FBI Probes Theft Of 15 Agricultural Spray Drones In New Jersey As Iran War Heightens Bioterror Fears

Fifteen agricultural spray drones were stolen from a New Jersey location last month in what the FBI is treating as a sophisticated, possibly coordinated theft, according to reporting by national security journalists Jack Murphy and Sean D. Naylor at The High Side. The case is unsolved. Retired FBI agent Steve Lazarus told the outlet the bureau is “freaked out for a good reason,” warning that the machines are “industrial sprayers designed to carry and disperse significant amounts of liquid quickly and with precision.”

Agricultural drones are built to do one thing at industrial scale: move liquid onto a target along a programmed GPS path. That is exactly the feature set counterterrorism officials have worried about since the post-9/11 era, when the concern was crop-duster aircraft and a single pilot. The 2026 version of the threat model involves a fleet of remotely piloted vehicles that anyone with a Part 137 waiver, or a pirated copy of one, can fly from a parking lot.

The timing sharpens the concern. The theft occurred during the active U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, a conflict now in a fragile ceasefire that President Trump extended on April 21 to allow further Pakistani-mediated negotiations. Iranian clerics have publicly called for jihad in retaliation for the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the FBI has been on elevated alert for homeland attacks tied to the war.

Industrial Spray Drones Are Built For Exactly The Wrong Threat Model

Industrial agricultural drones are engineered for a task that maps almost perfectly onto a chemical or biological dispersal mission: haul a large liquid payload across a defined area along a precise GPS flight path, at low altitude, with minimal operator involvement. That is what makes them valuable on a farm and terrifying to the FBI. DJI’s Agras T50, the current flagship in a product line that dominates roughly 80 percent of the U.S. agricultural spray market, carries a 40-liter tank, lifts a 40-kilogram liquid payload, and covers about a 36-foot swath along terrain-following waypoints. A Ceres Air C31, the American-built platform pictured in The High Side’s report, carries a 31-gallon tank expandable to 40 gallons and can lift nearly 400 pounds. Fifteen of these machines operating in formation could blanket dozens of acres in a single coordinated run.

Lazarus’s description to The High Side, that a typical agricultural drone can “cover a large area in minutes, following GPS-guided paths,” matches the real-world workflow of every major Agras, XAG, and Hylio operator in the country. That is the entire point of the aircraft in farming. It also describes, almost exactly, what a bioterror dispersal platform would need to do.

The Theft Pattern Does Not Look Like Ordinary Crime

Commercial agricultural operators lose drones to theft occasionally, usually one or two units pulled from a barn or a trailer. Fifteen at once is an order of magnitude different. Spray drones of this class weigh between 90 and 170 pounds each with batteries. Moving fifteen requires a truck, a lift, advance reconnaissance of where the aircraft are stored, and a plan for what happens after. That is not a smash-and-grab for resale on Facebook Marketplace.

The FBI has not publicly named the victim operator, the specific make and model of the stolen drones, or the municipality in New Jersey where the theft occurred. That kind of information discipline suggests an active investigation with leads the bureau does not want to compromise, not a generic property crime being quietly worked at the county level.

The FCC Drone Ban Makes Replacement Nearly Impossible

Whoever lost those 15 aircraft is now caught in a regulatory trap DroneXL has been tracking for a year. On December 22, 2025, the FCC added all foreign-made drones and UAS critical components to its Covered List, blocking new equipment authorizations for DJI, Autel, XAG, and any platform built outside the United States. DJI controls roughly 80 percent of the U.S. agricultural spray drone market. If the stolen aircraft were Agras units, the victim cannot simply order replacements.

The Texas Farm Bureau warned in January that “limited availability of drones and parts could prevent farmers and ranchers from adequately managing pesticide and fertilizer use.” American-made alternatives from Hylio and Ceres Air exist but cost three to five times more than the Chinese hardware they replace, and production volume remains limited. A theft of this scale now carries a secondary cost that did not exist two years ago: the victim may not be able to rebuild the fleet at all.

The Counterterrorism Playbook Already Assumes This

Federal law enforcement has been treating weaponized consumer and commercial drones as a credible homeland threat for at least two years. In May 2025, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested a man who flew a drone over the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command facility at the Detroit Arsenal to gather targeting intelligence for a planned ISIS attack. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said publicly in January 2025 that “the next point of attack will probably be the drones.”

The operational reality is even starker across the southern border. A University of Nebraska at Omaha research center documented 221 weaponized drone incidents in Mexico between 2021 and 2025, with 27 resulting in fatalities and 77 people killed. Cartel operators are already using modified commercial drones as weapons in conditions that mirror what a domestic attacker would face. The knowledge base and the hardware both exist.

DroneXL’s Take

I’ve been covering agricultural drones for almost a decade, and every time I watch an Agras T40 or T50 fly a field pattern, the same uncomfortable thought surfaces: this aircraft is optimized for exactly the kind of mission that keeps counterterrorism officials awake. The industry has always known it. So has the FBI. The question was when, not whether, someone would try to steal a fleet of them.

Here is what sets this case apart from the usual drone-terror speculation DroneXL has pushed back on for years. Most drone threat stories involve a hypothetical attacker who buys one DJI Mini at Best Buy and straps something to it. Those scenarios are mostly noise. Fifteen industrial spray drones lifted in a coordinated operation is not noise. That is capacity, and it exists in the wrong hands right now, somewhere in the continental United States, with no public answer from the bureau about where.

Two predictions with timeframes. Within 60 days, the FBI will issue a joint bulletin to the agricultural drone industry, pesticide applicator associations, and Part 137 operators urging hardened storage requirements and immediate theft reporting. Within six months, at least one member of Congress will use this case to argue for mandatory registration and serial-number tracking of any drone with a payload capacity above 20 pounds. Whether those measures actually reduce the threat is a separate question. The political response will happen regardless.

The larger lesson for the industry is that the FCC’s rushed foreign drone ban just collided with a homeland security crisis in a way no one planned for. Farms that relied on Agras fleets for legitimate work now have a harder time rebuilding after a theft than the thieves have using the stolen equipment. That is the definition of policy working backwards.

Source: The High Side.

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