Party Foul at Fort Bliss

By Rachel Hurley March 18th, 2026 Updated September 29th, 2026

Hey - do you remember last month when they shut down airspace around El Paso TWICE?

Well, now we know why.

The Pentagon loaned Customs and Border Protection a high-energy laser cannon and told them to go zap some cartel drones on the Texas border. CBP fired it near Fort Bliss without telling the FAA, according to an official who talked to ABC News. The FAA found out, lost its mind, and shut down all airspace within 10 miles of El Paso International Airport for what was supposed to be 10 days. Medical evacuations were grounded. Flights were canceled. Nearly 700,000 people had their city turned into a no-fly zone overnight.

But it gets better. According to people who talked to NBC, CNN and ABC, CBP wasn’t shooting down cartel drones. They were shooting down party balloons.

Yep! The United States government deployed a weapon system called LOCUST - a 20-kilowatt directed energy weapon developed by a defense contractor called BlueHalo and manufactured by AeroVironment - to vaporize what turned out to be mylar balloons. The Trump administration went on TV and said they’d neutralized a cartel drone incursion. Mexico’s president said there was no indication any cartel drones were even operating near the border that day.

The airspace closure lasted about eight hours before the FAA reversed it. But that was long enough for 14 commercial flights to get canceled, medical helicopters to be diverted 45 miles to Las Cruces, and the El Paso mayor to hold a press conference asking why nobody told him his city was being shut down. The FAA notice had warned the government could use deadly force on any aircraft it judged an imminent security threat. The congresswoman whose district includes El Paso found out the same time everyone else did.

Two weeks later, it happened again. The military fired the laser near Fort Hancock, about 50 miles southeast of El Paso, and shot down what it believed was a threatening drone. Turned out to be one of CBP’s own drones. CBP had flown it into military airspace without notifying anyone, according to a U.S. official and Senator Cantwell. The military had shot down a drone belonging to the same government that told them to shoot down drones. The FAA shut down more airspace.

So let’s count. In the span of two weeks, the federal government used a military laser to destroy party balloons, lied about it being cartel drones, shut down a major commercial airport, diverted emergency medical flights, then did the whole thing over again except this time they shot down their own equipment.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed off on loaning this laser to CBP. Nobody coordinated with the FAA, according to people who talked to NBC - and Senator Cantwell says the agencies admitted to serious coordination failures in a classified briefing. Nobody coordinated with each other. Senator Tammy Duckworth called it incompetence. Senator Ted Cruz - not typically an ally of Duckworth on anything - asked for a classified briefing and said he was “hopeful more details can be publicly shared” on interagency coordination. Senator Maria Cantwell sent letters to Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Sean Duffy, Kristi Noem, and the FAA administrator demanding answers and a briefing by March 25th.

The real context here is that this isn’t even the first time the Pentagon and the FAA have failed to coordinate on shared airspace. In January 2025, a military Black Hawk helicopter collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 over the Potomac River and killed 67 people. The NTSB investigation found the FAA and the Army weren’t sharing safety data. The bipartisan ROTOR Act was written to fix exactly this problem - require all aircraft to broadcast their location using ADS-B technology, close the military loophole that let the Black Hawk fly dark. It passed the Senate unanimously. Then the Pentagon withdrew its support right before the House vote, and it failed by a single vote - 264 in favor, 133 against, needing two-thirds. The families of those 67 people had traveled to the Capitol to watch.

So the same coordination failures that killed 67 people are now showing up at the border, except instead of a collision, it’s a laser cannon vaporizing party balloons while commercial planes are trying to land. The pattern is the same. Military hardware gets used near civilian airspace without proper coordination with the FAA. Something goes wrong. Agencies blame each other. Congress holds hearings. Nothing changes. Someone proposes a bill. The Pentagon kills it.

The LOCUST system itself is interesting. The Pentagon has been investing about a billion dollars a year in directed energy weapons. The concept is solid - lasers are cheap per shot compared to interceptor missiles, you don’t run out of ammunition as long as you have power, and they’re great for taking out small cheap drones that aren’t worth hitting with a traditional air defense system. Israel’s Iron Beam runs on the same principle. The problem isn’t the technology. The problem is handing it to CBP agents near a major commercial airport and, by several accounts, saying “have fun” without telling air traffic control.

They did eventually run a proper test. On March 7th, the Army tested a different laser system at White Sands Missile Range with the FAA present and watching. During the test, a commercial plane flying toward Albuquerque accidentally drifted into the laser’s tracking cone. The safety system automatically cut the operator out. The military called it a success story. Which it is - unless you think about the fact that it took shooting down balloons, shutting down an airport, and destroying their own drone before that test with the FAA actually happened.

If you live in El Paso or fly through there, or frankly if you fly anywhere the military is operating counter-drone systems near civilian airspace, you should know that the 2026 NDAA did expand counter-drone authorities to state and local agencies along with DHS and DOJ, but the interagency coordination process that’s supposed to keep commercial flights safe is, in Senator Cantwell’s words, “clearly broken.”

The ROTOR Act is technically still alive - Cruz has vowed to bring it back, and the families aren’t giving up. If you want to do something, call your House representative and tell them to support the ROTOR Act or demand equivalent ADS-B requirements in whatever aviation bill comes next. The House Transportation Committee chair has promised to mark up the alternative ALERT Act, but the families of Flight 5342 and the NTSB chair have both said it’s too weak and full of military exemptions that preserve the exact loopholes that keep causing these disasters.

The government spent an undisclosed amount of taxpayer money to mount a laser weapon on a truck, loan it to border agents who didn’t coordinate with civilian aviation authorities, shoot down party balloons, lie about it, then two weeks later use the same technology to destroy their own drone. And the one bill that would have forced these agencies to actually talk to each other failed in the House after the Pentagon pulled its support, citing cost and security risks - the same Pentagon that just lit a mylar balloon on fire with a laser beam to protect us from Mexican drug cartels.

Your tax dollars at work.

Sources:

Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said El Paso’s commercial airspace was shut down twice - the second closure, near Fort Hancock, didn’t affect commercial flights. It said Senator Ted Cruz said the agencies need to start talking to each other - he asked for a classified briefing and said he was hopeful more details could be shared on interagency coordination. It said nobody thought to invite the FAA to a laser test until after the balloons, the airport and the drone - the FAA and the Pentagon already had a meeting set for February 20th about a test, and the incidents sped it up. And it called Rep. Veronica Escobar, whose district includes El Paso, a congressman. Its closing summary also said the border agents weren’t trained, that the balloons were children’s birthday balloons, that the lie came on national television and that the drone was a surveillance drone - the reporting says the agencies didn’t coordinate, calls them party balloons, and doesn’t support the rest.

Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so - the people who talked to ABC, NBC and CNN about the laser, the balloons and the missing coordination, and a U.S. official and Senator Cantwell on the CBP drone - a few now say more exactly what the FAA notice warned, why the Pentagon dropped its support for the ROTOR Act and what the balloons were, two details that went beyond the reporting (which vehicle carried the laser and where the balloons came from) are out, and one source link now shows its real headline.