On February 11, 2026, the United States unwittingly exposed a part of its secretive anti-drone multi-layered defense system when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) unilaterally closed the airspace around El Paso, Texas. Although publicly characterized as an anti-cartel-drone program at Fort Bliss, the airspace shutdown exposes part of a larger development program to address the threat of asymmetric warfare using low-cost drones by non-state actors and smaller militaries facing off against superior forces.
Asymmetric warfare is a military conflict where the weaker of the belligerents employs unconventional warfare – like guerilla tactics and terrorism. Cyberwarfare and drones have been added into the arsenals of combatants fighting an asymmetric war.
Unconventional warfare is not new – it goes back centuries. Sun Tzu documented examples of asymmetric warfare in his book, The Art of War, centuries before he wrote his book. The Art of War (Sunzi Bingfa) is required reading in military schools worldwide, including West Point. It is an authoritative resource for understanding military strategies. Although irregular warfare carries with it a negative connotation among Americans, it was effectively used by the American colonists to defeat the superior military of the British Empire during the American Revolutionary War. The Viet Cong, with the help of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), successfully employed asymmetric warfare to defeat the military might of the U.S. superpower military.
The Viet Cong/NVA essentially undermined America’s willingness to continue waging war in Vietnam through asymmetric warfare.
Ukraine has affectively applied drones as part of its asymmetric warfare against Russia. America and other larger militaries have taken notice and have begun adopting tactics to counter it, including developing specialized counter-insurgency units and employing new technologies. Asymmetric warfare essentially makes it too expensive for the superior army to keep fighting, thus attempting to equalize the battlefield between two unequal militaries. Because of this, the larger militaries seek to undermine the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare by layering its defenses against it to mitigate the damage to expensive military hardware.
Some countries, like México, have purpose built their militaries around asymmetric warfare tactics to impose internal control while keeping an ability to control its borders from a belligerent military.
Asymmetric Drone Warfare & Drug Smuggling
The use of smaller and even off-the-shelf commercial drones, like the DJI Mavic series, by Ukraine has been effective against Russia’s conventional high-value targets. The effectiveness of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) lies in the cost per battle damage. A tank, ship and air defense systems cost thousands and even millions more than the $500 to $10,000 drones used to destroy them. Ukraine has developed effective drone tactics that militaries across the globe are now developing strategies to counter them.
Global criminal organizations have also taken notice and have started using cheap drones for their criminal activities, including the drug cartels. But the use of drones by Mexican cartels predates Ukraine’s deployment of drones in its war with Russia.
The Drug Cartel Drones
One of the techniques that helped to grow the influence of the Mexican drug cartels in the illicit drug trade was the innovative use of aircraft used by Amado Carrillo Fuentes to transport drugs into the U.S. Using aircraft to smuggle illicit drugs into the U.S. at large scale began in the late 1970’s when Carlos Lehder established a landing strip in the Bahamas as a transshipment point for cocaine from the Colombian Medellín cartel into the U.S. mainland. Lehder revolutionized drug smuggling logistics by establishing a small air force dedicated to smuggling large quantities of drugs.
In 1982, Barry Seal further revolutionized aerial drug trafficking by using larger capacity aircraft and developing radar-evading low flying techniques to avoid U.S. tracking of his smuggling routes.
Amado Carrillo Fuentes of the Cártel de Guadalajara (La Federación), and later founder of the Cártel de Juárez, further evolved drug smuggling logistics by introducing large-scale commercial jet aircraft for the cartel’s drug smuggling operations, earning him the nickname, El Señor de los Cielos, or Lord of the Skies.
It is from this aerial history that Mexican drug cartels continued to evolve their drug smuggling logistics by introducing drones into their inventory.
A recently declassified 2012 U.S. Department of State diplomatic cable reported that from 2009 to 2011, the Cártel del Golfo, currently based south of Brownsville, Texas, deployed the first vehicle-based improvised explosive device (IED) on August 5, 2010.
The Gulf cartel formed Los Zeta, its paramilitary arm in 1997. Eventually the Zeta’s split from the cartel.
Mexican drug cartels have been using off-the-shell drones since the early 2010s to help them cross their illicit drugs across the U.S. border. The cartels later adopted drones as surveillance tools and by 2017 the cartels started using them to drop improvised grenades on rival gangs.
It was the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), led by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, El Mencho, who weaponized drones against their cartel adversaries. Oseguera Cervantes created a special team of drone operators known as Operadores Drones. His drone operators used drones to attack rivals, for intelligence gathering and even propaganda operations. The first documented use of weaponized drones by the CJNG was on July 25, 2020, in Michoacán when a group of autodefensas (self-defense group) in Tepalcatepec found two weaponized drones that failed to detonate.
The autodefensas were a group of citizens who armed themselves in 2012 in Michoacán to defend themselves against drug cartel violence. However, it was later revealed that many of the members of the citizen auto defense groups had been infiltrated by organized crime. Eventually some of the groups were brought under the control of the Mexican Army, while the others were disbanded.
The original improvised version of the CJNG drone used explosives taped to the drone. Later versions used grenades. Mexican defense officials have documented close to a thousand instances of drones used by the CJNG. Osegura Carvantes’ cartel frequently used DJI Mini 3 drones, which cost less than $500 as well as the costlier DJI Agras as improvised attack drones loaded with explosives.
Earlier this year, the U.S. government banned the import of DJI drones into the country. Osegura Carvantes was killed on February 22, 2026, by Mexican Special Operators trying to capture him.
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine’s asymmetric use of drones against Russia became the laboratory for both the drug cartels and smaller militaries across the globe. In addition to avoiding the expensive death of a pilot that a conventional military aircraft requires, drones are easier to deploy and less costly to operate providing the user an effective alternative.
Ukraine’s use of drones is providing the cartels with the real-world experience in the use of sophisticated drone tactics and electronic evasion techniques. This experience has converted the cartels’ use of drones from simple smuggling tools to sophisticated tactical tools for their drug activities. Reports surfaced last year that Mexican nationals who were joining the Ukraine’s International Legion as volunteers to fight Russia may include cartel members using their volunteer work to learn more about the latest use of sophisticated drone operations so that they can bring back the expertise to the cartels.
Adding Ukraine to drug cartels’ use of drones has forced American defense planners, to alter warfare planning and implement new technologies to address the new asymmetric battlefield created by Ukraine.
In January two U.S. departments announced plans to modernize their agencies to adopt to ongoing drone threats. The January 23, 2026, National Defense Strategy document states that the Department of Defense will “develop and deploy capabilities and systems to counter unmanned aerial systems” in its Strategic Approach section. The document noted that America had “a renewed focus on countering unmanned aerial threats.” Previously, on January 12, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had announced a $115 million investment in counter-drone technologies for the 2026 FIFA world Cup soccer matches.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stated that “drones represent the new frontier of American air superiority.” Earlier this month, the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (SEDENA), or the Mexican Secretariat of National Defense, announced that it was deploying layered defense plan around the airspace of the soccer matches to protect them, including deploying portable anti-drone platforms.
The El Paso Incident
On February 11, 2026, residents of El Paso, Texas awoke to the news that the El Paso International Airport had been shutdown for ten days due to an unknown emergency. The unprecedented news led to several rumors about the reason for the sudden closure, including that a Mexican drug cartel drone had crossed the border.
Just as suddenly as the El Paso airport was closed, it was reopened to air traffic. But before it was reopened, Attorney General Pam Bondi added to the intrigue by stating before the House Judiciary Committee that a Mexican drone incursion had forced the U.S. military to respond. U.S. Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy added to the misinformation by stating that the airport was closed due to a drone incursion.
Rumors also circulated in the news media and on social media stating that a party balloon had been mistaken for a drone and was shot down.
It later emerged that there was miscommunication between the Pentagon and the FAA that led the FAA to unilaterally order the shutdown of the El Paso airspace. What is now known is that days before, there was some controversy between anti-drone testing at Fort Bliss and safety to aviation. The FAA chose to close their airport when it could not convince the Pentagon to agree on terms for anti-drone weapons testing near the airport.
Adding to the drama was that some days before, as part of its testing program, Fort Bliss officials invited Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials to train on an anti-drone weapon. As part of the training, a party balloon was targeted and lasered. This led to the rumors that a party balloon had been mistaken for a drone and destroyed.
It is not possible that a party balloon was mistaken for a drone because of how the laser technology being developed for anti-drone operations works. Systems like AeroVironment’s LOCUST (Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology) use a 20-kilowatt high energy laser to destroy drone swarms by uses a layered approach to targeting drones.
LOCUST was deployed to the U.S. Army in 2024 and is being tested at Fort Bliss.
Systems like LOCUST operate on the military concept of directive and then explain methodology that avoid mistakes that can kill friendly targets in high-stress environments. To help target and destroy swarms of drones, anti-drone weapons depend on a combination of layered targeting, including optical and computerized targeting, that clearly identifies the target before it is engaged. It is this layered defense and targeting methodology that makes mistakenly destroying a party ballon by mistake implausible. But as part of a testing regime, targeting an errant party ballon to destroy with a weapon that costs less than $10 per shot is plausible as a test target.
Both the United States and Mexican governments have been ramping up anti-drone weapons testing in preparation for the World Cup 2026 to begin in June.
Late yesterday, the airspace around Fort Hancock, Texas was temporarily closed by the FAA. Reports of what led to the closure are sketchy, but according to Congressmen André Carson (D-IN), Rick Larsen (D-WA) and Bennie Thompson (D-GA), the latest shutdown was prompted by the U.S. military shooting down a CBP drone in the area with a laser weapon. This morning federal officials confirmed that the U.S. military destroyed the CBP drone.
However, the testing of weapons like LOCUST is driven by the need to adopt America’s military to a changing war environment favoring asymmetric warfighting with drones. The closure of the El Paso airspace earlier this month unwittingly exposed part of America’s anti-drone multi-layered defense strategy it is developing for future wars, including a possible conflict with Iran.
Cover photograph: AeroVironment, Inc. (Blue Halo) Marketing Photograph of LOCUST anti-drone laser weapon.
