Southern border is a ‘sandbox’ for counter-drone tech: NORTHCOM commander

TAMPA, Fla. — The southern border of the US has turned into a breeding ground for counter-drone innovation, according to Commander of US Northern Command Gen. Gregory Guillot.

“We’ve made the southern border a literal and a figurative sandbox,” Guillot, who also serves as commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, said Tuesday here at the annual SOF Week exposition. 

Through Joint Interagency Taskforce 401 (JIATF 401) — the Army-led organization aimed at protecting the homeland from counter drone threats — he explained, the US military is inviting industry partners to the border to show off their tech aimed at taking down adversary drones. 

“We tell all of the vendors, if you’re willing to bring it down to the southern border, we’ll put it to use. We’ll tell you if it works, if it does, we’ll probably buy it,” Guillot said. “If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you exactly what you need to work on, so we can buy it potentially at scale, and therefore we have hundreds of systems down there or components of systems that are the beneficiaries of lessons learned from other regions.” 

Regarding those “other regions,” Guillot said NORTHCOM is learning “a lot” from US Central Command and attempting to apply those lessons to the southern border, though he did not detail what those lessons are. He did, however, note that cartel drones are flying over Marines and soldiers “all the time” on the border, explaining that the military needs a portable option to follow warfighters as protection against such drones.

“It presents us a different challenge. We have a lot of fixed and movable counter-UAS [unmanned aerial system] capabilities, but not really anything that would follow a patrolling soldier, and that’s a concern of mine, and we’re trying to get lessons from those countries where that, where they might have more experience with that,” Guillot said. 

Guillot did not specify what kind of counter-drone tech he’s looking for, though his remarks come about a month after the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Department published an assessment determining that high-energy laser counter-drone tech is OK to use on the border. 

The assessment “validated that proper safety controls are in place and that while these systems are at the cutting edge of counter drone technology, they do not pose undue risk to passenger aircraft,” a news release from the FAA read last month.

The FAA’s assessment comes after the agency closed airspace over El Paso, Texas, in February after the DoD reportedly permitted the FAA to fire a counter-drone laser system which ended up causing the El Paso airport and its surrounding airspace for several hours.