By David Shepardson<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) \u2013 The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Commerce aviation subcommittee on Friday called for a government investigation into two recent incidents of the government\u2019s use of \u200ba laser-based anti-drone system in Texas.<\/p>\n
Senator Tammy Duckworth, in a \u200cletter seen by Reuters, asked the inspector generals for the Transportation, Homeland Security and Defense departments to jointly investigate the government\u2019s use of counter-drone high-energy laser weapons. She said the Texas events near the Mexican border \u201craise serious questions regarding interagency coordination, notification \u200cprocedures, \u200baviation safety protocol, and compliance with federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u2060U.S. military errantly shot down \u2060a government drone with a laser-based anti-drone system on February 25, leading the FAA to expand an area where flights are barred around Fort Hancock, Texas. The incident followed a February 18 decision by \u200bthe FAA to halt all flights for 10 days at the nearby El Paso airport because of the use of the laser system \u2060by a Homeland Security agency without completion \u2060of a safety review.<\/p>\n
The El Paso shutdown order was \u200blifted by the FAA after about eight hours following the intervention of the \u200bWhite House.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon and FAA said last week that they \u200cwere testing high-energy lasers in New Mexico designed to counter drones, aiming to address the FAA\u2019s safety concerns.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon has said there are more than 1,000 drone incursions along the U.S.-Mexico border each month. U.S. security officials \u2060have increasingly expressed alarm about the use of drones by Mexican cartels to drop drug packages or surveil trafficking routes.<\/p>\n
Duckworth wants the inspector generals to review \u2060the decision-making process leading \u200cto the use of the systems and FAA\u2019s \u2060decision to close airspace, as well as \u201cevaluations of any \u200brisks posed \u200cto civilian aircraft, commercial operators, general aviation, medical \u200bevacuation flights \u2060or other critical air operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. Deputy Transportation Secretary Steve Bradbury said better coordination was needed. He told Reuters last week that testing was necessary so the FAA could \u201cget comfortable with what (the laser system\u2019s) limitations are, how it can be adjusted, how it can be controlled.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Toby \u200bChopra, Alexandra Hudson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By David Shepardson WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) \u2013 The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Commerce aviation subcommittee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-204340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-texas","9":"tag-texas-headlines","10":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204340","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=204340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}