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

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

 The threat isn’t arriving someday; it’s already overhead. We pull back the curtain on how cartels are adapting small UAS tactics, what we’re seeing at the border in real time, and why chasing point solutions is a losing game. Instead of a brittle “counter-drone” wall, we’re building an air domain awareness fabric that starts with detect, track, and identify, then applies the right mitigation for the place and moment.

  Featuring:

• Matt Becker, Vice President and Division Manager, Leidos 
• Erik Sorensen, Assistant Chief, Defense Capability Group/C-UAS Operations Coordinator, U.S. Border Patrol
• James “JT” Thom, Executive Director, Domain Awareness Security Operations, Air and Marine Operations, CBP 
• David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol (moderator)

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

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Transcript

Threat Is Here Now

SPEAKER_02 0:00

And and and obviously you have you know the the uh the green and the tan sort of represented up up here on the stage, uh but but the OFO has some equities in this environment too. Yes. Um I think there's a couple things sort of working against each other here. Uh we we have a a um a threat that is uh evolving for sure, but it's here now. Like it's happening right now. In an ideal scenario, uh we would build, we you know, we go through the planning phase and we build out this strategic architecture and and we would you know uh check a lot of boxes along the way to make sure that we're we're building an enduring capability uh that will last uh you know for decades. Uh the reality is we don't have that kind of time. We just don't have that kind of time. Again, the threats are here now. Uh we we're seeing uh what's happening over in Ukraine and and TTPs and cartels are learning, learning things, uh munition uh dis uh uh opportunities and all of that. So I think there's two things that are sort of running in parallel, and I think that's why sort of maybe Eric and I uh became the the sort of the stuckies for this for this discussion. Uh, because uh Eric's team is uh the these are the folks that are on the ground uh that are witnessing you know these small UASs that are doing this ISR, this counter-surveillance, them watching us watch them, watch us kind of thing. Um and then so we've got to address that. We we can't we can't allow this strategic thing to develop. So what what Eric's team is sort of working on is that tactical response. Hey, what are we doing right now that we don't expect might not be around three to five years from now? In parallel, uh Air Marina is really focused on this strategic answer. So we're building an architecture that that gets to this enduring capability, and and the hope will be, and and and hey, we we can talk RF all we want to, and we can build a capability uh that is primarily RF, uh, but the bad guys get a vote, right? And and as soon as we build a capability that that relies on RF, guess what? Uh they're going dark. Uh and we're seeing we're seeing some of that now. So we've got to build an enduring capability that addresses both. We're talking about radars, we're talking about optical sensors, we're talking about all these things. Matt brings up a good point about the deal about the DOW. Hey, this isn't Afghanistan. If this was Afghanistan, this is a much easier solution, but it's not. We've got people that we have to consider. We've got uh you know collateral damage that we have to consider. So back back to your the original question, Chief. The the the the strategic element of this is building an architecture that's primarily focused on detect, track, identify. We've separated that from the mitigation piece intentionally on the strategic side, not on the tactical side. That those have to run in parallel or those have to run in tandem. Um and so uh as we as we build out, because in order to do something about it, a threat, you got to be able to see it. So the the idea here is that down the road, as we develop this architecture, and we're in the process of doing that now, um, that the strategic element, I'm sorry, the the tactical element will be sort of uh enveloped by the strategic element. But we can't run these things separate because the threats at us right now.

Detect, Track, Identify First

Mobile Coverage And Adaptation

SPEAKER_00 3:28

JT, those that that's great to to capitalize on on what you said, we are looking at the the mitigation right options. Before we can get there, though, we have to do both Chief Aguilar, what you mentioned and what JT mentioned, is we have to be able to detect, track, and identify. And so breaking it up into those categories that you were speaking of, the wish, the hope, the dream is to have 100% persistent surveillance along the border. But as Chief Slotzars just spoke to up here, as you were talking about, that's an area that is very large, and that's just not going to happen tomorrow. It will happen someday. It will be the end goal. For now, we are having to stay mobile. So representing our blue brothers and sisters and OFO, we're working at persistent fixed surveillance on PoEs, but we're having to manage mobile options in between. And those mobile options are allowing us to target and to shift where the cartels do. Because as you know, Chief, as soon as we do something, like JT just said, oh yeah, they just adapt. And so we're having to stay in a position where we can adapt as well. As we move from those fixed sites and persistent surveillance, um, we continue to capitalize simultaneously with the mobile, but eventually we have to get to more of the mitigation. Um, we do have the jamming and the takeovers that Matt was discussing. Um, as we work with Department of War, we're having to kind of pare down what their mitigation options are, right? They they work in a different theater than we do. We need soft kinetic uh options. Um, granted, some of those harder kinetic options, and that's kind of the way we group them together, we we we don't go as as far and as in depth as Matt does in industry does. We just group them as soft, something we could use, say in a populated area like San Diego. And then do we need hard kinetics in a more remote area in force protection? And so as we get away from the detect, track and identify, and we get into that mitigate, um, we're really looking for those options and those um innovations that the industry is going to provide because there is no one size fits all for the SUAS threat. It is evolving too quickly, the cartel is too adaptable. As JT mentioned, they are bringing over TTPs from Ukraine. Um, fortunately, they're just using that south of the border against each other right now. But as we all know, that eventually will come north. And so being prepared for that and being proactive is is highly important, that mitigation aspect.

Mitigation Options: Soft And Hard

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Hey, if I could just if I could just add, it's it's real easy to get um sort of distracted by the threat of the day. Um when I when I talk about strategic um and I and I talk about an architecture that that's that's that's designed to be enduring, uh that that architecture is not built to combat counter-UAS per se. It will, but it's not built specifically to counter that. Because you you you it becomes real expensive uh when you start building architectures for individual threats. Because I mean, think think 10 years ago, think 20 years ago, what the threat looked like. There was no such thing as a as a drone. This wasn't a thing back then. And so I would suspect that 10 years from now, the drone thing will be probably, I won't say a thing of the past, but less utilized, and there'll be another threat. And so when we talk about building an architecture, we're building that architecture based on some validated surveillance requirements. And and certainly size and speed and all that sort of thing are kind of rolled into those requirements, but it's not specific. You won't see the verbiage that says, we're building this architecture for counter UAS. We're building this architecture for airborne threats, period. That's what we're building it for. And that threats, that threat sort of size of speed ranges from fast moving big things to slow moving small things and everything in between. It's not specific to drones.

Build For Airborne Threats, Not Drones

The Affordability And Scaling Challenge

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Matt? So uh I guess as we were sort of talking through um in what JT was just saying, to yeah, to me, uh being able to kind of look at a counter UAS as a piece of the sort of broader air domain awareness picture, I think brings with it a lot of uh additional capabilities to bring to bear from DOW and and other locations. And I think, frankly, is probably the right way to do it. The challenging part about the counter drone piece of that specifically is it is much easier to have affordable, I'll say affordable broad coverage for something flying at uh, say 10,000 feet that is the size of a conventional aircraft. Uh, it's much easier to understand and get the air domain awareness on that type of threat than it is on something that's flying at 50 feet off the ground and is you know something you can hold in your hand. Uh and so I think the scaling, figuring out approaches to how do you actually affordably uh provide solutions to those threats in a way that is, you know, along the entire border, you know, potentially, uh, is I think really the the big industry challenge that uh that we have. And so what technologies can can be used uh to do that? Because you're certainly not going to have million dollar sensors, you know, five kilometers spaced five kilometers along the border um anytime, anytime soon. Yeah, yeah.