US Army Uses a Laser Weapon for the First Time to Down Three Cartel Drones on the Mexico Border

MEXICO · SECURITY

The US Army used a laser weapon for the first time to shoot down three drones it says belonged to Mexican drug cartels, in an operation near the Rio Grande Valley that Washington announced on Thursday and Mexico is watching closely.

What happened in the Rio Grande Valley

The shootdowns took place late on Tuesday 25 August and early on Wednesday 26 August, according to statements from US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Both commands oversee the military defence of US territory.

The unit that fired was Joint Task Force–Southern Border, the military task force created for the border mission in March 2025. It was operating in support of Customs and Border Protection, the US border agency.

The task force said its troops engaged and defeated three hostile unmanned aircraft. The drones, it said, were working directly for activities that posed a physical threat to soldiers and border agents.

Major General Curtis Taylor, the task force commander, was blunt about the pattern behind the incident. Cartel networks, he said, increasingly use drones for human smuggling and to spy on US personnel.

The laser that did it

The weapon has a clunky name: the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser, or AMP-HEL. Industry and military officials told DefenseScoop it comes from the LOCUST family built by defence contractor AeroVironment.

A high-energy laser is exactly what it sounds like. It focuses a beam of light on a drone until a motor, battery or wing fails, at a cost per shot of essentially the electricity consumed.

That economics lesson is the point. The war in Iran has shown the absurdity of firing million-dollar interceptor missiles at drones that cost a few thousand dollars to build.

The Pentagon’s counter-drone hub, called Joint Interagency Task Force 401, is running laser and microwave pilots on several US bases. Its director, Brigadier General Matt Ross, says the science works; the operational doctrine is what is still being written.

Why this shootdown is different from February’s

The weapon’s domestic debut, six months ago, was a fiasco. In February, Customs and Border Protection used a Pentagon-loaned laser near El Paso to destroy an object that turned out to be Mylar party balloons.

The aviation authority was not told, panicked, and briefly shut down El Paso’s airspace. Weeks later, soldiers using the same system shot down a drone that belonged to the border agency itself, near Fort Hancock, Texas.

Those blunders forced a reset. The military tested the system at White Sands Missile Range in March, and the Pentagon and the aviation authority signed an agreement in April declaring the system safe for use in national airspace.

This week’s operation is therefore a first of a specific kind. It is the first time the weapon has destroyed drones that the military identifies as genuinely hostile, rather than balloons or friendly aircraft.

The sovereignty question nobody answered

Here is what the press release did not say. It gave no precise location for the engagements, and it did not say whether the drones were over US or Mexican territory when the laser hit them.

That silence matters because of Mexico’s red line. President Claudia Sheinbaum has said any unilateral US military action on Mexican soil would be a grave breach of her country’s sovereignty.

Washington, for its part, is signalling coordination. Taylor publicly thanked the Mexican government and its military for cooperation against drone threats in the region.

Mexico’s government had not publicly contradicted the US account as of Friday. How Sheinbaum’s administration responds will say much about where the border mission goes next.

There is also a bilateral mechanism at stake. US troops have completed joint patrols with Mexican military personnel since the task force was created, a level of contact unthinkable a decade ago.

Each shootdown tests that arrangement. A beam that stops at the border is a technical feat; a drone that falls on the wrong side of the river is a diplomatic incident.

The drone war that made this inevitable

Cartel drones are not new, and they are not rare. US Customs and Border Protection detected 34,682 drone flights within 500 metres of the border in 2025, and officials say hundreds now cross daily.

The aircraft carry drugs, scout border patrol positions and, inside Mexico, have been used to drop explosives on rivals. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel has run a specialised drone unit for years.

The US response has been to militarise the frontier. About 8,000 troops now serve under the border task force along the nearly 2,000-mile boundary, alongside wire barriers and joint patrols with Mexican forces.

Money is following. In late July the Pentagon’s counter-drone office awarded CACI International a contract worth up to US$500 million for SkyValor, a jamming system also being tested on the border.

What to watch from here

First, watch for Mexico City’s formal reaction. A quiet acceptance would confirm the cooperation story; a protest would reopen the sovereignty argument in public.

Second, watch for debris. Where the drones fell, and what they carried, will determine whether this stays a border-security story or becomes a diplomatic one.

If the wreckage shows cameras or drugs, Washington’s version stands. If it shows something else, Mexico’s sovereignty argument gets louder, and quickly.

Third, watch the tempo. If directed-energy fire continues without another El Paso-style airspace scare, the era of directed-energy weapons on US soil has quietly begun.

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