The FBI’s counter-drone school at Redstone Arsenal will more than double its capacity in its second year, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said after touring the Huntsville, Alabama, facility on Thursday, October 1. Woodward, the Justice Department’s third-ranking official, pointed to the more than 700 drones federal and local teams pulled out of the sky at this summer’s FIFA World Cup as the reason the training matters, and said every host city completed the course.

The school is the National Counter-UAS Training Center, created by executive order in June 2025 and graduating its first class before the year was out. Since July 1 it has also been the only place a state or local officer can earn the right to take a drone down under the Safer Skies Act. When that rule published, 61 officers in the whole country held the certificate. The school’s first class, in late October 2025, held 12.

The World Cup Ran on a School That Opened With a Dozen Seats

The FBI announced the center to every U.S. law enforcement agency in a September 24, 2025 memo scheduling a three-week Counter-UAS System Operator course for late October. The inaugural class was 12 officers from New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and California. The 2026 courses would prioritize World Cup host areas.

Congressman Dale Strong cut the ribbon on November 7, 2025, with the first graduates standing beside him, as DroneXL reported in December. The memo had been candid about what the certificate was worth at that point: nothing, legally, until Congress extended counter-drone authority to state and local agencies, which it did in the Safer Skies Act signed on December 18 inside the defense bill. Bloomberg reported in May that the FBI would field roughly 60 of those trained officers across the 11 U.S. host cities.

The Department of Transportation’s post-tournament account put seizures above 700 across all 11 cities under nearly 250 temporary flight restrictions, and FedScoop reported nearly 1,700 detections and more than 400 mitigation actions. Woodward told 256 Today what the haul did not contain: none of the 700 was loaded with ordnance.

“We love drones,” he told WZDX, adding that the bureau is not trying to infringe on anyone’s right to fly in a safe place, only to keep drones out of stadium events.

Doubling Still Leaves the Line Longer Than the School

Woodward did not say what the current capacity is, so the doubling has no public baseline. The nearest figures are the 61 mitigation-certified officers across about 46 agencies counted when the rule published on July 6, and the FBI’s plan to graduate 250 more next fiscal year.

Demand outran the building before the tournament ended. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told House appropriators on June 26 that the school was full mid-World Cup and that he wanted to route DHS money into it, as DroneXL reported. DroneResponders director Charles Werner told FedScoop in early August what that pace buys: with about 340 metropolitan cities in the country, 250 graduates would not cover them in the first year. Counting those graduates, the FBI will have trained about 1,000 people in three years.

The interim final rule that took effect July 1 locks that bottleneck in by design. Detection and warning, the lower tier, needs no in-person training. Disrupting, seizing or taking control of a drone requires resident training at the Redstone school and nowhere else. The government expects about 1,500 agencies to hold the detection tier within two years, and every one that wants the second tier passes through the same door. Woodward also toured a new FBI cyber facility on the arsenal and said agents he met that day commute between Huntsville and Washington, a presence he expects to grow.

Woodward Credits Trump and Says the Last Administration Did Nothing

Woodward said drone threats existed under the previous administration and nothing was done. President Trump, he said, directed his staff to get smart on counter-drone technology on taking office. He said the executive order came well before Congress authorized the school: June 6, 2025, against December 18.

The record on the earlier administration is more specific than nothing. On April 25, 2022, the Biden White House published a Domestic Counter-UAS National Action Plan that asked Congress for detection authority for state and local police, a federally sponsored pilot program letting selected local agencies mitigate drones, and, as its fourth recommendation, a National Counter-UAS Training Center. Congress passed none of it during that administration. DroneXL covered the bipartisan bill that tried in June 2024. The House reported it out of committee that September and never voted on it.

The executive order delivered a center the 2022 plan had described, and the Safer Skies Act supplied the authority the same plan had requested.

DroneXL’s Take

The 700 figure should worry pilots, not reassure them, because by Woodward’s own account none of those aircraft carried anything dangerous. Seven hundred operators flew into published no-drone zones, and I suspect most of them were hobbyists and videographers who never checked the TFR. Every one handed the people who want to regulate us a data point. Don’t be that guy. The stadium TFR is the one rule with no grey area left in it.

The school itself I am for, and I am for it staying the only gate. Fifteen hundred agencies are lining up for detection powers, and the ones that want to seize or commandeer an aircraft face a single federal certifying body with a three-week course. That course is the thing standing between the Safer Skies Act and a sheriff’s deputy with a jammer and a hunch. Doubling capacity is the right move. The pressure Werner described, 340 cities and a one-year pace that covers none of them, is exactly the pressure that produces a shorter course or a second, looser certifier, and that is the outcome I’d watch for in the fiscal 2027 numbers. The executive order built in five months what the previous White House and two Congresses had only written down. The next test is whether the standard survives the waiting list.

Source: WZDX / Rocket City Now, 256 Today, FBI NCUTC memo, FAA, FedScoop

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