-an-army-antidrone-laser-grounded-flights-at-el-paso-international-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/163728\/","title":{"rendered":"Why an Army antidrone laser grounded flights at El Paso International Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late on Tuesday night, the city of El Paso, Tex., learned that the airspace over El Paso International Airport had been closed as of 11:30 P.M. local time. The ban, initially posted as lasting 10 days, was then shortened to a matter of hours. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy later announced on X<\/a> that the shutdown had occurred as the Department of Defense<\/a> and the Federal Aviation Administration responded to what he called a \u201ccartel drone incursion<\/a>\u201d along the border and that \u201cthe threat has been neutralized.\u201d His post didn\u2019t answer how it was neutralized or why an airport had to go dark.<\/p>\n

Reports diverged on what was targeted\u2014the Wall Street Journal<\/a> and the Washington Post<\/a> suggested it may have been a party balloon, possibly made of Mylar\u2014while Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, stated<\/a>, \u201cThe details of what exactly occurred over El Paso are unclear.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday CNN reported<\/a> that, according to anonymous sources, Customs and Border Protection had deployed an antidrone<\/a> laser on loan from the DOD in the vicinity of Fort Bliss, adjacent to the airport. Those sources described a dispute over the use of a laser-based counter-drone<\/a> system nearby and concerns that it could pose risks to air traffic. The laser, identified as a LOCUST, a \u201cdirected-energy weapon\u201d used to counter drones, is a product of the defense company AeroVironment and its counter-drone unit BlueHalo. An AeroVironment press release states that the company had delivered the first two mobile LOCUST systems<\/a> to the U.S. Army in August 2025.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThese kinds of systems have been under development for quite a long while, and protection against drones is a key application,\u201d says Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado Boulder. \u201cIt\u2019s often said that lasers have an \u2018infinite magazine.\u2019 Compared to regular weapons, where you have a fixed number of bullets, as long as the laser is plugged in, it could keep on firing away.\u201d But that infinite magazine comes with a problem. \u201cIf you fire a laser at a drone and miss it, that laser beam will keep on going for a long way,\u201d Boyd says. \u201cIt might hit something else or dazzle a pilot.\u201d Even a hit isn\u2019t clean\u2014some materials are highly reflective, meaning laser energy bounces off the drone and scatters, potentially causing blinding. That\u2019s why, Boyd says, tests near busy air corridors can force officials to close airspace: the beam doesn\u2019t stop at the target.<\/p>\n

The appeal of the technology, despite those risks, is simple math. Missiles cost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, are limited in quantity and can be overkill for a quadcopter drone that costs less than a laptop. Lasers promise what Lockheed Martin has called<\/a> a \u201cdeep magazine\u201d and \u201clow cost per kill,\u201d because if you have a source of power and cooling, you can keep firing indefinitely. Raytheon\u2019s pitch<\/a> is straightforward: on a single charge, its antidrone laser system can deliver \u201cdozens of precise laser shots.\u201d And with a generator attached, it can approach \u201ca nearly infinite number of shots.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a laser isn\u2019t a bullet. BlueHalo\u2019s LOCUST system \u201ccombines precision optical and laser hardware with advanced software,\u201d according to a BlueHalo press release<\/a>, \u201cto enable and enhance the directed energy \u2018kill chain,\u2019 which includes tracking, identifying, and engaging a wide variety of targets.\u201d Unlike a warhead, a laser needs time on target. Keep the beam steady and locked on long enough, and you heat something critical on the target\u2014plastic housing, wiring, a sensor, a motor housing\u2014until it fails. In a press release describing tests of Lockheed Martin\u2019s ATHENA (Advanced Test High Energy Asset) laser system<\/a>, the company said that the system defeated its targets by causing \u201closs of control and structural failure.\u201d Boyd notes that the power in the beam matters but so does the material that is irradiated. \u201cDifferent materials will react in different ways,\u201d he says. And the targeting is demanding: \u201cyou really have to keep the \u2018red dot\u2019 of the laser fixed right on the moving target.\u201d<\/p>\n

The systems fielded today are a far cry from the Reagan-era vision of the \u201cStar Wars\u201d program: first proposed in 1983 and officially called the Strategic Defense Initiative, the project sought to use space-based lasers to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles. The concept was also explored with the Airborne Laser project, initiated in 1996 and tested in 2007, when a laser with one megawatt of power was mounted on a Boeing 747. In 2010, after a couple of successful tests, it engaged two test missiles off the coast of California, and though it locked on, it failed to destroy them, resulting in the project\u2019s cancelation.<\/p>\n

The lasers that replaced those early models are smaller, more efficient and far less powerful\u2014\u201cthe systems we\u2019re talking about today for antidrones are probably in the tens of kilowatts, maybe 100 kilowatts at most,\u201d Boyd says. That lower power has changed the target set. Instead of intercepting missiles with lasers in space, you\u2019re shooting down much softer, smaller targets. such as drones, with lasers on Earth. \u201cGetting them into a form factor where you could be defending things like army bases, sports arenas or airports has been the goal in the last five to 10 years,\u201d Boyd says.<\/p>\n

The milestones have come quickly. In August 2017 Lockheed\u2019s ATHENA system downed five drones at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. In October 2019 Raytheon announced that it had delivered a system to the U.S. Air Force. In August 2022 Lockheed said it had delivered a laser system to the Navy. And by February 2024, the Army had deployed four laser prototypes to the Middle East. Boyd notes that the U.S. Navy has had high-energy laser systems on some ships for about a decade and that the Army has been developing systems for its Stryker vehicle. Yet \u201cI don\u2019t think any of the U.S. systems have been fired in anger, so to speak,\u201d he says\u2014until, perhaps, the recent incident in El Paso.<\/p>\n

If this sounds like the future, the El Paso incident is a reminder that the future has paperwork to contend with and that not everyone is enthusiastic. Citing a Breaking Defense article, the Congressional Research Service reported<\/a> that feedback on tested laser prototypes was \u201cnot overwhelmingly positive,\u201d and officials warned that \u201cresults from the lab environment and test ranges are very different from the tactical environment.\u201d The FAA has warned<\/a> that \u201ca laser can incapacitate pilots,\u201d noting that, in 2024 alone, pilots reported 12,840 laser strikes (mostly from handheld laser pointers that were powerful enough to reach airplanes). Federal law<\/a> makes it a crime to aim a laser of any sort at an aircraft. And officials familiar with the El Paso closure described exactly that kind of coordination failure: one agency\u2019s counter-drone tool became another agency\u2019s aviation hazard.<\/p>\n

At a news conference, El Paso\u2019s mayor Renard Johnson said, \u201cI want to be very, very clear that this should\u2019ve never happened. You cannot restrict airspace<\/a> over a major city without coordinating with the city, the airport, the hospitals, the community leadership.\u201d Speaking to ABC News, John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security official, summed up the dilemma over the use of such systems. \u201cIt has to be coordinated<\/a>,\u201d he said, because a tool meant to protect the border becomes a hazard<\/a> to safety if the professionals learn about it the same way travelers do: via an alert on their phones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late on Tuesday night, the city of El Paso, Tex., learned that the airspace over El Paso International…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":{"0":"post-163728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-el-paso","9":"tag-el-paso-headlines","10":"tag-el-paso-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}