Pentagon Shoots Down Its Own $30M CBP Drone at the Texas Border and Still Has No Fix for the Coordination Failure That Caused It

A U.S. military high-energy laser destroyed a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) surveillance drone near Fort Hancock, Texas on Thursday, February 26. The reason: CBP never told the Pentagon it was flying one. The military saw an unidentified aircraft in military airspace, identified it as a threat, and fired. Cost to taxpayers: an estimated $30 million, per congressional aides who spoke with Reuters.

Quick facts before the details:

• The incident: The Pentagon used a directed-energy laser to destroy a DHS/CBP border surveillance drone near Fort Hancock, TX, a small border town roughly 50 miles southeast of El Paso, because CBP had not notified the military it was operating there.
• The price: The drone is estimated to have cost approximately $30 million in taxpayer funds, per congressional aides who spoke with Reuters.
• The FAA response: The agency issued a new flight restriction over Fort Hancock below 18,000 feet, citing “special security reasons,” with the restriction running through June 24.
• The pattern: This is the second major airspace incident in 15 days tied to the same laser system near El Paso. The first, on February 11, shut down El Paso International Airport for eight hours, canceled 14 flights, and diverted medical evacuations 45 miles away.

No Shared Picture: How the Pentagon Shot Down a Friendly Aircraft

The Fort Hancock shootdown confirms what the El Paso balloon incident already made obvious: the Pentagon, CBP, and FAA have no reliable real-time coordination system for counter-drone operations along the southern border. Military operators engaged the CBP drone because CBP had not filed a flight notice. The FAA learned about the engagement after it happened and responded by restricting airspace. At no point did any of the three agencies share a common operational picture.

Four officials told The New York Times that a preliminary internal review confirmed CBP had not notified the Defense Department it was launching a drone. The agencies later released a joint statement describing the engagement as military personnel employing “counter-unmanned aircraft system authorities to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace.” That language describes shooting down your own government’s $30 million aircraft as though it were an orderly procedure. It wasn’t.

The coordination failure ran in both directions. At El Paso two weeks prior, the FAA issued a 10-day citywide airspace closure without notifying the White House, the Pentagon, DHS, or local authorities. The Fort Hancock engagement is a Pentagon and CBP failure. El Paso was partly an FAA one. No agency comes out of this sequence looking competent.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing the same day as the Fort Hancock shootdown, Pentagon nominee Mark Ditlevson — up for Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs, a role he has been filling in an acting capacity — was pressed by lawmakers on why DoD had allowed lasers to fire in El Paso airspace on February 11 over FAA objections. He argued the statutory requirement is to “coordinate” with the FAA, not to obtain its approval. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking committee member, cut him off. “The coordination failed,” Reed said. (Reed also acknowledged, in fuller remarks, that the FAA may share some of the blame — but was clear that a failure of coordination had occurred regardless of where fault lay.)

DroneXL’s full breakdown of the Fort Hancock incident, including the legal question of whether DoD violated federal coordination requirements, is here.

Democrats Call for Inspector General Investigation, Point to Ignored Legislation

Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the Senate aviation subcommittee and a former Army helicopter pilot, announced she will formally request a joint Inspector General investigation into both laser incidents, covering the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Transportation. Representatives Rick Larsen, André Carson, and Bennie Thompson, the top Democrats on panels overseeing aviation and homeland security, issued a joint statement: “Our heads are exploding over the news that the DoD reportedly shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone using a high-risk counter-unmanned aircraft system.”

The three representatives also pointed to pending bipartisan legislation they say would have addressed exactly this failure. The Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act includes mandatory training requirements, clearer notification procedures between agencies, and improved coordination standards. The administration bypassed the process. “Now, we’re seeing the result of its incompetence,” the lawmakers said.

This isn’t the first time these lawmakers have sounded this alarm. In April 2025, Larsen and Thompson raised identical concerns after Secret Service counter-drone technology near Reagan National Airport triggered false collision avoidance alerts on commercial aircraft, again without FAA coordination. DroneXL’s article on the Democrats’ investigation demand has the full legislative timeline.

The El Paso Pattern: A Warning That Went Unlearned

Fifteen days before Fort Hancock, a counter-drone laser system operated by CBP near Fort Bliss destroyed four Mylar party balloons. The FAA responded by shutting down El Paso International Airport entirely, the first full closure since September 11, 2001. Fourteen flights were canceled. Medical evacuations were diverted 45 miles to Las Cruces. A plane carrying surgical equipment from Dallas never arrived. The White House found out Wednesday morning during a regular staff meeting in Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ office, and the airspace restriction was lifted within minutes of that conversation.

Fort Hancock proves that lesson was not learned. DroneXL’s February 22 weekly roundup revisited the full El Paso sequence and noted the coordination gaps had not been closed. They weren’t.

The cartel drone threat driving these deployments is real. A DHS official told Congress that hostile organizations flew roughly 27,000 drones within 500 meters of the border in the first half of 2024 alone. CBP documented 45,000 drone detections along the southwest border in 2023, with approximately 2,500 unauthorized incursions into U.S. airspace. The threat justifies the deployment. It does not justify deploying weapons without knowing which aircraft in your airspace belong to you.

The $30 Million Question Nobody at the Pentagon Answered

CBP did not respond to press requests for comment on the loss or the circumstances of the engagement. The DoD, FAA, and CBP joint statement said the agencies are working under President Trump’s direction “in an unprecedented fashion to counter drone threats from Mexican cartels and foreign terrorist groups at the U.S.-Mexico border.” The statement did not explain how a CBP drone got destroyed in the process. It also provided no timeline or specific procedural changes in response to the mistake. The statement was issued by what the Trump administration now calls the Department of War, its rebranding of the Department of Defense.

That $30 million figure matters beyond the dollar amount. CBP uses large surveillance drones — including the MQ-9 Guardian, a maritime patrol variant of the MQ-9 Reaper — for persistent border surveillance, though the specific drone type destroyed at Fort Hancock has not been publicly confirmed by any government agency. DroneXL reported last August on a CBP MQ-9 Guardian flying 600 miles into Mexican territory on a cartel surveillance mission. Whatever the platform, these are not disposable assets. Destroying one because two agencies couldn’t coordinate a flight notice is an avoidable loss of both capability and taxpayer money.

DroneXL’s Take

I’ve been tracking the counter-drone coordination failure along the southern border since the El Paso shutdown story broke on February 11. Fort Hancock is the same failure with a more expensive and embarrassing target. Shooting down party balloons is a sensor problem. Shooting down a CBP drone is a process problem. The agencies operating laser systems at the border don’t have a working deconfliction system. They’re flying blind in each other’s airspace.

Defense Secretary Hegseth has pushed aggressive counter-drone deployment at the border, at stadiums, around critical infrastructure. His July 10, 2025 directive called for small UAS domain dominance by the end of 2027, aimed primarily at battlefield integration. That ambition may be warranted given the genuine scale of cartel drone activity. But you can’t claim drone dominance when your laser can’t tell a friendly government aircraft from a cartel threat. The weapon is being built and deployed faster than the command structure to use it safely.

Congress has had bipartisan legislation ready to address exactly this: mandatory training, operator coordination, notification requirements. The administration bypassed it. That’s not bureaucratic fumbling. That’s a deliberate choice with a $30 million consequence.

The Fort Hancock airspace restriction runs officially through June 24, but will almost certainly be quietly lifted well before then — just like El Paso’s restriction evaporated eight hours after the White House found out. Duckworth’s IG investigation will take months, likely six to twelve. My prediction: before that report publishes, there will be a third incident involving a counter-drone system firing without shared airspace awareness. The only open question is what gets destroyed next.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.