Drones carrying various sensors are being deployed globally to help secure borders and protect the agents who patrol them, while counter-UAS systems are being leveraged to safely take drones with nefarious payloads out of service. 

A fixed surveillance tower situated along the Arizona border has detected movement, indicating there may be an attempt at an illegal crossing. The dispatch center monitoring the tower’s sensors are notified of the activity, then send that information to agents on the ground.

Before deciding their next move, agents quickly deploy a drone to learn more about the possible threat. Within minutes, drones, carrying ISR sensors varying from electro-optical (EO) to thermal cameras, assess the threat and provide critical situational awareness before agents arrive on scene.

Drones can tell agents if people are there, if they have weapons, what clothes they’re wearing and what direction they’re headed, said Keith Haynes, who worked with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for 25 years and is now a federal account executive at Skydio. The systems can continue to hover as events unfold, providing overwatch and relaying information back to remote agents in real time. 

Over the years, UAS have become “indispensable assets,” a CBP spokesperson said, helping monitor the more than 7,000 miles of border, much of it rough terrain. As of June, sUAS teams have flown about 23,952 flights or 9,620 hours along U.S. borders in fiscal year 2025, resulting in 7,926 assists. 

Drones have a “unique capability to enhance operational effectiveness,” the spokesperson said, and CBP continues to explore new efforts being made to modernize the technology, including AI, automation, maritime drones, improved tethered drones, indoor drones and long-endurance drones. 

“These systems bridge the gap between fixed surveillance infrastructure and manned aircraft,” the CBP spokesperson said. “The low acoustic profile and smaller size of the sUAS allows for them to operate nearly undetected while providing real-time intelligence critical for situational awareness and operational planning.”

UAS give agents the information they need to properly react, Haynes said, reducing time to target and, most importantly, increasing officer safety. With UAS reporting back what they see, officers no longer have to react on the fly. 

“These drones give agents on the ground fidelity on what they’re about to encounter,” Haynes said. “They get to pick how they make the approach. They get to coordinate an approach to resolve an issue, and that keeps them safer.” 

Border patrols are also deploying counter UAS (C-UAS) technology to detect and mitigate hostile drones, said Glenn McArthur, D-Fend Solutions’ business development manager and former border patrol agent. Cartels and other bad actors are relying on drones to smuggle in drugs and guns, making it critical to intercept these systems. 

Drones and C-UAS technologies have become essential tools to keeping the borders and the officers who protect them safe. As the technology continues to evolve, so too will the use cases—for both border patrol agents and the nefarious actors they’re protecting against.

ENHANCED BORDER PROTECTION 

Border patrols have been using drones to supplement and support agents on the ground for years, McArthur said. With the imagery and video captured, agents can narrow down exactly where, and if, they need to respond after a sensor has been triggered.

With UAS, agents don’t have to waste time and money responding to nonevents, Haynes said. Drones can provide the information agents need to give an all clear, allowing resources to be allocated to higher threats. And when there is a threat, drones can often react automatically, making responses more efficient and, of course, safer. 

For the most part, border patrols have shifted to smaller UAS, said David Cameron, field services engineer and lead UAS pilot for MatrixSpace, that can, for example, hover around check points. They’re also using fixed-wing aircraft in more remote areas that may require longer on scene times. 

Before drones, the only aerial imagery available was from manned aircraft, Haynes said, which was expensive to obtain and not readily available. These days, CBP agents don’t deploy on a shift without at least one drone. 

Borders cover large distances, so deploying drones to provide persistent overwatch can be a challenge, said Guilhem De Marliave, CEO/Co-founder of Elistair. Tethered systems help fill that gap, gathering intelligence beyond where the fixed towers can reach and having the ability to stay in the air for hours at a time, day or night. The tethered drone box can be placed on any vehicle and easily launched to cover up to 10 kilometers, offering “flexibility of surveillance.” 

“The systems are fully powered through the tether,” he said, noting all comms come through the tether, so the drones can’t be jammed or listened to. 

“Anyone can create an outpost for a few hours, put it down and move it and put it out again.” 

The Elistair tethered drones are being deployed in Africa and Europe, De Marliave said, including an ongoing project that aims to secure maritime borders and ports in Europe. Known as Smart Maritime And Underwater Guardian (SMAUG), the goal is to detect smuggling by leveraging sensors underwater, on the surface and in the air. 

In May, Elistair successfully deployed a tethered drone on a maritime robotics autonomous vehicle. Two large-scale demonstrations are planned at ports in Spain and Drammen Norway later this year and in 2026.

No matter the type of drones deployed, whether tethered, fixed wing or quadcopter, as border patrols expand use and applications, they’re finding one of the biggest advantages beyond enhanced safety is cost savings. 

“The operational costs—encompassing fuel, maintenance and personnel—are markedly lower with sUAS,” the CBP spokesperson said. “The use of sUAS to augment air support missions in coordination with CBP’s manned aviation assets continues to provide border security efficacy across the broad spectrum of missions.”

POWERFUL SENSING 

Drones use various sensors to capture data at the borders and to navigate safely, including EO cameras, thermal sensors, LiDAR and radar. 

The availability of more advanced sensors combined with better endurance are improving drones’ capabilities along the borders, said Philander Franklin, ZenaTech’s VP of business development for North and South America. The ZenaDrone1000, for example, carries a high-resolution camera and offers an extended flight time, allowing it to move to a threat’s location and follow it. 

Thermal cameras are also being deployed, Franklin said, to help border control identify and contain situations at night. Some nefarious actors, for example, are setting fires to distract agents so they can more easily smuggle weapons or drugs across the border. Thermal sensors can help agents quickly identify these fires and determine their response. 

LiDAR can capture 3D information and help agents understand what the camera system is looking at, Franklin said, and also can aid navigation.

Skydio’s X10 carries an EO daytime and an infrared (IR) camera, Haynes said, and also features day and night obstacle avoidance that comes as part of the basic software and hardware package. 

“As it flies, if it encounters an obstacle, say a tree, it will avoid it on its own,” Haynes said. “That allows the operator to focus on the mission at hand and not have to worry about flying the drone manually. It reduces the cognitive load on the operator.” 

The X10 also has a multi-band radio, Haynes said, giving operators the ability to pick a frequency between 1.6 and 2.5. If they’re ever exposed to jamming or a congested RF environment, the drone will automatically fail over to another pre-defined frequency and continue operation. Instead of the drone flying back because it’s been jammed, it continues to provide persistent surveillance along the border. 

Obstacle avoidance is a main focus, with MatrixSpace and Sagetech Avionics among the companies addressing it. Sagetech has developed a detect and avoid (DAA) solution that detects cooperative aircraft and partners with companies like MatrixSpace that focus on non-cooperative aircraft, said Rudy Johnson, director, sales and business development for Sagetech. The companies recently won an HSWERX award from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for their work on advanced air detection supporting UAS.

Sagetech’s DAA technology enables a blended maneuver, giving operators both the lateral aspect of what direction to turn and the vertical speed to obtain when avoiding an obstacle, Johnson said. 

The nimble, AI-enabled MatrixSpace radar, which makes it possible to fly BVLOS without a visual observer, also sends out alerts to operators when an obstacle is detected so they can determine the best maneuver to avoid it. It can be put on small drones, which are increasingly becoming the “guardian eyes” for the larger systems, DeMatteis said. 

“Today, big, massive $500 million systems, are sitting ducks,” she said. “Look at the war in Ukraine. Everything big and massive has been shot down. What’s surviving are the little nimble drones.” 

One of the biggest challenges, De Marliave said, is interfacing all the different sensors and making them communicate, whether they’re on drones, UGVs or surveillance towers.

“Putting all that data into a central node will give CBP situational awareness so they can make quick and timely decisions in a dynamic field,” Johnson said. “Getting all that data consolidated and to the right folks quickly, that’s where the real benefit is.” 

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES 

CBP continues to explore advancements in sUAS technology, the spokesperson said, and is working closely with the FAA, academia and industry on BVLOS requirements, capabilities, and standards, including DAA technologies, monitoring UAS traffic management advancements, and government regulations. AI integration “stands out as a promising development.” 

“AI could automate the detection and tracking of items of interest,” the spokesperson said, “thereby increasing safety in the national airspace, providing operational efficiency, and enabling quicker responses to emerging threats.” 

AI advancements have made it possible to identify targets in the field and, for example, distinguish if it’s a person approaching the border with a weapon, Franklin said. The algorithms also can determine the threat level the identified object poses and provide information back to border patrol agents, who then determine how to react. 

Autonomy, partly made possible by AI, is also crucial to advancing border patrol use cases. If a drone can plan missions, control itself as it navigates and return back to the charging unit, that allows for continuous flights observing the border, Franklin said. That ability, with various sensors on board, creates a wide range of use cases, including border management and search and rescue operations. 

With AI and autonomy, drones can be pre-programmed to follow instructions during specific situations, Franklin said. For example, if a drone sees someone trying to climb the wall, it knows to elevate to a vantage point where it can see the activity, get a clear picture of the person’s face and get that information back to border patrol so they can manage the situation. 

“AI gives you a system that has its own brain, so to speak. It can make its own decisions in some cases, in terms of avoiding obstacles or identifying something on the ground,” Haynes said. “The ability to put a box around and track a person using pixelation on the screen and having the drone follow the person is the future of what this technology will be able to provide.” 

COUNTERING THREATS

While agents are leveraging drone technology more at the borders, so are bad actors, who are using drones to get drugs, weapons and people across. 

For example, 10 years ago, to gain a tactical advantage, criminals would climb to a high point on a hill or a mountain on the Mexican side of the border, McArthur said. Now, they can sit at a house along the border and just launch a drone to locate and surveil border patrol agents. 

Cartels are also using drones to steal cattle from large ranches in Texas, DeMatteis said. They send in several drones to fly above the cattle, knowing it will scare them. The cows form a group to get away from the drones, and are then herded to the fences. 

“They cut the fence, load the trailers and are gone,” DeMatteis said. 

Small, nimble drones can help identify this type of activity so agents can put a stop to it, DeMatteis said.

Counter-UAS technologies are also key to combating criminals who have easy access to small cheap, drones. 

“Counter-UAS technology gives border patrol a defense mechanism against how cartels are operating,” McArthur said. “Otherwise, you would just have unlimited drones flying along the border with no repercussions. Technology like D-Fend’s with cyber takeover gives them a safe, surgical option to have an effect on these drones and respond accordingly.” 

How does it work? When the technology detects a drone, an agent or operator will get an alert indicating where the drone was launched from, where the ground control station is and the direction the drone is traveling, McArthur said. The operator then decides whether the drone is a threat and needs to be mitigated or if it’s a friendly drone and there’s no need to engage—a critical distinction these systems must be able to make. 

If the drone is deemed a threat, the operator can take over the drone, land it safely, then perform forensics to gather intelligence. 

Other methods include jamming and kinetics, McArthur said, but both have their drawbacks. Jamming the drone may cause issues with radio communications for agents. And drones typically return home if they’re jammed. That means they’ll go back to the cartel operator in Mexico, then, McArthur said, “you’re playing a cat and mouse game.” 

Kinetics also isn’t ideal for homeland security, McArthur said. You don’t want drones falling out of the sky or projectiles landing somewhere they can cause collateral damage. 

As the borders become more secure, criminal organizations will rely on drones even more to surveil agents and move weapons and narcotics into the country, McArthur said, making them more difficult to catch and prosecute. 

“They’re more apt to stay on the Mexican side and guide cargo in remotely using the drone and their cell phone versus crossing with the narcotics and people that are crossing illegally,” McArthur said. “This is going to lead to a greater need for border control to increase counter UAS capabilities.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Drones have reached an inflection point, DeMatteis said. Technology has caught up with the end user, and that opens up so many applications, including for border control. 

Access to information on the edge and automation will be a strong driving force as we move forward. 

The blended maneuvers Sagetech’s technology makes possible will one day be automated, for example, Johnson said, with the guidance sent straight to the drone’s autopilot. They’ll be no need for a person to translate the maneuvers they’re seeing to avoid other traffic. That will allow border patrols and others to scale more easily, where operators will handle multiple drones instead of just one. 

“I see us doing that very soon,” he said, noting on-board detect and avoid is a path to autonomy. “That’s what the industry is asking for, and what border patrol wanted. That system that automatically avoids other traffic is the next step.” 

Processes will be further automated and centralized, Haynes said, with systems like the Skydio Doc for X10 making that possible. Patrols can set up the dock in high risk areas and then operate from a centralized command center. That frees up agents on the ground to continue their work without operating a drone. The solution is “really catching on” with drone as first responder (DFR) programs, and is likely the future of public safety and border patrol missions. 

Advancing technology, Cameron said, will allow for safer BVLOS missions, longer flights, better camera platforms and less reliance on foreign parts, particularly those developed by adversaries. 

The future also holds the potential for enhanced integration of sUAS operations with other assets, the CBP spokesperson said, such as ground sensors and manned aircraft. This will create a more seamless and comprehensive surveillance network along the border, and a network that helps eliminate coverage gaps and ensures more coordinated responses.

sUAS will continue to be a critical tool for border patrol agents, providing situational awareness, enhancing officer safety and reducing time to target as well as costs. 

“Drones provide border patrol agents with air support no matter where they are,” the CBP spokesperson said. “They are integral in CBP’s mission to secure U.S. borders and enforce U.S. laws.”