Pentagon eyeing tech testbed expansion along US-Mexico border

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has turned the US-Mexico border into a testbed, of sorts, for emerging tech like high-energy lasers and unmanned systems. It’s the kind of experimentation the DoD would like to expand, a senior official told Breaking Defense — if there’s sufficient funding on the way from lawmakers.

“We want to do as much as we can. I would love to continue to bring on new projects, new programs to the border and try it out, but we want to do it in a responsible way that’s safe,” Mark Ditlevson, assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs, told Breaking Defense Wednesday. 

“Obviously there’s major negotiations happening right now” on the Hill, “so I can’t speak to any sort of future budget,” Ditlevson said.

Congress has passed a continuing resolution to keep the department funded when fiscal 2027 starts on Oct. 1 through early December. But the fate of the Pentagon’s FY27 budget is very much up in the air as lawmakers debate the details of the $1.15 trillion base budget along with another $350 billion reconciliation deal that looks increasingly unlikely to pass in its current form.

So for now, Ditlevson said the Pentagon is assessing tech it has already deployed and eyeing how it could do more.

For instance, as part of a more comprehensive project looking at autonomy and network integration the department has been monitoring the border area along the Rio Grande river area with 10 Lightfish unmanned surface vessels (USVs).

After receiving “positive feedback” on sensor platforms like the USVs, Ditlevson is eyeing an expansion that could mean pushing USVs into the Gulf of Mexico “to help with the narco-trafficking fight.” An exact timeline for deploying a fleet on unmanned vessels in the Gulf is up in the air.

“In a perfect world, I would love to see a vendor — whatever R&E [Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering] chooses for unmanned surface vessels — to go from the mouth of the Rio Grande across to Key West, and [whoever] can do that mission with the right size platform and the capabilities that we require,” he added.

Up in the air, Ditlevson and his team have also been working with new aerial drones and are now looking for ways to better “automate” them so that they can replace some of the manned aircraft, or reduce the number of drone operators required on the ground. 

“There’s a lot of challenges with that because you have to have obstacle avoidance systems in place and different guardrails to be able to work within the US airspace,” he added. “How do we do that? We’re working through it right now.”

On the ground, there might also be an opportunity to test out new unmanned ground vehicles but only if those robots are a good fit and “force multiplier … that makes us more effective.”

“If we’re going to have 1,000s of service members augmenting the border patrol in this mission, they need to be as effective as possible,” Ditlevson said. “And one way of doing that with really targeted investments that have great return, is through a bunch of these different efforts, and unmanned ground vehicles could potentially be an area that we look at.”

Over on the software side, the department is aiming to take Joint Interagency Task Force-401’s Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems sensor architecture and fold it into the mix at the border next year.

“For me on the policy side, looking at more strategically, I love sensors and they’re great, but they need to be integrated into our operating picture,” he added, noting that integration includes DOD’s Maven Smart System and Lattice, or Customs Border Protection’s Minotaur.  “Hardware is awesome, but that software backbone also needs to be invested in, and that’s something in this next year” to expand on. 

Lasers And (A Bit Less) Red Tape

The push to roll out new tech and weapons at the border is not without its challenges. Take directed energy weapons. 

For decades the US military has been developing and testing high-energy lasers and high-powered microwaves, but they were never quite ready and faced a host of size, weight and power issues. However, the proliferation of small drones has provided a renewed push for those weapons, potentially offering up a lower price-per-kill ratio over traditional munitions.

But testing them out against real-world threats on US soil posed challenges — especially when it comes to legal restrictions and safety regulations.

Over the past year that has changed after Congress moved to combat the growing drone issue with the Safer Skies Act that passed as part of the larger 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. That law equipped state and local officials with new counter drone tools and authorities and also expanded authorities under what’s known as Section 130i, which outlines where and how DoD can conduct counter-drone operations on US soil. 

“The policy issues that we’ve had to work through are on the counter-UAS side with high-energy laser systems … [involved] a lot of challenges when this administration came in, policies that have been ignored over a very long time in the counter UAS space,” Ditlevson said. Specifically, he pointed to Section 130i as the avenue for the “cutting of red tape” for outfitting military installations on US soil with new tech to defend against drones.

But it hasn’t been completely smooth sailing. There was a high-profile incident earlier this year. In February the FAA suddenly and mysteriously shut down the airspace around the busy El Paso airport. It later emerged that the emergency was related to a miscommunication between federal agencies about the use of a counter-drone laser by Customs and Border Patrol, on loan from the Army.

Ditlevson said measures have been put in place to keep such a miscommunication from happening in the future.

“I feel like we’re fully integrated with the FAA in our efforts as we develop these different technologies,” he said. “Earlier this year, I understand there was that one situation that occurred, but at this point in time, that has been remedied, and I feel very confident in what we have for systems in place.”