A shocking but ultimately brief airspace closure over El Paso, Texas, 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.
As low-cost UAV equipment proliferates around the world, analysts have repeatedly warned that destructive attacks perpetrated using drones are inevitable. It is challenging to develop nimble and safe countermeasures, though, given that things like jamming or attempting to shoot down a drone are difficult—or even impossible—to carry out safely in populated areas, much less densely populated cities.
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 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.
CBP reportedly used the laser defense tool to shoot down what turned out to be a party balloon.
“The FAA likely did a very intelligent thing by issuing the Temporary Flight Restriction,” says Tarah Wheeler, chief security officer of the cybersecurity consultancy TPO Group. “The initial 10-day length of the TFR makes it seem like the FAA wasn’t provided with information on how long the laser would be in use. The FAA doesn’t want to close down airspace longer than they have to.”
The FAA, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment.
A White House official told The Hill on Thursday that an FAA administrator made the decision to close the airspace without notifying the White House, the Pentagon, or DHS.
“The Department of War and the Department of Transportation having been working together for months regarding drone incursion operations. Last night’s action to disable the cartel drones was not a spontaneous action,” the official told The Hill in a statement. “At 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.”
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 Luján, wrote to DHS secretary Kristi Noem, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and transportation secretary Sean Duffy to request a classified briefing on the incident.
The lawmakers wrote that they want representatives from each agency “to 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.”
The laser tool used in the situation was a “LOCUST” anti-drone weapon system made by the defense company AeroVironment (AV), according to a Reuters report. 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 LOCUST creator BlueHalo in November 2024.)
“The 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,” an Army report on a laser weapons test said in June.
AV delivered two sets 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—one of a few “Directed Energy Efforts” that the Army’s Directed Energy Prototyping Office undertook in 2025.
Deployment of anti-drone defense measures is becoming a bigger priority in the US and around the world, but integrating them safely is challenging and experts say there need to be new protocols and communication mechanisms in place to protect both civilian and military aviation. Even the most seemingly innocuous laser pointers or other laser-equipped tools, for example, can pose risks to pilots and aviation. Sources told the Associated Press that before last week’s incident, a meeting had already been scheduled between the FAA and the Pentagon for later this month to discuss use of the technology.
Multiple private and commercial pilots, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press, told WIRED that they found the series of events to be extremely troubling.
As one put it, “I do not want to be stuck anywhere for 10 days or get hit by a laser. There is currently no procedure for that.”
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