{"id":166658,"date":"2026-02-16T13:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T13:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/166658\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T13:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T13:33:10","slug":"the-el-paso-no-fly-debacle-is-just-the-beginning-of-a-drone-defense-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/166658\/","title":{"rendered":"The El Paso No-Fly Debacle Is Just the Beginning of a Drone Defense Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"

A shocking but ultimately brief airspace closure over El Paso, Texas<\/a>, and parts of New Mexico last week is stoking unease among pilots and the broader public about the status of United States anti-drone defenses.<\/p>\n

As low-cost UAV equipment proliferates around the world, analysts have repeatedly warned<\/a> that destructive attacks perpetrated using drones are inevitable<\/a>. It is challenging to develop nimble and safe countermeasures, though, given that things like jamming or attempting to shoot down a drone are difficult\u2014or even impossible\u2014to carry out safely in populated areas, much less densely populated cities.<\/p>\n

In the case of the El Paso incident, the Federal Aviation Administration originally set the airspace closure to last 10 days, but ultimately lifted it after eight hours. The Trump administration initially said the move was related to possible incursion of Mexican drug cartel drones, but the New York Times and others reported<\/a> that it came from FAA concerns that Customs and Border Protection officials were using a Pentagon-provided anti-drone laser weapon in the area despite questions about potential dangers to civilian aircraft.<\/p>\n

CBP reportedly<\/a> used the laser defense tool to shoot down what turned out to be a party balloon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe FAA likely did a very intelligent thing by issuing the Temporary Flight Restriction,\u201d says Tarah Wheeler, chief security officer of the cybersecurity consultancy TPO Group. \u201cThe initial 10-day length of the TFR makes it seem like the FAA wasn\u2019t provided with information on how long the laser would be in use. The FAA doesn\u2019t want to close down airspace longer than they have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FAA, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

A White House official told The Hill<\/a> on Thursday that an FAA administrator made the decision to close the airspace without notifying the White House, the Pentagon, or DHS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department of War and the Department of Transportation having been working together for months regarding drone incursion operations. Last night\u2019s action to disable the cartel drones was not a spontaneous action,\u201d the official told The Hill in a statement. \u201cAt no point in the process of disabling these cartel drones were civilian aircraft in danger as a result of the methods used by DOW to disable the drones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also on Thursday, US representatives Veronica Escobar of Texas and Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, along with New Mexico senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n, wrote<\/a> to DHS secretary Kristi Noem, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and transportation secretary Sean Duffy to request a classified briefing on the incident.<\/p>\n

The lawmakers wrote that they want representatives from each agency \u201cto speak to the roles they played, acknowledge where the failed communication occurred, and share the steps you are taking to ensure a future crisis of this nature will not reoccur.\u201d<\/p>\n

The laser tool used in the situation was a \u201cLOCUST\u201d anti-drone weapon system made by the defense company AeroVironment (AV), according to a Reuters report<\/a>. The LOCUST system is a 20-kilowatt laser directed energy weapon, a relatively low-power tool made to be used to take out small drones. (AV acquired<\/a> LOCUST creator BlueHalo in November 2024.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recent proliferation of inexpensive and readily available drones has shifted the focus to short-range air defense, where lasers and high-powered microwaves offer a potentially game-changing advantage,\u201d an Army report<\/a> on a laser weapons test said in June.<\/p>\n

AV delivered two sets<\/a> of LOCUST units to the US Army in September and December as part of the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) prototyping project\u2014one of a few \u201cDirected Energy Efforts\u201d<\/a> that the Army’s Directed Energy Prototyping Office undertook in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A shocking but ultimately brief airspace closure over El Paso, Texas, and parts of New Mexico last week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6207,4092,4018,138,140,139,66059,2672],"class_list":{"0":"post-166658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-aviation","9":"tag-department-of-homeland-security","10":"tag-drones","11":"tag-el-paso","12":"tag-el-paso-headlines","13":"tag-el-paso-news","14":"tag-lasers","15":"tag-military"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166658","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=166658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}