The Pentagon is considering sending a powerful anti-drone laser system to the military base in Washington where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio reside, according to four people who have been briefed on the matter.
While the plans are still in flux, the Army is weighing using the technology near Mr. Hegseth’s and Mr. Rubio’s residences at Fort Lesley J. McNair, in Southwest Washington, according to those people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The Army has been debating deploying the lasers there after reports of unusual drone activity in the airspace around Fort McNair. The drone sightings have prompted concerns about possible surveillance of two high-ranking national security officials at a time when the United States is at war with Iran.
But placing the lasers near Fort McNair would add a layer of complexity to the heavily traveled airspace over Washington. The laser system has been the subject of a heated dispute between the Federal Aviation Administration, which has raised safety concerns about its use along the border with Mexico, and the Pentagon, which has been more eager to deploy it to fight drone incursions by Mexican drug cartels.
The F.A.A. is already under intense scrutiny after a midair collision between an Army helicopter and a regional passenger jet killed 67 people over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan National Airport last year.
National Airport, located across the Potomac in Northern Virginia, is about two miles from Fort McNair.
On Sunday, Heather Chairez, a spokeswoman for an Army-led joint task force in the national capital region, said she was “aware of the reported drone sightings near Fort McNair and the surrounding areas.” While there was no credible threat, she said, the task force had increased its anti-drone activities “to keep our service members and civilians who work and live on Fort McNair safe.”
Ms. Chairez did not comment specifically on the use of the lasers.
An F.A.A. spokeswoman, Hannah Walden, said her agency’s officials looked forward to working with the Pentagon and other agencies “to protect the homeland while ensuring the safety of the national airspace system.” She did not respond to a request for comment on the implications of putting an anti-drone laser system at Fort McNair.
That decision is playing out as the F.A.A. and the Defense Department are close to resolving their running dispute on the use of the laser system along the border with Mexico to combat drone surveillance by drug cartels.
The agencies are working on a laser-use agreement that would cover the border region, said three people with knowledge of the interagency tensions and a fourth who was briefed on the expected pact.
But F.A.A. officials continue to have some qualms about the potential safety risks of the lasers, three of those people said.
Consequently, the agency is considering issuing an advisory notice to airmen, known as a NOTAM, that would warn pilots to use caution when flying through the El Paso area if they did not have locational-broadcasting technology switched on in their cockpits, according to the three people who have been briefed on the expected pact.
Such broadcasting technology would provide a laser’s operator with additional information on the location of nearby aircraft, according to Aaron Westman, a senior director at AeroVironment Inc., the laser manufacturer. That information could be added into the laser’s software controls to help protect the aircraft.
As of a week ago, the wording was not expected to specifically mention the lasers, according to two people who had been briefed on the language.
The F.A.A. issues scores of NOTAMs every week about a wide array of flying conditions and impediments. But in order to be effective, aviation safety experts said, the notices must carry a certain level of detail about the risks involved.
“What pilots want to know is, what’s the thing that I’m looking for?” said Marc Nichols, a co-chair of the transportation practice at the law firm DLA Piper and the chief counsel of the F.A.A. under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “When you don’t know, does it really kind of solve the problem of issuing a NOTAM?
The interagency dispute over the lasers in Texas came to a head this month during what three people briefed on the matter described as a fractious White House national security meeting led by Mr. Rubio.
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Defense Department officials at the meeting badgered Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Bryan Bedford, the F.A.A. administrator, to agree to use of the laser, arguing that it was essential in the fight against the cartels, these people said.
A White House official said the administration was working on solutions and disagreements would be addressed through the interagency process.
It was around the time of that meeting that a new and notable swarm of drone activity was spotted near Fort McNair, the military installation where Mr. Hegseth, Mr. Rubio and a variety of senior military officials have been living. The activity prompted Pentagon officials to consider relocating the two cabinet members, according to The Washington Post.
The interagency laser argument had been brewing since at least January, when Pentagon officials alerted the F.A.A. to their planned use of the laser system, known as the LOCUST, at its Army base in Fort Bliss, Texas, near El Paso. The Defense Department wrote in an email to the agency that while it would “support F.A.A. internal review” of the system, it believed it necessary to go ahead.
The F.A.A. objected, writing in response that officials worried at the prospect of fatalities or permanent injury to civilians. It offered to impose temporary flight restrictions to allow for the laser to be tested.
Then, when a laser was fired repeatedly at a foreign object that turned out to be a party balloon in the early morning of Feb. 9, the F.A.A. responded by shutting down El Paso’s airspace entirely. The closure was intended to last for 10 days. But an alarmed White House quickly demanded that the F.A.A. reopen the airspace.
On March 7 and 8, officials from the Pentagon and the F.A.A. gathered at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for a demonstration of the laser system with product specialists from AeroVironment.
The F.A.A. sought assurance, said an official with knowledge of the demonstration, that the LOCUST would not pose a serious safety risk to an aircraft’s physical structure or to the vision of the pilot.
The laser was tested in a variety of situations, including being fired at the body of a jet plane for eight seconds at full intensity, according to Lt. Col. Adam Scher, a spokesman for the Defense Department’s joint interagency task force for countering drones.
“The laser caused no structural damage to the aircraft,” Colonel Scher said in a statement. He added, “The system acted exactly as was expected every time.”
Yet behind the scenes, F.A.A. officials spent weeks studying the impact, said several people who were briefed on their study. The Pentagon continued to press them, one of those people added, to sign off on the lasers as quickly as possible.
The F.A.A. has been under increasing pressure to bolster airspace safety since the midair collision over the Potomac 14 months ago, the deadliest aviation disaster in nearly a quarter century.
Then, on March 22, two Air Canada pilots died when the plane they were landing collided with a fire truck crossing their runway at LaGuardia Airport in New York.
In both cases, thinly staffed F.A.A. control towers and missed communications appear to have been factors. The agency has promised to make the safety of the flying public a top priority.
As air-safety overseers considered use of the anti-drone system, the president made his views clear.
During an Iran war briefing on March 9 at his club in Doral, Fla., President Trump praised the benefits of laser technology as a cheaper and more effective alternative to the types of interceptor missiles, such as Patriots, that the United States has relied on for decades.
“The laser technology that we have now is incredible,” he said. “It’s coming out pretty soon, where literally lasers will do the work of — at a lot less cost — do the work of what the Patriots are doing, and what other things are doing.”
Kate Kelly covers money, policy and influence for The Times.
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