DHS Plans Experiment Running ‘Reconnaissance’ Drones Along the US-Canada Border

The US Department of Homeland Security, successful collaboration with the Defense Research and Development Canada, is looking to nonstop autonomous drones and vehicles on the US-Canada borderline this fall, investigating which products tin watercourse surveillance video and sensor information betwixt the 2 countries utilizing commercialized 5G networks.

A caller DHS telephone for participants frames the experiment, known arsenic ACE-CASPER, arsenic a multiday workout “simulating a nationalist exigency effect scenario,” with drones and crushed vehicles relaying unrecorded feeds to a bi-national command-and-control halfway arsenic they transverse the border. Vehicle autonomy, the papers notes, is secondary to its superior aim: demonstrating “resilient, persistent 5G communications.”

DHS and DRDC did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

Scheduled for November, the tests would beryllium the archetypal associated US-Canada cross-border exertion experimentation on their shared borderline successful astir a decade. From 2011 done 2017, the 2 governments staged 5 cross-border drills nether a programme called CAUSE, investigating whether exigency responders connected either broadside of the enactment could stock radios, video, and information with their counterparts crossed the border.

While couched successful nationalist safety, hunt and rescue, and exigency response, DHS describes galore of the capabilities the experimentation volition workout successful martial terms, asking vendors to demonstrate, for instance, the quality of autonomous vehicles to stitchery “real-time battlefield intelligence.” The sought-after aerial systems are described arsenic “Command and Control: Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance” platforms—or C2ISR—an acronym borrowed from the US Department of Defense, linked to the betterment of “kill chains.”

DHS announced the drone trials done authorities procurement channels by the department’s probe and improvement branch, the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), successful concern with Defense Research and Development Canada, its bluish counterpart.

The directorate sits astatine the method halfway of the US national government's home counter-drone programme pursuing restructuring nether an enforcement bid signed by President Donald Trump successful 2025. Last week, S&T's National Urban Security Technology Laboratory launched a counter-drone purchasing tool, designed to usher constabulary and emergency-response agencies successful the Washington, DC, region—and the 11 US states hosting FIFA World Cup matches this summer.

The aforesaid executive-order bundle besides prioritized procurement of American-made drones and reserved authorities declaration opportunities for home manufacturers—a large marketplace opening for the US drone industry, further widened by a caller Federal Communications Commission designation that bars caller foreign-made drones from US wireless networks.

Any beingness of companies positioned to respond to the telephone for the November trials would see aggregate vendors with ties to the president’s elder big sons.

Powerus Corporation, the Florida-based drone shaper that precocious merged with a play people institution that has backing from Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., is one. Anduril Industries, successful which Trump Jr.'s ain steadfast invested past year, produces a suite of drones geared toward battlefield surveillance for the Pentagon, portion holding DHS’s largest border-security contract: a $1.1 cardinal statement to deploy AI-powered surveillance towers on the confederate border.

“Powerus welcomes immoderate effort by DHS to fortify borderline information done precocious autonomous systems,” Powerus cofounder Brett Velicovich tells WIRED. “Protecting American borders is precisely the ngo our exertion was built for, and we're encouraged to spot the authorities moving urgently successful this direction.​”

Unusual Machines, an Orlando, Florida, drone-components shaper wherever Trump Jr. antecedently served arsenic advisor and received banal that is worthy astir $4.4 cardinal today, does not merchantability straight to the government, a institution spokesperson tells WIRED, but does merchantability to suppliers who do.

Xtend, the Israeli drone shaper present backed by Eric Trump, besides opened a Tampa, Florida, office successful summertime 2025 and announced a multimillion-dollar declaration from a Pentagon special-operations bureau past fall. Xtend declined WIRED’s petition for comment.