HSDF THE PODCAST

Law Enforcement and Military Coordination for Border Operations Part 2

• Homeland Security & Defense Forum

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Welcome to “HSDF THE PODCAST,” a collection of policy discussions on government technology and homeland security brought to you by the Homeland Security and Defense Forum

 Speed decides who stays safe. We pull back the curtain on how America can out-iterate fast-moving threats at the border and beyond, connecting acquisition reform, AI-first systems, and operator needs to real-world outcomes. From the National Defense Authorization Act to the Safer Skies authority push, we lay out how procurement must shift from slow “programs of record” to agile “characteristics of need” that deliver capability when it matters.

 Featuring:

 This discussion took place December 12, 2025 at 8th Annual Homeland Security & Defense Forum Border Security Symposium

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Setting The Stakes: Speed And NDAA

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

Army’s Shift Beyond Programs Of Record

SPEAKER_04

Okay, so a lot of talk about technology today, obviously, and the speed of technology, the speed of relevance, having capability, how to stay ahead of your adversaries, and um what we uh look at that should be getting um approved next week, voted on by the Senate, and then to the president's desk is the National Defense Authorization Act. And so the NDAA has quite a bit of profound acquisition reform in it for the Department of War. And uh and having listened to the leaders for the Army, I'm a retired Army, so I stay really plugged into what the Army's doing. Uh, transforming and contact tick. And that's what the Army is doing. And they're getting away from programs of record because programs of record are locking the Army and have locked the Army into uh programs that just become legacy programs, right? That you continue to try to bolt on uh technology to it, and then you find yourself on uh version 15 of the same thing from the 1950s or you know, the 1980s or something like that, right? And so they're going to what's called the characteristics of need and uh and being able to stay ahead and move fast and iterate technology. They're going uh they're going to uh try to achieve to become lighter, mobile, low signature, uh decentralization, those sorts of things. Department of War, the Secretary of War has uh has directed the Army to be the executive agent for GIATA 401, Joint Interagency Task Force 401, excuse me, which has been talked about already for counter-UAS, small UAS. And also uh they are standing up a Task Force X, which is a focus on robotics and manufacturing. Um, budget line consolidation, having the right to repair on equipment, uh, instead of having like 200 parts to a system uh creating things and having industry help them create things that have like 10 parts, right? And then when you talk about right to repair, say uh the army, which is pretty big, doesn't have to have like uh field service representatives, FSRs that are always have to be there to repair stuff, right? Because the soldiers can't, because they don't have the right to repair, those sorts of things. So uh the Department of War is moving out and and trying to figure out, right? Because if you look at uh what's happened between Russia and Ukraine, and you look at what has happened between those two countries, right? Uh Russia, having the ability to industrialize really, really fast. Their army can't fight, but by God, they can industrialize pretty doggone quickly, right? Uh the superpower that Ukraine has is that they they can take the battlefield changes and they come back and they can change how they're doing things, their tactics, and then they can change how they're implementing things and uh and what they're employing, right? So that's their superpower. And so as we think through and we think through our mission and the security of our homeland, safer, stronger, more prosperous. Now also the Western Hemisphere, right? Safer, just increasing that bubble out, safer, stronger, more prosperous. We think about the technologies that are needed on the border. Is the border networked? Is there persistent surveillance? Are we able to see? Do we have domain awareness of everywhere on the border, right? When we're talking about increasing capacity and capability, do we need the military to support CBP because there's not enough CBP, right? So uh I will tell you that just in terms of uh what the the direction that the army is going, unless it's AI enabled, they're not gonna they're not gonna fool with it, right? And so how do we move out with all the technology that's available? Uh a lot of money being put into uh DHS uh at this point, but how do you take advantage of that uh and all those capabilities? Are the industry days um that are taking place, are those actually enough, right, for people to be able to showcase what the latest technology is? Because I think there's things out there that's available now that can help.

Counter‑UAS, Robotics, And Right To Repair

SPEAKER_02

Ma'am, I'll I'll I'll take a shot at that. Uh when I first deployed in I think 2017 to the border uh as Task Force 51 commander, we were given the guidance of go and prepare uh and bring in the uh brigade combat team. Uh your mission, expect the mission to last between six to nine months so we can buy time for DHS to hire enough uh CBP assets to uh be able to deal with the border, with the challenges. And that's the caravans at that time. We haven't left the border. And of course, uh I don't want to alarm anybody. The United States Army's been on the US-Mexico border since 1829. So this was not so we we've always this has been part of the mission set, of course, at much lower levels. But the problem is that the Army had a lot, it had capabilities that were generic capabilities that they could be thrown at this because we had a force ready to respond across the nation. The CBP did not. DHS did not have the infrastructure to be able to grow that fast. Uh and so that's one of the challenges. And of course, remember the threat, the cartels are constantly innovating as well. They're taking lessons learned from Ukraine in a Russian conflict, they're taking, you know, you know, they're taking lessons learned from MISRO, from Gaza, and they're applying it to their tactics and techniques. They're very, when money is no object, you have incredible capacity to be able to attract talent and to be able to put technology, and they're not governed or restricted by who they buy equipment from. And so the ability to innovate, the programs of record are not made to be able to adapt as quickly. And so I'm glad that the Department of War is changing the whole outlook on how we go after technology, because the the speed of innovation is so you all are doing so well of innovating and putting products out there. There are Cold War systems to acquiring equipment and the training pipeline are not set up for that. And so we're having to speed up and catch up because the innovation is incredible.

Ukraine Lessons For Border Security

SPEAKER_03

No, absolutely. You bring up a good point. Um, and I know it's been uh spoken about uh earlier, like how do we speed up procurement? I think that's one of the uh main uh uh barriers that we have. But from an operator perspective, I mean, we don't get into the whole how are we going to procure it's like hey, I need this right now at the speed of mission. I think the uh somebody mentioned the speed of mission. But I'll give you uh an example of what it looks like uh in the border uh in the border environment. I will say about seven, seven to ten years ago, uh one of the biggest threats that we were facing, which was a new threat, was the use of ULA's ultralight aircraft. And our challenges were like, hey, AMOC could not track them because they're slower and they fly lower. Uh, anyways, it was a problem tracking those, right? And then you had to be right on top of them because um the only way to spot them is it's uh contact by chance. Um, and then we had a lot of reports from the community that hey, I see this thing buzzing over my my uh house, et cetera, right? So we started looking at that, started looking at that, coming up with uh solutions to counter that threat. By the time we got to a solution for that threat, it was obsolete. It was a dinosaur then. Now you got the uh the SUAS, the drones that have taken the place of those things. So from again, from an operator perspective, you you see um the threat evolving extremely, extremely fast. No limitations on procurement, no limitations on on um you know on getting experts to develop these things for their use. Um so we have to look for ways on how to get that technology uh at the speed of uh of mission. And as far as technology goes, I think it's been touched on as well, but I I think uh that when industry is developing technologies, right now uh General King mentioned that we use the military as a stopgap measure because DHS and CVP were going to build capacity to be able to secure the border. So that was the uh that was the initial uh plan. And we're doing that. You you've seen all the efforts to increase Ice, to increase border patrol. But um when it comes to technology, I think autonomy to the extent possible is indispensable nowadays because every good piece of equipment that we deploy out there requires agents and officers to go mend that. That's one thing. The other thing, um, when we're talking about intelligence or sensors, advanced information. Advanced information. If you're telling me that I have a threat five feet from me, it's a little bit too late, right? So how do we push, again, the border out from a surveillance perspective and being able to take intelligence and information feeds uh, you know, from either from host countries or from uh the military ISR type of uh stuff? There's some, I heard one of our leaders uh in uh uh CBP that he was looking uh at getting working with Mexico to deploy technology way before the vehicle gets to that officer at the port of entry. So, what that does is give that officer all the information that he or she needs to be able to make that split-second enforcement decision by the time that vehicle gets there, versus having the vehicle right in front of you and start running the checks and stuff like that when it's front of you. So those are the two main things autonomy to the extent possible, and then advanced information, getting that information to those officers uh as at the speed of commission, as we say.

Operator View: Missions Outpacing Procurement

SPEAKER_02

And we're looking at things relatively innocuous, traffic cams. Something that simple. There's usually public source, uh license tag readers. The buys time for that for that law enforcement officer to make that decision. Uh, traffic patterns going south versus north, and how you know the frequency, uh, the time of day, those becomes patterns of life that we've learned a great deal in the military and fighting uh counterinsurgency for 20 plus years that can apply to and law enforcement officers use these technologies and these tactics across America and become very valuable. And so I think there's a great deal of opportunity. And by the way, that saves an agent. So if you can put a passive monitoring system, then that agent can be used somewhere else where to actually take enforcement action.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So uh I mentioned the NDAA earlier, uh, and the uh in this NDAA, there are similar authorities that the Department of War has, the DHS will get uh called the Safer Skies Act, right? Uh and that, because right now there's only the monitoring, the authorities for the monitoring of drones, not the ability to interdict drones. And I think that'll be really, really key, but there's not a lot of time to, you know, when that authority happens between uh, like for example, the World Cup, right? And those activities that'll that'll be starting to happen. So um quick reaction time. But I know that the the team has already been working on figuring that out. I think at this point we'll go to the audience for questions. And so I know we got some microphones that'll come around, but um happy to entertain your questions.

SPEAKER_01

I don't think everybody realizes how big that second 42 million square miles. Uh that's right.

SPEAKER_00

So that was pretty uh substantial. Uh but the the question I have, I guess, is uh for industry, and I always look at it from ST standpoint and science and technology. We're always telling them when we're working with industry that we've got the technologies. So hearing from the operators, uh interoperability is a big thing, right? When the national defense areas were established and operational control was uh mandated, we had this influx of uh DOW coming in and bringing them into the into the wars. Now it was already happening at small scale, but with all these this equipment coming in. Can you talk about the importance of interoperability, the opportunities for industry as they look at uh interoperability, what that means, not just uh interoperability for DOW to DHS, but also interoperability with equipment that they are developing to have an expansion of that market space for them.

From Ultralights To Drones

SPEAKER_02

Well, one of the challenges that we have is there's so much flow. And this is a common problem that the Department of War has. As your unit is getting organized to deploy, whether it's overseas, you get this tons of equipment thrown at you. By the way, you have to stop and train and bring train operators and train it and build it back back into your systems of opera. How do you use that technology? And so, how timely is that technology and making sure that your training pipeline supports all these technologies? It's it's it we got to be careful. And this is one of the things that we we I spent a lot of time working with our friends in Sedanna, is that our inner you know, our competitors, enemies or whatever you want to call them, are bringing and throwing technology at at our partners south of the border. But they don't come with operations and maintenance and training as part of it. Only the United States brings a whole program that that helps train, help sustain, and maintain the equipment. And so that's what you see when you go to Central and South America, you see all this equipment is just pushed over on the side of the runway, just rotting away because there was no training, no operations, you know, OM part of it. And so that's what's unique about the United States is that when we utilize, it comes as a package. And we have to make sure that that that package is just in time, but it also is supported by an effective training, and and it then the operators can then use the information generated to actually make decisions.

Autonomy And Advanced Information

SPEAKER_04

And in the NDAA also, uh foreign military sales uh reforms, right? Uh, because the foreign military sales, all of us commanders complained about that, how doggone slow it was. You know, leaders, you know, my own hemisphere, I mean, they're in the seat for like four years, one term, four years. And they got to make a difference in like a couple months, not a couple years. And that's what foreign military sales was. But then if you uh then uh other countries see how quickly we really can do it from Team USA, right? Uh when you have something like what uh Russian invasion of Ukraine, and then how quickly we can really get uh military equipment over there is pretty doggone fast. So, you know, speeding that, uh speeding that up and being able to get those capabilities. But if you think about it, like-minded democracies, I see what's happening in our world with the axis of aggressors working with each other, China, Russia, North Korea, Iran. I mean, I could just take Venezuela, who has equipment from all those countries in Venezuela, right? It's just a hub of uh uh uh activity, our adversaries right there in one place, so close to our homeland. I've testified on the hill uh many times and said the first and second island chain to our homeland has already been set by the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and everything that they have done with the with the Belt and Road uh projects, the billions of dollars of projects. Partnering with uh our interagency, Team USA is really powerful when it brings all of its instruments of national power together: diplomacy, information, military, and economics, and our uh you know, our investment in the region in the Western hemisphere. That's why I'm glad to see it in the national security strategy, because we are not, our US companies and our Western companies aren't competing on the critical infrastructure tenders that come out. Why don't we have, why are we not sharing information with Mexico? We have vetted units in all other countries, you know. What about the vetted units in Mexico? I had an organization underneath me in U.S. Southcom called Jayat of South. I'm sure all of you have heard about it one time or another, right? We have LOs from the region, one LNO military from uh 17 different countries in that organization. We continue to increase the interdictions that are done every year coming from the Caribbean, Central America, South America, because of that trust that we've built with like-minded democracies. To me, what's happening right now is very clear. It's between autocracy and democracy. China is ready and wakes up every day trying to replace us, Team USA, and the rules-based international order. And they are working with the other axis of aggressors to make that happen every single day. And so as we think about our own critical infrastructure here, we look at what's already happened with cyber, we see the technology availability out there. How quickly uh can we adapt that? And then how quickly can we iterate that is up to us, right? But we got to figure it out, and we got to figure it out really, really fast. Uh, we'll take one more question from the audience, please. Oh, my time's up. Oh we're getting the hook. Everybody, thank you very much. Again, thank you for everything that you do. Appreciate it.