Army Deploys Radars To Mexico Border To Detect Cartel Drones

The U.S. Army is contributing ground-based radars to help spot and track drones as part of the continued build-up of U.S. military support along with the U.S.-Mexican border. Drug cartels in Mexico have been steadily increasing their use of weaponized uncrewed aerial systems, as well as unarmed types for surveillance and smuggling. There are also growing concerns about the threats drones pose to the U.S. homeland, especially military bases and other critical infrastructure.

The Department of Defense released pictures earlier today showing members of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum in New York State, training with the AN/TPQ-53 and AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radars in Arizona. The 10th Mountain is one of a number of units from across the U.S. military that has sent personnel and material to support the enhanced border security mission that kicked off after President Donald Trump took office in January.

A member of the 10th Mountain Division works on an AN/MPQ-64 radar in Arizona earlier this month. DOD/US Army Sgt. Chase Murray

“HHB Divarty [Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, Division Artillery,] 10th Mountain Division raise their drone detection capabilities at the southern border,” the title of one of the pictures declares. Its caption also notes that “U.S. Northern Command is working together with the Department of Homeland Security to augment U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the southern border.”

“Beyond confirming that the sentinel radar is a C-UAS [counter-uncrewed aerial systems] capability organic to 10th Mountain Division, I won’t get into specifics on what other DoD assets may or may not be at the border,” a spokesperson for NORTHCOM told TWZ when asked for more information.

The AN/MPQ-64 is a multi-purpose radar that can be used to spot various aerial threats, including fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and cruise missiles, as well as drones, and cue air defense systems to engage them.

A stock picture of an AN/MPQ-64 radar. Raytheon

The AN/TPQ-53, also sometimes referred to just as the Q-53, is primarily designed to detect and track incoming artillery rockets and shells, as well as determine their point of origin. Friendly forces can then use that data to target the enemy units that launched those attacks. This is why they are currently found in Army artillery units like the 10th Mountain’s DIVARTY. The TPQ-53 does also have a demonstrated ability to spot and track drones.

Both the AN/TPQ-53 and the AN/MPQ-64 are well-suited to spotting and tracking low-flying threats. As such, sending the radars to the border with Mexico would provide valuable additional capacity to monitor for cartel drone activity, as well as just offer useful added situational awareness.

Increasingly well-armed and otherwise equipped, in general, Mexican drug cartels have embraced the uncrewed aerial system and have continued to expand the scale and scope of their use of those platforms. Originally seen primarily as a tool for cross-border smuggling, cartels are now regularly using drones to surveil and launch attacks against each other, as well as government security forces.

Multiple incidents in recent years have underscored how cartel-related violence in Mexico can already escalate to points where it takes on a character more in line with an open low-level civil conflict than just organized crime. As the U.S. government, including the U.S. military, has stepped up activity along the southern border in recent months, there have been growing concerns about the potential for that violence to spill over. This includes reported fears that cartels could launch cross-border drone attacks.

Drone incursions across the U.S.-Mexican border are already a routine occurrence. “I don’t know the actual number – I don’t think anybody does – but it’s in the thousands,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of NORTHCOM and the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told members of Congress when asked about this issue at a hearing last year.

At that same hearing, Guillot became the first U.S. official to publicly acknowledge still-unexplained drone incursions over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia over a period of weeks in December 2023, which TWZ was the first to report on. The swarming of Langley, as well as a flurry of claimed drone sightings over New Jersey and other parts of the United States bordering on mass hysteria last year, have since become national cause célèbres. Helped in addition by constant reports about drone use in the ongoing war in Ukraine the threats posed by uncrewed serial systems have been fully thrust into the public consciousness. It’s interesting to note here that Ukrainian forces have also been using U.S.-supplied TPQ-53 and MPQ-64 radars.

None of this is new, including when it comes to the U.S. homeland, as TWZ has been highlighting in steady reporting about drone activity over military facilities and training ranges, as well as warships offshore, and critical civilian infrastructure, for years now. Incursions last year at bases hosting U.S. forces in the United Kingdom further underscored that these threats are global in nature and not limited to traditional battlefields. In addition to Langley, we have been the first to report on many other drone incidents at home and abroad, something CBS News‘ “60 Minutes” drew attention to just this weekend in a segment on this topic.

On top of all this, there has been and continues to be substantial overlap between reports of sightings of what are now often called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and drones. By the U.S. government’s own assessments, many purported UAPs are likely to have been uncrewed aerial systems, though some incidents do remain unexplained.

A breakdown of cases of reported UAP sightings between 2023 and 2024 assessed by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office to have been drones (UAS) and other explainable objects. AARO

“There were 350 [drone] detections reported last year on military installations, and that was 350 over a total of 100 different installations of all types and levels of security,” Gen. Guillot had also said at another hearing just in January. “The primary threat I see for them in the way they’ve been operating is detection and perhaps surveillance of sensitive capabilities on our installations.”

Despite all this, the U.S. military and the rest of the U.S. government continue to play catch-up when it comes to tackling drone threats, especially with the U.S. homeland.

“Well, I think the, the threat got ahead of our ability to detect and, and track the threat. I think all eyes were, rightfully, overseas, where UAVs [uncrewed air vehicles] were being used on one-way attack to attack U.S. and coalition service members,” Gen. Guillot told CBS News‘ “60 Minutes” for its segment this weekend. “And the threat in the U.S. probably caught us by surprise a little bit.”

At another point in the segment, CBS’ Bill Whitaker asked Guillot if, “as it stands today, could you detect a swarm of drones flying over or flying into the airspace at Langley? Could you detect that today?”

“At low altitude, probably not with your standard FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] or surveillance radars,” Guillot said, which also highlights the value of having the Army radars near the border with Mexico.

U.S. Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot during a visit to the headquarters of Joint Task Force-North, one of the US military’s main entities for coordinating support for border security operations, in January 2025. US Army

When it comes to the U.S. military more actively addressing drone threats within the confines of the United States, an often obtuse maze of rules, regulations, and legal jurisdictions presents real challenges. Efforts have been and continue to be made to try to simplify and streamline the situation. Any discussion about trying to shoot down drones flying in U.S. airspace also has to take into account various risks, especially to innocent bystanders on the ground. You can read more about all of this in detail in this previous TWZ story.

“Customs and Border Protection have various C-UAS capabilities, and the authorities to use them, in the U.S. southern border area,” the NORTHCOM spokesperson told TWZ today as part of their response to our queries about the Army radars. “USNORTHCOM is working with CBP to tie in complementary C-UAS capabilities, and specific authorities associated with each. As with the rest of the homeland, covered DoD installations are authorized C-UAS capabilities beyond self-defense.”

The Army sending the radars to the border with Mexico now highlights the larger continued gaps just in being able to monitor uncrewed aerial activity, let alone disrupt, disable, or destroy those systems, as well as the threats that cartel drones pose more specifically.

Howard Altman contributed to this story.

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