FAA Clears Military to Use Anti-Drone Lasers in U.S. Airspace After Two-Month Standoff

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave the U.S. military formal clearance on Friday to use high-energy lasers against suspected drones in U.S. airspace, ending a two-month interagency dispute that twice shut down commercial flight operations over the Texas-Mexico border. FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said in a joint statement with the Defense Department that the agency had completed a safety assessment of the military’s anti-drone laser systems and determined they “do not present an increased risk to the flying public,” according to reporting by The New York Times.

The decision reverses the FAA’s posture from February, when the agency twice shut down swaths of airspace over Texas after the military and Customs and Border Protection deployed the lasers without the agency’s prior approval. Those two incidents canceled 14 commercial flights, diverted medical aircraft 45 miles, and destroyed a $30 million CBP surveillance drone in a friendly-fire mishap.

Two Texas Incidents Set the Stage for the Safety Review

The dispute traces to February 10, when CBP officials used a Pentagon-owned AeroVironment LOCUST (Laser Optical Counter-UAS System for Tactical Use) laser to engage what turned out to be metallic balloons near Fort Bliss. The FAA responded by closing all airspace within a 10-nautical-mile radius of the El Paso VORTAC from the surface to 18,000 feet, a closure the White House lifted hours later after the shutdown surfaced in a meeting in Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’s office. DroneXL covered the full account of the El Paso airspace closure and its cascading impact on commercial aviation.

On February 26, soldiers used the same laser system to shoot down a drone over Fort Hancock, Texas. The drone belonged to CBP. CBP had not told the Pentagon it was operating one. The FAA closed airspace over the area again. Congressional aides put the cost of the destroyed aircraft at approximately $30 million. DroneXL reported on how the Pentagon destroyed its own government’s drone and why the coordination failure that caused it had still not been fixed.

Federal law requires the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate with FAA leadership before rolling out new technology to disable or destroy drones. The agencies had disagreed for months over whether coordination meant securing FAA permission in advance, or simply notifying the agency. The Texas incidents settled that argument in the FAA’s favor, at least temporarily, and forced a formal safety review.

White Sands Evaluation Produced the Safety Clearance

In early March, FAA and Pentagon officials met at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for a live demonstration of the laser system conducted by AeroVironment. The evaluation involved multiple agencies, including JIATF 401, and ran over two days. DroneXL covered the Army’s AMP-HEL laser evaluation at White Sands after DefenseScoop reported an unscripted moment during testing: a commercial aircraft drifted into the same tracking angle the system was holding on a simulated target, and the automated safety inhibit shut the laser down before it could fire. That unplanned event did more to address FAA concerns than the prepared portions of the evaluation.

Bedford and Army Brigadier General Matt Ross signed the joint statement Friday confirming the safety clearance. The FAA said it will issue an advisory to pilots operating near the southern border, alerting them to increased anti-drone laser activity in the area. An FAA official told the Times the agency determined the risk to aircraft would be minimal even in the event of direct laser contact, though the public statement did not address that finding explicitly.

Political Pressure and What Comes Next

Whether Friday’s agreement quiets congressional concern is an open question. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, has requested a briefing from both the Pentagon and the FAA about how the agreement was reached, according to an aide. The sequence of events, where the White House pressured the FAA to reopen El Paso airspace hours after the February 10 closure, and where the FAA now reversed course entirely after a six-week review, will invite scrutiny about whether the safety finding was driven by data or by political calendar.

The Pentagon has also raised the possibility of deploying the LOCUST system at Fort McNair, a military installation in Washington, D.C., where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reside, after detecting unusual drone activity near the compound. Friday’s clearance, which covers the southern border liberally, does not automatically extend to urban deployments in the national capital region, where airspace restrictions and political sensitivities are considerably more complex.

One detail in the joint statement is worth flagging. General Ross’s quote refers to the “Department of War,” the name the Trump administration has been using for the Defense Department, describing the capabilities as “safe, effective, and ready to protect all air travelers from illicit drone use in the national airspace.” The statement was issued jointly with the FAA, but the rhetorical gap between the two agencies remains visible in the language each chose.

DroneXL’s Take

This clearance has been coming since the White Sands evaluation in March. The automated safety inhibit during the commercial aircraft flyover was the turning point. I wrote at the time that the FAA had been asking for exactly that kind of evidence, and once it existed on video, the agency’s path to approval became much shorter. What changed between February and April was not the technology. The LOCUST system has not been meaningfully upgraded in the intervening weeks. What changed was that the FAA got the test data it had been requesting for months before the military ever fired a shot over Texas.

The coordination failure that destroyed a $30 million CBP drone has not been structurally fixed by this agreement. The clearance gives the Pentagon broader latitude to operate near the border, but the February incidents were caused by agencies not telling each other what was flying, not by the absence of an FAA safety certificate. Adding a pilot advisory and a joint statement does not solve the problem of one agency firing at another agency’s aircraft. The counter-argument is that the FAA now has a formal safety determination on the record, and the Pentagon is required to operate within that legal framework. That’s structurally better than what existed before February. But “better than nothing” is a low bar when the previous state was also nothing. Watch for the next incident near Fort McNair, because the operational pressure to deploy there is real, and the political pressure to avoid another airspace shutdown will be equally real. By the end of 2026, either the agencies will have built genuine coordination infrastructure, or a second friendly-fire incident will force them to.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.