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The U.S. military said it blasted three cartel-linked drones out of the sky during the late-night hours of Tuesday and Wednesday, opening a new frontier in the shadow war at the southern border.
Defense officials said they used the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser to “engage and defeat” the three drones, which they deemed hostile based on their use in direct support of activities posing a physical threat to U.S. personnel.
It is a major line-crossing moment: the first time the laser system has been successfully used on a cartel drone at the border, though some members of Congress have been demanding its use for years.
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“Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners. By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed-energy capabilities like this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance,” said Army Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commander of Joint Task Force-Southern Border, based at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
He did not identify the precise location of the strikes, though U.S. Northern Command placed them in the Rio Grande Valley, nor did officials identify which cartel is believed to have been involved.
Cartels have used drones for operations such as smuggling drugs, tracking the deployment of the Border Patrol and monitoring checkpoints and routes for drugs or people to sneak deeper into the U.S.
Tens of thousands of drone incursions are recorded each year, and those are just the ones that are detected.
Doing something about it was a trickier question.
“Why don’t we shoot them down?” then-Rep. Dan Bishop demanded during a 2022 House Homeland Security Committee hearing on cartel drones.
However, the idea alarmed Rep. Dina Titus, Nevada Democrat, who worried about downing a drone over a neighborhood.
Biden administration officials at the hearing said their preferred approach was to try to disrupt the flights.
That appears to have changed under the Trump administration, which now has the technology and willingness to use directed-energy force.
“That’s good news. Our soldiers need that on the southern border right now,” said Todd Bensman, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation who previously served as senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security and as a National Counterterrorism Center detailee.
Mr. Bensman has published a piece for The American Mind detailing how the smuggling cartels may have learned drone warfare from inside the Russia-Ukraine war.
He said those methods, used on U.S., Mexican or Colombian forces, could be devastating.
Although they have used drones as intelligence or distraction tools, cartels have seemingly been wary of using them in offensive attacks against the U.S.
That has not been the case in Mexico, where drones have been used in assassination attempts, inter-cartel warfare and bomb attacks on police. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel has reportedly used drones to carpet-bomb a rival cartel’s territory.
The laser used in the strike last week, known in military-speak as the AMP-HEL, is associated with AeroVironment, an Arlington, Virginia, company that has delivered AMP-HEL systems to the Army — though the military did not confirm the manufacturer in this instance. The firm said it uses a 20-kilowatt laser mounted on a vehicle. The system can track drone swarms, then fire at them, keeping the beam on a drone until it fails.
Mark Morgan, who served as acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection in the first Trump administration, said it was past time to take down drones.
He said cartels have been expanding their organization, capabilities and technology while U.S. politicians “either know little about the threats we face at our nation’s borders or intentionally ignore them.”
“Having the Department of War join the fight in a meaningful way is long overdue. But we need to do more. Our nation’s borders will never be secure until the cartels are defeated,” he said.
Mr. Morgan called for the administration to embrace a plan laid out several years ago by then-Attorney General William P. Barr, who said the U.S. should adopt war on terror tactics for use against the cartels, using precision military strikes to take out drug labs and leaders.
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