An FBI-led counter-drone task force used electronic countermeasures to force civilian drones out of the sky over the Spokane wildfires, after its detection gear logged 41 unauthorized aircraft inside the flight restriction in four days. The unit was assembled to protect FIFA World Cup matches in Seattle earlier this summer. It moved to Spokane County in early August when hobby pilots kept grounding helicopters and air tankers over three uncontained fires that destroyed at least 700 structures.
No pilot has been arrested. Deputies tracked operators down, cited them, and referred the cases to the Federal Aviation Administration, where Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels says each one carries up to $100,000 in fines. The authority to take the drones down is itself new: Senator Maria Cantwell said she helped secure federal approval for the task force to bring unauthorized drones down over the fires.
FBI Detection Gear Logged 41 Drones in Four Days
The FBI Counter UAS Task Force detected 26 unauthorized drones inside the Spokane flight restriction on August 2 and 13 more on August 3, reaching 41 detections in four days by August 5. At least one incursion forced aerial firefighting to stop completely while the fires burned uncontained below.
Those figures come from the Washington State Patrol’s August 5 release and a briefing by the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office. The task force draws officers from the King County Sheriff’s Office, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, the Seattle Police Department, the Spokane Valley Police Department, and the Washington State Patrol, and it ran drone detection around the clock inside the FAA’s temporary flight restriction, published on the agency’s TFR map, which covered the fire area up to 5,000 feet (1,524 meters) and ran 24 hours a day, in force through August 14.
On the evening of August 3, a single drone grounded every aircraft on the fires for about 30 minutes, according to the Seattle Times, and that operator was never found. DroneXL’s Rafael Suárez documented the opening days of this mess in Drone Pilots Ground Spokane Firefighting Aircraft 26 Times, when the state had 35 aircraft assigned to the fires and four drones crossed directly into their flight paths.
A World Cup Counter-Drone Unit Ended Up Over a Wildfire
The task force patrolling Spokane’s airspace was not built for wildfires. It formed ahead of the FIFA World Cup to keep drones away from packed stadiums in Seattle, moved on to the Seafair air show, and drove straight from there to Spokane County as the fires broke out.
King County Sergeant Jason Stanley described that pipeline to KIRO 7, saying the team left for Spokane before the last jet had landed at Seafair. The mission barely changed, because radar and radio frequency detection find a hobby drone over a fire line just as easily as one hovering near a stadium.
What changed is what happens next. Deputy Doug Hicks, a task force member, told reporters the unit uses electronic countermeasures against drones in the restricted airspace: “It breaks the link between the drone and the controller.” Ground crews then move in, find the pilot, and have them bring the aircraft down. Nowels told the Spokesman-Review that rumors of deputies shooting drones out of the sky were inaccurate; the tool is the jammer, not a shotgun.
DroneXL covered this unit’s stadium season as it happened, from the counter-drone school that trained officers ahead of the tournament to the more than 600 drones seized at World Cup venues. Spokane is the first fire on that resume.
Citations Went to the FAA Instead of Handcuffs
No drone pilot has been arrested over the Spokane fires. Deputies cited the operators they could locate and referred each case to the Federal Aviation Administration, with Sheriff John Nowels putting the exposure at up to $100,000 per case. Federal criminal charges remain possible on top.
An FAA spokesperson told the Spokesman-Review that hindering firefighting efforts is a federal crime punishable by up to two years in prison, and the sheriff made clear he considers these cases exactly that.
“We are done playing games with this,” Nowels said in remarks reported by KIRO 7.
These referrals are not paperwork that dies in a drawer. The operator whose DJI Mini hit a Super Scooper over the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025 ended up pleading guilty in federal court. A Colorado pilot faced federal charges in July for grounding aircraft over the Aspen Acres Fire. As of publication, the FAA has not announced penalties in any Spokane case, so the public record on 41 detections currently ends at the referral stage.
DroneXL’s Take
The pilots who flew over these fires did more damage to this hobby than any lobbyist ever could. They handed the strongest possible case for broad counter-drone takedown authority to the people who already wanted it, wrapped in footage of their own neighbors’ burning homes.
Counter-drone authority is one of the most contested questions in American drone policy, and Congress has spent years arguing over who should get takedown powers at wildfires and under what limits. Then 41 hobby drones showed up over a burning county, and the argument settled itself in four days. A senator asked, federal officials signed off, and a jamming unit built for stadium security started breaking control links over an American city. Nobody marched in the streets about it, because nobody could defend the flights.
I get why expanded counter-UAS powers make responsible pilots nervous, and they should: authority granted in an emergency has a way of sticking around after the emergency ends. That concern is exactly why the Spokane pilots deserve the anger of every legitimate operator, with 65,000 of their neighbors under evacuation orders while they hunted for footage.
My read is that Spokane becomes the template. The model worked, and agencies talk to each other. Watch whether the FAA converts these referrals into published penalties the way it pursued the Los Angeles Super Scooper case, because that outcome is the number the next would-be fire pilot actually needs to see.
Sources: Washington State Patrol, The Spokesman-Review, KIRO 7
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
