On Wednesday, the Texas Senate Select Committee on Homeland and Border Security heard testimony regarding time claims that examine the impact of drones ‘ use on public health.
The committee, which was led by state senator Phil King (R-Weatherford ), was charged with reviewing existing agreements between Texas agencies and the federal government that “protect against and disabling hostile drones.”
The interim charges also included recommending state agencies to help the federal government with drone mitigation, identifying what restrictions are required to guard” critical infrastructure and public events,” and strengthening sanctions for” close any gaps when protecting Texas ‘ stars”
The” Safer Skies Act” was included as part of the larger national National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 in December 2025. The legislation also gives state and local law enforcement the authority to appoint drones that threaten public health, as well as expanding these powers at the national level.
Dr. Michael McGee, a former associate professor and senior research associate with the University of Texas at El Paso’s Minority Institutional Research Opportunity Center for Space Exploration and Technology Research, was the first to speak for the commission. Additionally, he served in the United States Air Force for 20 years.
McGee claimed in his evidence that he has collaborated with city authorities, state agencies, and national partners for eight years to “protect the southern border.”
He told the commission,” First, drones are low, ready, and everywhere.” Every cartel and every criminal organization uses aircraft performance that forces only had 15 years ago, according to the statement “everyone can now get it.”
McGee emphasized the difficulty of finding drones, calling it a “very hard layered problem” where each tier of drones becomes increasingly more expensive and difficult to detect “until some may be detected by signal at all.”
According to McGee,” the law really changed in Texas’s prefer,” adding that while Congress gave state and local authority to combat drones successful six weeks ago,” the pipeline that unlocks it certified a total of 61 law enforcement officers in the whole country — Texas has two of those.”
He claimed that the committee’s influence is” that gap between capacity Texas lacks and authority Texas does not have.”
According to McGee’s recommendations, including establishing a Texas-based training facility for officers who are trained in drone mitigation under the auspices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and establishing partnerships with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement to teach the certification courses on their own.
He advised putting these certifications in place right away before the Formula One United States Grand Prix, which will take place from October 22 to October 25 at Circuit of the Americas in Austin.
A state-owned data system is another suggestion made by McGee. He said,” If you don’t own the data, you’re going to be forever beholden to the organization that does,” adding that.
Additionally, McGee suggested establishing a permanent DPS-led task force and working with Mexico, similar to the one in El Paso, which he claimed has been running since 2018 with no funding.
Because the most troubling flights originate there, he said, “you got to partner south of the border, state police to state police.”
According to McGee, “personal computers were where personal computers were in 1995,” and drones are “everywhere, suddenly cheap, and about to change everything.”
” We see it coming, but our next 9 / 11 is coming.” The question is whether Texas constructs the defenses prior to arrival, he said.
Texas is “high risk” on the border, and it may not be until a cartel,” not even from Mexico, but some cartel from South America,” sends a drone” with the capability of destroying ] a stadium ]and ] infrastructure,” according to state senator Juan” Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen ).
The state lawmaker said,” We are very, very much exposed to any type of drone attack from the border right now,” adding that Texas must be a leader in terms of drone mitigation.
What should the Legislature promote or look into in terms of the skills sets Texas high school graduates need to meet future security needs, asked state senator Kevin Sparks (R-Midland ).
Since drone systems use AI, Texas Military Department Captain Samuel Ellison suggested expanding robotics programs and boosting AI proficiency.
For the 2026–2027 school year, Fort Bend Independent School District ( ISD ) is already offering these courses, starting with a pilot program in middle school where students are exposed to careers in the field, like commercial drone operations and emerging urban air mobility. Through drone flight simulators, build-and-fly projects, and drone programming, students will learn the fundamentals of drone technology and aircraft systems.
Through projects like chatbot and robotics controls design, Fort Bend ISD students can take part in an AI program where they will learn “ethical AI literacy, computational thinking, data fluency, and creative AI-assisted problem-solving.”
Sgt. El Paso Police Department Cory Balke gave a testimony about cartel activity along the U.S.-Mexico border, describing a situation where traffickers flew” about a thousand pills of fentanyl at a time” from Juarez to a backyard in El Paso using an actuator drone capable of dropping payloads without landing.
He said the person would leave the house, take the pills, reattach a prepaid Visa gift card, and then simply fly home after that, adding that they had done it five times throughout the day for eight months.
The frightful thing about this is that it was recovered in our open-air water treatment facility, according to Balke.
What kind of substance might have been introduced into our water? he emailed the senators. Then he claimed that contaminated wastewater that is pushed back into the Rio Grande River could be “agricultural espionage” in addition to poisoning drinking water.
State Senator Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound ) stated to Balke that he is “really effectively countering a foreign military capability.”
More than 5,000 drones are discovered in and around DFW’s airport every month, according to Josh Cousins, assistant chief of police for the Dallas-Fort Worth ( DFW) airport. He claimed that while 99 percent of them are” careless and clueless,” there have also been numerous state and federal drone flight prosecutions that are “egregious or nefarious enough to warrant arrest.”
Cousins referred to how a single drone “in the wrong place” could cause an aircraft full of passengers to be in danger, stop operations at our airfield, and force a ground stop, Cousins added that this threat was real, ongoing, and growing.
Cousins spent nine games in Dallas or Arlington’s airspace operations center during the FIFA World Cup this year.
” I saw firsthand how state, local, and federal agencies worked side by side to protect the airspace,” he said.” It was a textbook example of how interagency cooperation and drone mitigation is supposed to work.”
Cousins cited the federal regulations that are governing drones ‘ development, which” Authority continues to narrow, even imposing limitations on who can even detect drones.”
The Transportation Security Administration, which is currently administered by the Federal Air Marshal Service, has been designated as the lead federal agency for counter-UAS operations at airports, according to Cousins. This places airport police officers in a supporting capacity as opposed to a lead operational role.
According to Cousins, drone training that was approved by the Department of Justice has been “very challenging to obtain.”
According to him,” DFW Airport owns a fully functional system, the same kind of system the federal government itself would employ.” ” However, we’re not permitted to use it.”
Cousins claimed that the new federal rule” cuts against the very interagency cooperation that made FIFA such a success” by” sharply restricting our ability to share detection data with partners that the rule deems unauthorized users.”
The gap widens, he said, “every month, we wait.” Drones don’t wait for the paperwork or the pay to catch up. While the tools we already have on hand to stop them sit idle, drone technology in untrained operators keeps getting faster, quieter, and harder to follow.
Cousins acknowledged that while” Congress has opened the door” to drone mitigation, “walking through it simply isn’t feasible without state support.”
