By The Washington Times (U.S.) | Created at 2026-08-28 21:04:48 | Updated at 2026-09-05 07:27:41
1 week ago
The U.S. military said it blasted three cartel-linked drones out of the sky, 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 and a threat to U.S. personnel based on their patterns.
It’s a major line-crossing moment — the first time the laser system has been successfully used on a cartel drone at the border — though it’s one some members of Congress have, for years, been demanding to see.
“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 Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commander of Joint Task Force-Southern Border.
He didn’t say where along the border the system was deployed, nor which cartel is believed to have been involved.
Cartels have used drones for everything from smuggling drugs to tracking the deployment of the Border Patrol to 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 that’s 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 hearing on cartel drones.
But the idea alarmed Rep. Dina Titus, a 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 new administration, which now has both the technology and willingness to use kinetic force.
“That’s good news. Our soldiers need that on the southern border right now,” said Todd Bensman, who used to serve as senior advisor at the National Counterterrorism Center’s counter-cartel division, and is now at the Heritage Foundation.
Mr. Bensman just published a piece for The American Mind detailing how the smuggling cartels may have learned drone warfare from inside the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
He said those methods, used on U.S., Mexican or Colombian forces, could be devastating.
While they’ve used drones as intelligence or distraction tools, cartels have seemingly been wary of using them in offensive attacks against the U.S.
But that’s 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 this week’s strike, known in military-speak as the AMP-HEL, is produced by AeroVironment, a Virginia company. 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 ran 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 back by former 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.
