The Trump administration is making enhancements to a virtual wall on the southern border in the form of drones that will be able to detect and take down other drones used to smuggle drugs into the United States or spy on agents on patrol.
U.S. Custom and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security agency responsible for all trade and travel at the border, awarded in late September a $1.2 million contract for six of Citadel Defense Company’s Titan V3 Drone, a 20-pound device capable of taking control of other drones by sending a signal through the airwaves. Private sector drone leaders have said their technology has barely seen any action despite border officials’ concerns about suspicious drones flying into the country, even as the Trump administration has forked up billions for a physical border fence.
Citadel CEO Christopher Williams said his company worked with CBP over 12 months to find a “counterdrone system” that can prevent the smuggling of illegal guns or narcotics by forcing down the drones carrying those goods, all without pulling a firearm on them.
“It essentially sets up an electronic fence, which prevents drones from potentially carrying weapons, drugs across the border,” Williams said in a phone call Wednesday.
On the U.S.-Mexico border, smugglers use drones to spy on operations at ports of entry where people and vehicles go through inspection, as well as to keep an eye out on certain areas for Border Patrol agents. If the coast is clear, smugglers know they can run goods through the area on foot or by car — or even fly them overhead with a drone.
The first drug smuggling incident via drone was documented in November 2015. Now sightings of unmanned aircraft, which range from a few ounces to a few pounds, are a daily occurrence along the border. Agents have a hard enough time seeing or hearing the small aircraft at night, when they are most often flown. Because drones can fly up to 1,000 feet high and at 50 miles per hour, it is nearly impossible to physically go after one, even if it is spotted. In fact, only one smuggler has been prosecuted in a drone incident near the border, according to CBP.
Even if agents are able to see drones flying high in the dark, they are not allowed to use their firearms to shoot them down. Laws dictate the situations in which law enforcement can take down a drone, which CBP took into consideration before awarding the contract.
The six new counterdrone systems that will be used by port officers and agents in the field can operate in two capacities: They can detect drones without breaking laws that forbid any interference in telecommunications networks, and they have the power to force a suspicious drone to safely land in a chosen spot, which law enforcement refer to as an interdiction.
A range of counterdrone systems are on the market. Some devices look like large guns and have triggers that users can pull to send an electronic signal to the drones, telling them to land where they are or to come to a specific location.
Some counterdrone devices can cast an invisible net over a city block so nothing is allowed to fly into that portion of airspace. Others will deploy a drone to intercept the smugglers’ drone and cast a physical net to capture it, then take it back to the ground.
The downside to the first type of telecommunications jamming system is that it interrupts service for people using nearby cellphone towers to make calls or send texts because the powerful counterdrone holds up all other connections in order to expedite its signal to the bad drone, which is getting its instructions where to fly through that same cell tower.
The drones purchased by the CBP work autonomously, scanning the sky up to 1,000 feet and 1.8 miles in all directions for any remotely operated aircraft in the sky.
The counterdrones are autonomous and will alert the handler on an attached tablet if a drone is detected in that airspace. At that point, it is up to the operator to decide how to handle it. It’s also where the line blurs in terms of how CBP is prepared to respond.
The counterdrones will be used in “highly trafficked areas, and highest priority locations” in Texas, Arizona, and California, but not New Mexico, Citadel said in a statement.
CBP did not answer if its employees will just detect or also take down the drones, since federal entities are still deciding how each agency should respond to drones that pose national security concerns.
“These systems will be utilized for pilot evaluation and utilized as operations dictate, in accordance with CBP policy,” a CBP representative wrote in an email.
The Citadel contract may end up giving agents the chance to see just how many drones are coming over the 2,000-mile southern border, albeit in very limited areas.
Border Patrol agents told the Washington Examiner last fall that they are worried about drones flying into the U.S. from Mexico.
“Detection is our greatest weakness right now,” then-Border Patrol San Diego Sector Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Roy Villareal said during a border tour. “It’s one of a multitude of threats we have, but I think it’s going to grow … simply because of the inability to intercept [them].”
Drones are remotely operated from up to a few miles away, making it difficult to determine who was flying it even if it is captured.
