Congressman pushes DHS to shoot down cartel drones at border

Rep. Dan Bishop was incredulous when Homeland Security officials told a House committee last week that they see about 200 suspicious drone flights a day at the southern border — and that’s just what they are able to detect.

“I don’t understand the reason that we would allow drones to come into the United States,” the North Carolina Republican said. “Why don’t we shoot them down?”

It’s a question that’s been percolating among border experts and Homeland Security officials for years, and one that still confounds policymakers.

The threat from drones is massive and growing, officials told the House Homeland Security Committee.

During one five-month period, Customs and Border Protection detected 30,000 flights.

Dennis Michelini, acting head of CBP’s Air and Marine Operations division, described for lawmakers what happened when a drone-scanning system was turned on for the first time in one part of the border.

CBP immediately spotted flight signatures for 40 to 45 drones that they had no idea were in the skies over the border.

Some were Mexican government counter-drones, but others were flying back and forth across the border. They may have been hobbyists knowingly or unknowingly breaking the law, but some were likely to have been cartel-controlled drones carrying drugs or observing Border Patrol movements in order to spot gaps in coverage.

“The amount out there was really staggering,” Mr. Michelini said.

He told Mr. Bishop that Homeland Security’s current approach is to disrupt drones’ flight operations. Essentially, that means breaking the connection between the remote pilot and the unit, which usually forces the drone to the ground, often returning back to where it took off.

CBP has two “covered areas” where it can deploy that capability. Few drones are actually interdicted, he said, but at least they are brought out of the sky for that time.

Mr. Michelini said Homeland Security doesn’t use “kinetic” force.

Mr. Bishop, in a follow-up interview with The Washington Times, said he wasn’t satisfied with the answers.

“It’s another sign of chaos, It’s another sign that every bit of U.S. policy under this administration is content with chaos at the border, including drone flights,” he said.

He said he will try to become chair of the Homeland Security Committee if Republicans take control of Congress next year, and he will demand better answers from the government.

It’s not just the border where authorities are struggling for answers on drones.

The Transportation Security Administration, the lead agency on drone threats at airports, said it considers disruption the best answer right now — but it has holes in its own capability to bring drones down.

“We’re focused on detect, track and identify,” said Austin Gould, TSA’s assistant administrator for requirements and capabilities analysis.

Rep. Diana Titus, Nevada Democrat, seemed horrified by the idea of shooting a drone out of the sky.

“I don’t think it’s quite that simple. I don’t think you start firing off rockets to shoot down drones in neighborhoods or along the border or along the river, where people live,” she said.

She said in Las Vegas, people illegally fly drones near the airport — formerly known as McCarran, and now as Harry Reid International Airport — to get pictures of the city’s skyline.

Mr. Bishop said she was conflating things by comparing solutions at airports to those at the border.

“I certainly don’t think we should be firing missiles at drones in Las Vegas,” he said. “I see a very different picture in terms of cross-border flights.“

He also said it wouldn’t take long to get a message across.

“If you blew up a bunch of Mexican cartel drones, especially the heavy ones you keep talking about, I don’t think they’d keep doing it,” the congressman said.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez, Florida Republican, said the U.S. needs to invest in more research to get an offensive capability to bring down drones.

“I really do believe it’s a matter of when, not if, some major event is going to be happening either at the border or it’s going to be happening in one of our airports or one of our transportation hubs through the use of these unmanned systems,” he said.

He worried about the looming danger of autonomous drones, flying on programming and preset GPS points rather than controlled by a pilot. Without pilot-to-drone communication, forcing them down is a far tougher task, experts said.

Mr. Gould said British authorities think that’s exactly the type of drone that was used in a 2018 incident at Gatwick Airport, when more than a thousand flights were canceled over three days as drone sightings halted operations.

Some security experts have also worried about the ability to arm drones. In 2017, federal police in central Mexico discovered four men suspected of cartel ties who were carrying a drone equipped with a bomb and a remote detonator.

Mr. Michelini said drones also pose a threat to his own people flying helicopters along the U.S.-Mexico border.

He said there have been five “near-misses” with small drones and CBP aircraft in the last year and a half.

Mr. Gould said from the air traffic standpoint, drones over the last year forced 49 flights to have to take “evasive action” to avoid a midair collision.