Washington
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n The US military used a controversial anti-drone laser system to shoot down a unmanned aircraft operated by US Customs and Border Protection in Texas, according to congressional representatives.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cOur heads are exploding over the news that DoD reportedly shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone using a high risk counter-unmanned aircraft system,\u201d three Democrats on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure said in a statement.\n <\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s not clear when the shoot-down happened. CNN has reached out to the Department of the Defense and CBP for more information.\n <\/p>\n
\n As a result of the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration implemented a temporary flight restriction Thursday evening \ufeffabove the town of Fort Hancock, Texas, to \u201censure safety.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The small town is about 50 miles south of El Paso, Texas, along the Mexican border.\n <\/p>\n
\n The top Democrat on the House committee Rick Larsen, along with Reps. Andr\u00e9 Carson and Bennie Thompson were notified of the shoot down Thursday through official channels, a congressional source tells CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe said MONTHS ago that the White House\u2019s decision to sidestep a bipartisan, tri-committee bill to appropriately train C-UAS (counter unmanned aerial system) operators and address the lack of coordination between the Pentagon, DHS and the FAA was a short-sighted idea. Now, we\u2019re seeing the result of its incompetence,\u201d the statement said.\n <\/p>\n
\n The shoot-down comes about two weeks after the use of a military laser system by CBP designed to disrupt drones near El Paso prompted the FAA to abruptly shut down a large swath of airspace up to 18,000 feet over the city for 10 days. The move effectively shut down El Paso airport, but was reversed after about eight hours.\n <\/p>\n
\n Because of the location of the new restrictions implemented Thursday they are not expected to have any impact on commercial flights.\n <\/p>\n
\n The top Democrat on the Senate Aviation Subcommittee, Tammy Duckworth called for an investigation into the \u201cdysfunction\u201d endangering the nation\u2019s aviation system.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe situation is alarming and demands a thorough, independent investigation,\u201d the senator said in a statement. \u201cI will be calling on the Inspectors General of the Departments of Defense, Transportation and Homeland Security to launch a joint investigation into the recent scandals in El Paso and now Fort Hancock.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 The US military used a controversial anti-drone laser system to shoot down a unmanned aircraft operated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-492990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}