U.S. Forces Took Down About 100 Suspected Cartel Drones on the Southern Border in August

U.S. forces assigned to the southern border took down approximately 100 suspected cartel drones in August, a senior War Department official told Fox News, the first time the Pentagon has put a monthly number on the fight. Joint Task Force–Southern Border carried out the engagements with specialized counter-drone equipment, including directed-energy lasers, supplied and integrated by other Army units. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said the systems are defensive. “The United States is employing defensive counter-drone technology to protect our personnel and border security operations from cartel-linked drone threats,” she said.

Wilson said every shoot-down is planned with the Mexican military and Mexican border authorities “to ensure safety and deconfliction on both sides of the border.” The official who gave Fox the August tally went further on the strategy. “The president directed, the Department of War executed, the first ever plan and strategy to use direct military force to defend the homeland from this threat,” the official said. “The effects have been spectacular, and we’ve seen the largest and steepest reduction in U.S. casualties inflicted by the cartels in American history.”

The hardware is no longer experimental. In late August the task force publicly confirmed that it used the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser to engage and defeat three hostile unmanned aircraft over two nights, August 25 and 26. Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commander of Joint Task Force–Southern Border and of the 1st Armored Division, said the drones were judged hostile because they were flown in direct support of activity that posed a physical threat to U.S. troops and Customs and Border Protection agents. “Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners,” Taylor said. “By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed-energy capabilities like this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance.”

A task-force spokesman told the Washington Examiner those three aircraft were small commercial drones of the type cartels and other transnational groups typically fly, and that the August 25–26 shots were the first confirmed AMP-HEL kills of cartel-linked drones on the border. The Fox exclusive makes clear they were not the only kills of the month. Approximately 100 in August means the cartels are treating American airspace along the line as a reconnaissance and logistics corridor, not a curiosity.

About 8,000 service members are deployed under the task force across 1,954 miles of border. Since the mission began in March 2025 the unit says it has reinforced hundreds of miles of line with wire, run tens of thousands of detection patrols — some with the Mexican army — flown thousands of observation sorties, and cleared brush in remote sectors. U.S. Northern Command is working with the Department of Homeland Security to put those troops in support of CBP rather than in place of it.

The drone war is the airborne half of the same campaign that put U.S. forces onto cartel fuel ships off Ecuador last week. Cartels do not only walk people through the river. They fly cameras over the men who are trying to stop them. For years the bureaucratic answer was a memo about airspace. The August number is what a presidential order plus a laser looks like when the memos stop.