{"id":860261,"date":"2026-09-25T14:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/860261\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T14:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:40:09","slug":"northcoms-next-counter-drone-demo-will-be-its-first-in-an-urban-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/860261\/","title":{"rendered":"Northcom\u2019s next counter-drone demo will be its first in an urban area"},"content":{"rendered":"

YUMA PROVING GROUND, Ariz. \u2014 U.S. Northern Command\u2019s next Falcon Peak exercise will focus for the first time on safely integrating and demonstrating counter-drone capabilities in a dense city setting that\u2019s bustling with human activity, Brig. Gen. Jason \u201cOx\u201d Rueschhoff told DefenseScoop on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cHomeland defense is not about protecting from outside, it\u2019s also protecting inside,\u201d said Rueschhoff, Northcom\u2019s director of operations. \u201cWe could do one without taking care of the other, and that\u2019s not the right answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responding to questions from a small group of reporters who were invited to cover the command\u2019s Falcon Peak 26.2 experiments on America\u2019s southern border<\/a> this week, he previewed plans for the fifth major drone-fighting test that\u2019s forthcoming in the ongoing series.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, this is all about experimenting to win,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s kind of how we like to look at this \u2014 getting the right capabilities to the warfighters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Falcon Peak is a recurring joint military exercise designed to prove and refine rapidly maturing technologies that can sense, monitor, and mitigate rogue and hostile small unmanned aerial systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Northcom initiated these counter-UAS<\/a> trials in October 2024, immediately after its appointment as the U.S. military\u2019s lead synchronizer to set baseline domestic testing procedures.<\/p>\n

Broadly, the first three iterations of this exercise prioritized ready-to-use defense platforms to help the services make faster and more informed purchasing decisions. The ultimate aim was to accelerate the adoption of in-demand equipment to get after drone intrusions increasingly escalating<\/a> across the nation.<\/p>\n

Over the last month, in its fourth instance, Falcon Peak 26.2 was the first to home in on directly defending against drone threats targeting America\u2019s assets, airspace and critical infrastructure around the sprawling U.S.-Mexico border<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took the opportunity here for a southern border kind of operational environment. You\u2019ve seen a lot of UAS incursions across the continental United States, so that is the next focal point that we\u2019re looking at \u2014 it\u2019s how do we have a better engagement sequence [and] how do we have better capabilities? It\u2019s a different problem set inside an urban environment,\u201d Rueschhoff told DefenseScoop. \u201cAnd so, the big things for us to be focused on will be collateral damage issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he suggested, a combination of legal and regulatory restrictions, technical detection limitations, and severe cost and safety imbalances in domestic airspace make it much more complex for the joint force to take down drones over the continental United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the things that we were able to do out here \u2014 if you looked out sitting on the runway,\u201d Rueschhoff noted, \u201cyou could see that there\u2019s not a whole lot of interference possibilities from buildings, facilities, or radars out there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

There will be some, he said. However, he expects that once structure size, local capacity and metropolitan congestion are introduced, there will be new problem sets for the command to creatively work out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that will be the focal point for the next [Falcon Peak] \u2014 more of an urban environment,\u201d Rueschhoff said. \u201cI think that\u2019ll be really telling for capabilities, and this will get at more than just our borders, but it\u2019ll be about how we defend inside of the United States, as well.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

He did not indicate when or in what city the urban-focused counter-drone exercise would take place. \u201cWe\u2019re working on that,\u201d Rueschhoff said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Brandi<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWritten by Brandi Vincent
\n\t\t\tBrandi Vincent is a Senior Reporter at DefenseScoop, where she reports on disruptive technologies and associated policies impacting Pentagon and military personnel. Prior to joining SNG, she produced a documentary and worked as a journalist at Nextgov, Snapchat and NBC Network. Brandi grew up in Louisiana and received a master\u2019s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. She was named Best New Journalist at the 2024 Defence Media Awards.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"YUMA PROVING GROUND, Ariz. \u2014 U.S. Northern Command\u2019s next Falcon Peak exercise will focus for the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,22149,265452,161547,161548,363101,44890,16777,363102,363103,26,3,363104,41034,21,19,22,20,25,24,363105],"class_list":["post-860261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-border-security","tag-c-uas","tag-counter-drone","tag-counter-uas","tag-counter-unmanned-aircraft-systems-c-uas","tag-critical-infrastructure","tag-drones","tag-falcon-peak","tag-jason-u201coxu201d-rueschhoff","tag-mexico","tag-news","tag-northern-command","tag-u-s-mexico-border","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-usnorthcom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860261","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=860261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}