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Counter UAS in Action Protecting U S Borders from Unmanned Threats - Part 1

• Homeland Security & Defense Forum

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Hear how C-UAS technology is being utilized to mitigate risks posed by unmanned threats to help protect critical infrastructure and national security.

The episode highlights the growing challenges posed by unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in border security, discussing regulatory issues, operational strategies, and technological advancements needed to counter these threats effectively. Experts emphasize the urgency of updating laws, improving intelligence capabilities, and fostering collaboration among various levels of government to ensure robust responses to drone incursions and related activities.

  • Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP
  • Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security 
  • Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol
  • David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator)

 This discussion took place at the HSDF’s Border Security Symposium on December 11th, 2024.

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• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

All right, good morning everybody. Once again, it is actually my pleasure to be on this panel this morning for the following reason one of the most critical aspects on new threats, risks and vulnerabilities that our nation is facing. I'm going to use old stats. By old I mean fiscal 23 for one sector. I won't name the sector, but in 23, there was 48,000 detections Sector is about 120 miles 5,200 incursions and two of their most busiest stations were basically overwhelmed with what is known as encounters.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

Now, encounters are and I'll leave it to the experts here to kind of talk to what these definitions mean. Encounters are divided into incursions into the United States, detections and then counter surveillance flights, which, to me, counter surveillance is one of the most dangerous things for our men and women that are operating on the ground, in the air, on the rivers, Because the bad guys have eyes on what we're doing, where we're at and how we're operating. So with that I'm going to go ahead and begin. This morning the panel was introduced. There are a lot of challenges associated with taking on these new threats and risks of responsibilities. I'm going to ask Steve to very quickly go into some of the challenges that we have from a regulatory and policy perspective, that kind of set the stage as to where we go next.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

Thank you, good morning. I think really to set the stage and Clint, as one of our key operators, can speak volumes to this but we are up against a deadline like we have been 12 times previous to this December. December 20th is the current expiration of our existing counter UAS authority. That means, come Christmas time, come Rose Bowl parade, come Super Bowl, none of those events, none of our ongoing departmental missions, would be covered with counter UAS protection. Now we've been fortunate to have that authority renewed over time, continuously in piecemeal, short-term extensions.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

But this is one of the challenges that really puts us in a kind of a backslide from progress, in that we cannot appropriately budget, we can't strategically plan for the future, recognizing that our authorities, our existing authorities, expire in 10 days and this piecemeal iteration of our authorities has been ongoing since about 2022. So, with that in mind, it's very difficult for us strategically and organizationally, with our components, cbp included, to say, hey, we need to start procuring, acquiring and strategically planning for the future, when our budget folks, our folks on the Hill, say, well, we're not really sure if you're going to have these authorities in two weeks, these authorities in two weeks, right, and so it's sort of a chicken and egg conundrum where we're saying we need money, we need personnel, we need funding. All of those things have lead time before we can operationalize and there's no expectation that we're going to have this authority on a longer term or more permanent basis moving forward. And so I think that helps set the stage for any conversation related to counter UAS and I like to kind of front load with that piece. But again, you know we do what we can with what we have.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

I think there's been an expectation that there's no desire to have the authorities lapse at any point, which is great for us, and I think there was. If anybody watched the hearing and the testimony from yesterday related to this topic, there was general support from folks on the Hill to say so. This authority is important. We need to make sure that it continues and we need to develop some sort of durable framework for you all to work against and strategically plan for. But that's what we're up against right now and it's it's not great going out to your operators and saying, hey, you may have to cease and desist your operations in a matter of two weeks. Nobody likes to hear that.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

In a matter of two weeks and we've already mentioned this a couple of times, Steve touched on it also inauguration, Super Bowl, all these other things, these NSSC events that are coming down the pike, and here we are 10 days out from the expiration of the only authority that we have that will actually be able to counter. So again, that kind of sets the stage. Let me go to these two gentlemen on my left here, both of which I've worked with in the past, but to each of you, the actual challenges posed by unmanned systems, especially in the rugged, remote areas of operations, where I think today the flows are kind of directed, quasi-focused, on the urban areas of operation, but very quickly it could be redirected and probably will be redirected by the cartels in the rural and remote areas of operations. And to the EAC here, specifically in your area of air domain and security beyond the juridical line. So let me start with you, AAC Miller, please.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

Thanks, chief, and you know, like you're well aware of CBPs and Legacy Customs radar architecture and domain awareness which is Air Marines. One of our primary mission sets was designed for essentially general aviation size targets or ultralights and that type of target that's coming across the border or short landing in Mexico to offload narcotics or contraband or whatever. So it wasn't really designed for these small, slow, potentially dark targets, one meter or less. So that's what we're in the process of now is redesigning the overall persistent wide area surveillance of the border to not forget about these historic targets which are still a threat, but add into the fold this new and emerging threat. And it's not a cookie cutter approach. You know you have, like you mentioned, you have mountainous terrain, you have flat terrain, populated, unpopulated areas. There's different systems and different types of equipment that is going to be needed for each of these and then fold into also the maritime environment. We see these types of threats in the maritime environment as well.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

Okay. So what you talked about, jonathan, was the additional challenges and threats. The others aren't going away, the others are not going away and, unfortunately, the criminal minds are going to be evolving with anything that we do. So in the immediate, besides identifying what we can, we're just basically waiting for the authority and the technology to address, whether kinetically or by, I guess, rf control of these platforms.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

Right. Well, and like Mr Willoughby said, the authority is a big piece. From a program management, from an operations perspective, you can't run contracts or do long-term planning if your contractors or some of your employees are saying, hey, do we even have a program on December 21st? And an answer like well, there's general support or fingers crossed not a good answer for planning.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

So I think for CBP, our general strategy between Air Marine, ofo and the Border Patrol is two parallel efforts. One is strategic what I spoke to rebuilding out, modernizing the architecture of the radars that we have today and our capabilities for domain awareness to include these small targets, but also the threat today. How are we going to fight? The fight today and that's something that Clint's team and the Border Patrol is more focused on is some of these systems that are available, a little bit smaller in scope, smaller areas, but still very effective in detecting and mitigating in a variety of different ways to address the threat. And you know I suspect you know with the plans that in the future, when there's the more strategic architecture built out, be able to shed a lot of these systems and focus more on the mitigation aspects.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

Right, Okay, clint, let me go over to you, and as I understand it from my reading, there are levels of types of unmanned systems One, two, three and I think four and in some cases five. The responsibility and I'm using these terms very carefully because responsibilities, not division of responsibilities, but responsibilities lay at certain levels with you. And then the EAC takes the higher level because of the size, if you will, of the platforms. So can you talk about those unique challenges with the areas of platforms that you're responsible for?

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

Yeah, absolutely, thank you. So I guess first the caveat we don't know anything about New Jersey, so we'll just get that out of the way right now. But no, yeah, thank you for the question. So we're predominantly on the border patrol side of the house, as ESE mentioned, focused on kind of the right now, the tactical problem, right, and I think to level set with everybody. First, in CBP we're a little different than everyone else doing counter-US right. Number one we're doing it domestically. So there's a lot more concerns and limitations to our technology that we can deploy, right, we're not like DOD, we can't go overseas and play in a theater and blanket GPS, jam everything and call it a day, right, so there's a lot of restrictions in place on us here. The second piece is in CBP we're not doing point defense, right, so we're not protecting the White House or a nuclear power plant or you name it right. We're looking at linear miles of border, which is very different, and so the technology we deploy is going to be different from Secret Service and different from Coast Guard and our other federal partners domestically. So to answer the question directly, we are right now focused on this, group 1 and group two, uas, right, so kind of the 55 pounds and under. Is that threshold set by the FAA that we're all familiar with domestically? That's our biggest problem right now. Are we being beat by dark drones here domestically? Are there GPS enabled or just completely RF silent drones? Excuse me, crossing the border Maybe, but I can tell you that there's thousands of drones a day crossing the border right now that are not dark and we still can't answer that threat Right. So we kind of have to take this at the tactical level. I'm the guy that's taken just one step in front of the other trying to address the threat, all while in parallel effort we worked a strategic plan that the EAC was talking about.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

So our three biggest concerns for counter UAS right now, for CBP right, is counter surveillance. If you're going to move something illegally across the border, why not cheat right, fly a drone, you can see where the border patrol is. Go around the border patrol Day zero stuff, very easy. The second thing is the movement of illicit cargo. So whether these cartels want to move weapons, money, narcotics, they can attach it to a drone. That isn't done as common or as often as most people would think, because the counter surveillance piece they can just say, hey, you can move 10 times as amount of cargo over here with the counter surveillance asset. So counter surveillance movement, illicit cargo. And the third thing is just airspace deconfliction, right? So EAC has a lot of aircraft flying around. Our DOD partners have a lot of aircraft flying.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

We want to make sure we're not running into these drones that are flying in the border environment. So you'll notice, the big one I didn't mention is the kinetic threat, right? Is that a concern? Absolutely it's a concern. We're seeing cartel-on-cartel violence in Mexico. Everybody sees the news of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. That is a concern, but, like everything else, there's an everyday concern of agents on the border. Are we going to be shot at? Are we going to be shot at? Are we going to be attacked? So we have to take these things in step and those three I mentioned are really our focus for the program right now. And with that comes different types of technology, which I'm sure we'll get into eventually, but from a threat perspective, that's where we're sitting right now for CBP.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

And, by the way, because of the importance of this conversation, any questions that come up while we're going through this, please raise your hands. And we're going through this, please raise your hands and we're going to allot some time at the end, but if there's anything that pops up in between, please don't hesitate to ask. So, steve, on the regulatory front, what we can do for CUAS under the proper authorities, what is it we can do for CUAS efforts being undertaken?

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

Yeah, I think CBP, fortunately, is well positioned right now. Within the legal framework. They have, in my opinion, all the authorities. They need again to be within legal compliance and checking all the boxes. With respect to relief from Titles 18 and 49, which are necessary to be able to counter this threat, drones are, for lack of a better definition, considered aircraft right, and there's no difference between mitigating a drone and seizing a 747 in flight In federal law. There is no distinction right now, and so we need relief from parts of federal law, such as aircraft sabotage, aircraft piracy, to be able to take control and seize these aircraft. And, in addition to that, we need to be able to take advantage of the ability to decrypt and demodulate communication signals from these drones in order to understand where they are, where the operator is, where they're flying and what threat they pose to our covered facilities or assets. Right, and subsequently, we need relief from titles certain sections of Title 18, such as Wire Tap Act, computer fraud and abuse. You know these are laws that were designed 50, 60 years ago for different reasons, but have not been opined on as far as it relates to today's threat, which is drones and other things. Right, and so we have to work within the existing framework, and the easiest way to do that is just say well, you have relief from these federal provisions in order to do your job, in order to perform your normal law enforcement actions. Cbp is a great example of a group that has, I believe, what they need legally. However, there are other parts of the department that are just as critical in this mission space that don't have what they need, and there are a number of pieces of legislation that are floating out there.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

But, most explicitly, there's really, I think, three things that we're looking for from the department's perspective, to help all of our components, as well as our partners, deal with this threat. The first is explicit inclusion of TSA as a component that can perform this mission. Right now, they are not called out in law, and so any threat at an airport can only be dealt with in a reactive posture. The second is getting our state and locals, the law enforcement organizations that are there, as first responders, the first to respond in local jurisdictions, the authorities. They need to detect, track and identify these drones within their jurisdictions so that when we have situations such as New Jersey or such as Joint Base Langley used this where there are drones, there are sightings, there are things out there that we don't know are state and locals the ones that are there first, responding to these things day in and day out have the authority to track and identify them and then respond accordingly within their local jurisdictions.

• Steven Willoughby, Deputy Director, C-UAS Program Management Office, Department of Homeland Security :

And the third is a pilot program which would allow certain state and locals to be able to conduct mitigation in close partnership and sponsorship by DHS or DOJ, namely for protection of large sporting events or mass gatherings within their jurisdictions. All of these things are gaps in the existing legislative framework, things that we're pushing forward in partnership with the interagency with the administration, with critical stakeholders out there that care about this threat, and so there's a lot of groups that are well positioned to do this. Cbp has different issues than the authorities right, maybe more so looking at the extension and the durable application of those authorities so that they can strategically plan and resource and budget. But on the other side, there are components and there are stakeholders that don't have any authorities at all and the operation of these systems would be illegal for them to do and we need to rectify that and kind of right size where the authorities are right now so that we can deal with this threat on a national scale again, across those critical infrastructure nodes that are most vulnerable.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

AAC Miller. The Super Bowl is coming up. Inauguration is going to be up.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

How much of a challenge will UAS's and the CUAS capabilities be to your operations in supporting that? Well, I'll tell you, these days I pray for domed stadiums for sure, so that's helpful. But, yeah, you know, I think and Mr Willoughby hit on it, you know, do we have capabilities that are adequate? Yes, we do. What we're lacking is capacity, and a lot of these events, uh, take a lot of manpower. Um, you know not only the uh, the uh, the Superbowl, the inauguration, but you know, looking in the near future, and you know, 2026, we have the world cup. You know 11 different venues in the United States for six weeks. Uh, in 2028, we have the Olympics, paralympics in LA.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

Those are counter UAS operations on a unfathomable scale and it's going to, you know, getting back to the authorities, it would be incredibly helpful to empower the state and locals to help out in these efforts, the state and locals to help out in these efforts. You know, and not only that, for you know SEER events, but you know it's one thing to create an architecture of counter UAS protection in a covered area along the border, but it's another, completely different story with you know, what's happening in New Jersey, where it happens in your neighborhood. You know, and you don't have that architecture in place, it's not expected activity. Where it happens in your neighborhood and you don't have that architecture in place, it's not expected activity, but it still creates a threat, so you're relying on who's available there. I mean, you're talking about, potentially, a 10-minute flight. Who has the ability there to respond and act?

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

In those areas. Yeah, specifically so. Clint, the issue you talked about dark platforms. What does that mean? Dark platforms? Obviously you can't see them, but do we have an idea as to what the size of the problem is and potential solution sets?

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

Sure. So I think really, right now, you know, the best indicator is what is going on overseas in these different conflict zones. Right, we see how fast the threat is adapting. You know it started with RC-controlled aircraft. You know, years and years ago and we started to move into better frequency ranges. You know your typical 2.4 and 5.8 frequencies and so counter UAS kind of traditionally, when we started and got the legal authorities from Congress back in 2017, 2018 timeframe, that's what counter UAS was and that's why we have relief from wiretap, pin trap, trace, the title 18 authorities that Steve talked to.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

But what we're seeing is the advancements in technology so fast, unfortunately driven by wartime, to defeat these defense capabilities. So we're just, unfortunately, we are experiencing that on our border as well. So, as these cartels move away from the traditional frequencies that are used, even just simply by putting a SIM card, like you have in your cell phone, in a drone, now you can fly this drone from anywhere. Right, you don't have to be within line of sight and using a known frequency, which is what our typical, you know, everyday equipment that we've had for years is tuned towards. So, right there, without even being dark. But moving to, let's say, the LTE frequency band. Now you're mixing in with every other cellular device that's out there on the border.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

So from a detection standpoint alone not even to mention defeat, but from detection alone it's a lot more complicated. But even to take it a step further, you know pre-planned waypoints using GPS only and no command and control. So I take a drone, I tell it and I map out on Google maps where I want it to go. I launched that drone Maybe it's to take a package from point A to point B and now, as the operator, I don't even have control of the drone anymore. I push launch, I can get my vehicle and go grab a cup of coffee and the drone's going to fly its own path right.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

So you know, are we seeing that on the border? Yes, we are. But, as EAC mentioned, you know a lot of our current detection capability, like radar, isn't attuned to that. So I don't think we fully understand on the border the scope of it. We're trying to solve the first problem of counter surveillance with the drones that we can see.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

But you can estimate and draw numbers based on what we're seeing overseas and how fast they're adapting that this change is coming. It's probably already here, but that's the essence and going forward right, getting into radars, better radars, getting into cameras, getting into acoustics and, frankly, getting into what we refer to as left of launch. Right, More of intelligence-based approach to this. If we continue to chase the drone every day, we're forever going to be behind the technology curve. We have to get after the intelligence side of this, the left of launch, and target the financials and the supply chain and who's buying these, who's training these and who's deploying them. That are our adversaries, and so the more we can attack it from that left of launch front, I think, the more success we're going to have in the future, despite which direction the threat goes. That goes.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

So one of the things that on both sides the regulatory and on the operational side is we have learned quite a bit on all things from the military. Mic's off. Good to go. I think I'm having trouble. Can you all hear me? All right, I guess I've got to raise my voice a little bit. So we've learned a lot from the military in the past on some of the things that we implement on the civilian side. Are we in any way paying special attention and learning from what's happening in theater right now, with a multitude of drones that are being used, UASS that are being used over there, both for detection, for kinetic kills, for identifying the TTPs that they're using? Are we looking at that?

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

Yes, absolutely, I would say, from the detection standpoint. That's probably where we learn the most Because, despite where you're doing counter UASS and what you're doing it for, you need to detect right. That's step one. So we are seeing advancements in everything I mentioned, from the RF spectrum to radars, cameras, et cetera. Where we are vastly different, unfortunately, from DOD in this space is the mitigation piece. So you mentioned it earlier. Do we use some sort of RF takeover device where we can take control of a drone and land it where we want? You know that's preferred in CBP because we don't have collateral damage. We want to get that drone and do forensics on that drone or try to, you know, to run, run further into an investigation where in the DOD world. A lot of times, as mentioned earlier, it's that point.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

Defense protection how do I protect me, my people, my vehicles, from one way attacks for more severe, you know, kinetic attacks with munitions. So we unfortunately don't have the ability to push a button and launch a missile, like a lot of these big DOD vendors have done right, and go up and blow up a group, one, two or three UAS. We're restricted by a lot of the things policy-wise, legal-wise and just risk here to operating in the national airspace. If we jam GPS, are we going to jam a Tesla driving down the road? Are we going to jam an aircraft that happens to be supporting our agents on the ground as well? We don't know, right. So we're a lot more tactful with our deployments right now and that technology is based off a lot what DOD does.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

But that's kind of my challenge. Back to industry, and I know this will probably be towards the end of question here. But you know, our ask is treat CVP a little different when you think about the solutions you're going to present, because we don't share that same mission space. We don't have the wide open authorities to utilize specifically the defeat options. It's a major challenge for us right now. Detection we're learning a lot. It's the mitigation we struggle with here domestically and I think that's not to reference the New Jersey thing, but case in point, right, we're watching these things fly around all day long. What are we going to do about it? That's difficult in the domestic space.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

Yeah, and you know, just like everything that we learned from DOD, you know we have to apply it in a civilian law enforcement homeland security application. You know, not unlike how we applied our large UAS, our MQ-9s you know the military uses MQ-9s as a weapons delivery system that's disposable, and we fly ours in the National Airspace System in a very different way, complying with FAA rules and regulations. When it comes to counter UAS, we have to. A lot of our authorities are based off of some of the anti-piracy FCC federal regulations that we have to overcome. And then, like Clint mentioned, when it comes to mitigation, we have to worry about what's the potential collateral damage for that small US to fall out of the sky or drop its payload Right, or drop its payload Right.

• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (moderator):

So some of the progression and evolution that we have seen on the smuggling of people and narcotics, we went from cross border and courage is basically backpacks. We went to ultralights. We now are seeing semi-submersible submarines. Are we far off from seeing group four platforms? Far off from seeing group four platforms bringing people, bringing, uh, payloads, narcotics, things, or are we already seeing some of that? I think we're seeing some of that on the lower level, but I'm talking to big players yeah, I mean you can't, you can't, you can't dismiss it.

• Jonathan Miller, Executive Assistant Commissioner, Air & Marine Operations, CBP:

You, you have to, uh, you have to build that into your plan for domain awareness and I think if we build out a plan, our current plan, to detect the one meter or less targets, whether through RF or active radar, I think we'll have that covered. The mitigation may be quite different, right.

• Clint McArdle, Assistant Chief / National C-UAS OPS Director, U.S. Border Patrol:

Well, and I.