Airport closed after secret military anti-drone lasers deployed – to shoot down a party balloon

Washington: Airspace was abruptly closed over El Paso when immigration officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the US Department of Defence without giving aviation officials time to assess risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.

The episode on Tuesday morning (Texas time) led the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to declare that nearby airspace would be shut down for 10 days, an extraordinary pause that was quickly lifted at the direction of the White House.

Top administration officials quickly claimed that the closure was in response to a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels that required a military response, with US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declaring in a social media post that “the threat has been neutralised”.

But that assertion was undercut by multiple people familiar with the situation, who said that the FAA’s extreme move came after immigration officials this week used an anti-drone laser shared by the Pentagon without co-ordination with the FAA. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Customs and Border Protection officials thought they were firing on a cartel drone, the people said, but it turned out to be a party balloon. Defence department officials were present during the incident, one person said.

The Defence department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The FAA declined to comment.

The military has been developing high-energy laser technology to intercept and destroy drones, which the Trump administration has said are being used by Mexican cartels to track Border Patrol agents and smuggle drugs into the United States.

The airspace closure provoked a significant backlash from local officials and sharp questions by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including some Republicans, who expressed scepticism about the administration’s version of the events.

“At this point, the details of what exactly occurred over El Paso are unclear,” Republican Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees the aviation agency, told reporters after attending a closed-door briefing with FAA administrator Bryan Bedford.

Cruz and Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn both said they wanted a classified briefing on the incident from the FAA and the Defence Department.

Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, also rejected the administration’s explanations.

“A 10-day shutdown of a major US air corridor is an extraordinary step that demands a clear and consistent explanation,” Reed said. “The conflicting accounts coming from different parts of the federal government only deepen public concern and raise serious questions about co-ordination and decision-making.”

According to four people briefed on the situation, Pentagon and FAA officials were set to meet on February 20 to discuss the safety implications of deploying the military’s new anti-drone technology, which was being tested. But the FAA’s urgency intensified after CBP officials deployed the technology.

It was not clear if that incident alone prompted the FAA’s decision to close the airspace over El Paso. FAA officials did not respond to questions about the claims by Duffy and other administration officials that a subsequent drone incursion had necessitated the closure of the airspace at 11.30pm on Tuesday. A Transportation Department spokesperson did not respond to inquiries about whether a party balloon had been fired upon this week.

But according to the people briefed on the matter, at the time FAA officials closed the airspace, the agency had not yet completed a safety assessment of the risks the new technology could pose to other aircraft.

Two of the people added that FAA officials had warned the Pentagon that if they were not given sufficient time and information to conduct their review, they would have no choice but to shut down the nearby airspace.

The FAA’s initial closure announcement late on Tuesday, which cited “special security reasons”, barred all aircraft from flying in the area around El Paso below 18,000 feet for 10 days.

The move left El Paso officials blindsided.

“I want to be very, very clear that this should’ve never happened,” El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson said in a news conference on Wednesday morning. “That failure to communicate is unacceptable.”

Federal agencies largely stayed mum on the controversy, even in its aftermath. Bedford, the agency’s administrator, declined to answer reporters’ questions following a closed-door briefing with senators at the Capitol on Wednesday evening (Washington time). Earlier that day, a Pentagon spokesperson repeated the military’s assertion that it had responded to a drone incursion.

A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address the dispute, challenged the claim of a failure of communication, saying that the Pentagon and the Department of Transportation had been co-ordinating with the aviation agency for months and that it had been assured that there was no threat to commercial air travel.

The Trump administration has been vocal about its plans to fight Mexican drug cartels and neutralise the drones some are using as part of their operations, even as Mexico’s leaders reject claims that they have been involved in cross-border incursions.

“There is no information about the use of drones at the border,” President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said shortly after news broke about the temporary closure of the El Paso airspace.

In July, Steven Willoughby, deputy director of the counter-drone program at the Homeland Security Department, testified before Congress that 27,000 drones had flown within 500 meters of the border over six months in 2024, piloted by organisations hostile to law enforcement.

Those drones can cause major disruptions to American infrastructure, Willoughby said, adding that his program worked with the FAA “to properly co-ordinate the use of each piece of equipment at specific locations and times to ensure that impacts to the national airspace system are minimised”.

The day after Willoughby’s testimony, Sheinbaum disputed his assertion, saying in a news conference that Mexican officials had observed the cartels using drones against one another inside Mexican territory, but not at the border. Speaking at the same news conference in July, Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, Mexico’s navy secretary, insisted that the cartels’ drones “have not been detected at the border”

In the US, where many officials accept cartel drone incursions as established fact, some wondered why this particular incident would have prompted such an uncommonly sweeping response from the FAA.

“There have been drone incursions from Mexico going back to as long as drones existed,” Representative Veronica Escobar, the Texas Democrat representing El Paso in Congress, said. “This is not unusual, and there was nothing extraordinary about any drone incursion into the US that I’m aware of.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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