The US Military’s First Confirmed Laser Kill
A case of laser weapon friendly fire at the US-Mexico border reveals a dangerous coordination gap in the US government’s domestic counter-drone enterprise.
A United States military high-energy laser weapon has finally achieved a publicly confirmed drone kill — sort of.
The US Defense Department recently used a laser weapon to shoot down a drone on the US-Mexico border that turned out to belong to the US Customs and Border Patrol, prompting the Federal Aviation Administration to close the airspace around Fort Hancock, Texas, on February 27, lawmakers said. The engagement was the second known employment of a laser weapon near the border in recent weeks following CBP’s use of a 20 kilowatt LOCUST Laser Weapon System near Fort Bliss and subsequent FAA airspace closure above El Paso in early February. (The New York Times had previously reported that the system had “been taken out of commission” after that incident.)
In a statement, a trio of ranking Democratic lawmakers said the incident was preventable, accusing the White House of ignoring previous legislation designed to “appropriately train [counter-drone] operators and address the lack of coordination between the Pentagon, DHS and the FAA” to avoid subsequent airspace closures.
In a joint statement, the Pentagon, CBP, and FAA acknowledged that US troops “employed counter-unmanned aircraft system authorities to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace,” framing the engagement as part of a broader crackdown on rising Mexican cartel drone activity.
“At President Trump’s direction, the Department of War, FAA, and Customs and Border Patrol are working together in an unprecedented fashion to mitigate drone threats by Mexican cartels and foreign terrorist organizations at the US-Mexico Border,” the statement said. “The bottom line is the Trump Administration is doing more to secure the border and crack down on cartels than any administration in history.”
The latest border laser incident, even if accidental, would mark the first known instance of a US military laser weapon actively neutralizing a “hostile” drone in a real-world setting — at least, the first one officials have publicly confirmed. While I previously reported that the US Army had deployed LOCUST laser weapons as the Palletized High Energy Laser (P-HEL) to an undisclosed location overseas (likely the US Central Command area of operations), senior service leaders have demurred when asked if those systems had successfully achieved kills downrange yet.
The US is also not the first country to actively deploy laser weapons for drone defense in recent years. In May 2025, the Israeli Defense Forces published footage showing defense contractor Rafael’s ‘Iron Beam’ laser weapon burning through several fixed-wing drones launched by Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon during Israel’s October 2024 invasion. (There have been several alleged laser kills in recent years, but none of them thoroughly confirmed by reliable sources).
That the US military’s first known laser kill was a case of friendly fire is somewhat embarrassing, sure, but it also underscores a critical challenge facing the US government’s domestic counter-drone enterprise: the threats are moving faster than the human systems designed to respond to them.
As observers of the ever-evolving drone threat know, fast-moving unmanned (and increasingly autonomous) systems can compress decision timelines into mere seconds. Domestic airspace coordination, on the other hand, currently appears stuck at bureaucratic speeds during emergencies, stymied by the ambiguity surrounding detection and engagement authorities. Who gets to act? When? Where? And with what tools? If the US military and CBP can’t reliably distinguish a friendly drone from a hostile one or appropriately deconflict, how can either be expected to respond effectively during a real-world exigency?
Lawmakers are right to be concerned about the lack of clarity surrounding domestic counter-drone authorities. When US service members, federal agencies, and federal aviation regulators (let alone state and local officials) are not predictably synchronized in real time, any operational ambiguity can lead to an unpredictable moment of hesitation with potentially deadly consequences. America’s laser arsenal may promise a near-instantaneous response at a fraction of the cost of traditional air defenses, but the Fort Hancock incident is a stark reminder that the systems meant to manage these weapons are lagging behind their real-world use.
The first confirmed laser kill in US military history should have been a battlefield milestone. Instead, it was a stress test of the the government’s domestic counter-drone architecture — and the government failed.
