For the first time, the U.S. military is deploying high-energy laser weapons to shoot down unauthorized drones over American soil. Five installations spanning the southern border, the Pacific coast, and the Great Plains are slated to receive directed-energy counter-drone systems in 2026: Fort Huachuca and Fort Bliss in the Southwest, Naval Base Kitsap in Washington state, Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
The rollout follows a landmark regulatory agreement between the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of War, the Pentagon’s recently restored official name, that for the first time clears a high-energy laser system for use in airspace shared with civilian aircraft. It also reflects mounting urgency after a series of unexplained drone incursions over military bases in late 2024 and early 2025 exposed gaps in existing defenses.
Why lasers, and why now
Small commercial drones have become a persistent headache for U.S. base commanders. They are cheap, widely available, and difficult to stop with conventional weapons. Shooting one down with a missile costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and risks collateral damage. Radio-frequency jammers can force a drone to land, but they also disrupt friendly communications and GPS signals. A high-energy laser offers something different: a focused beam of light that can burn through a drone’s airframe or disable its sensors in seconds, at a cost the Pentagon has previously estimated at roughly a few dollars per shot in electricity.
The problem has never been whether lasers work. Several systems have performed well in military tests overseas, including deployments to the Middle East. The bottleneck was regulatory. No federal framework existed for firing a directed-energy weapon into airspace that the FAA controls and civilian pilots depend on. That changed when FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford and Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of Joint Interagency Task Force-401, signed a safety agreement establishing protocols for laser counter-drone operations along the southern border. The agreement is the first of its kind and is expected to serve as a template for additional sites.
The five bases and what they protect
Fort Huachuca, Arizona. An Army intelligence and electronic warfare hub roughly 15 miles from the Mexican border. Drone incursions here threaten sensitive training and surveillance operations tied to border security.
Fort Bliss, Texas. One of the Army’s largest installations, straddling the Texas-New Mexico line near El Paso. Its vast training ranges and proximity to the border make it a natural early candidate for directed-energy testing.
Naval Base Kitsap, Washington. Home port for the Navy’s Pacific fleet of Trident ballistic missile submarines. A surveillance drone loitering over Kitsap could collect information about some of the most sensitive assets in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. A longtime hub for unmanned aircraft operations and sensor research. U.S. Senator John Hoeven confirmed in a press release that Grand Forks was selected for deployment, testing, and operational assessment of laser and high-powered microwave counter-drone technologies. It is the only one of the five sites with both a military and a named congressional confirmation.
Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri. The sole operating base for the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Protecting the B-2 fleet from overhead surveillance is a top priority, and Whiteman’s location in central Missouri means any drone activity near the base is immediately suspicious.
The diversity of the list is deliberate. By placing lasers at border posts, a submarine base, a bomber wing, and a drone research hub, planners can stress-test the technology across different threat profiles, climates, and airspace conditions rather than optimizing for a single scenario.
JIATF-401: the task force driving the timeline
The organizational engine behind the deployment is Joint Interagency Task Force-401, a body that coordinates counter-drone efforts across the Department of War, the Department of Homeland Security, and federal aviation regulators. In a six-month progress report, JIATF-401 described accelerated delivery of counter-UAS capabilities, including published guidance documents, training materials, and an infrastructure protection guide already distributed to operators in the field.
That pace is unusual for defense procurement, where programs routinely take years to move from policy to hardware. JIATF-401’s compressed timeline reflects both political pressure from Congress and a recognition that the drone threat is evolving faster than traditional acquisition cycles can handle. The task force has set standards for how directed-energy systems will be tested, certified, and eventually operated at scale, laying groundwork that extends well beyond the initial five sites.
What is still unclear
Several important details remain undisclosed. The primary sources reviewed do not name a specific laser system, manufacturer, power output, or effective range. It is not clear whether all five bases will receive the same hardware or whether different platforms will be tailored to local threats. Whether the systems will be permanently installed, mounted on vehicles, or housed in shipping containers for rapid relocation has not been stated.
Budget figures are also absent. The FAA safety agreement and the JIATF-401 progress report focus on regulatory and operational milestones, not appropriations. Without a disclosed funding stream, it is difficult to gauge how sustainable or scalable the program will be beyond its initial phase. Congressional authorization language, if it exists in a defense spending bill, has not been cited in the primary documents.
The FAA agreement specifically covers laser operations near the southern border. Whether similar agreements will be needed for Kitsap, Grand Forks, or Whiteman, each of which sits in different FAA-regulated airspace, is an open question. How the government will manage potential risks to nearby communities, civilian pilots, and wildlife at those locations has not been detailed publicly.
Finally, while Grand Forks has firm primary confirmation from both military and congressional sources, the other four bases appear in secondary reporting without equivalent base-level statements. Their inclusion in the program is widely reported but not yet backed by the same depth of documentation.
What comes after the first five
If the initial deployments perform as planned, the program could mark a turning point in how the United States defends its own territory against small drones. The FAA-Department of War safety agreement establishes a regulatory precedent that can be extended to additional bases, critical infrastructure sites, and potentially even civilian venues like airports and stadiums. JIATF-401’s standardized guidance means future installations would not have to start from scratch on policy, training, or safety protocols.
But scaling from five test sites to a nationwide network will depend on factors that remain unresolved: whether the lasers prove reliable in varied weather conditions, how quickly operators can be trained, whether Congress funds expansion, and how regulators handle the inevitable friction between military necessity and civilian airspace safety. For now, the program represents the clearest signal yet that directed-energy weapons are moving from laboratory demonstrations and overseas experiments to permanent fixtures on American military bases.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
