DOD eyes tactical drones to accompany troops Trump is surging to the border
The acting defense chief unveiled the Pentagon’s immediate plans for the expedited implementation of the president's executive orders.
By
Brandi Vincent
January 23, 2025
Defense leaders are weighing their options to deploy various types of military drones on the U.S.-Mexico border for information-collecting and surveillance operations in support of the Trump administration’s move to rapidly expand troop presence there, a senior military official told reporters Wednesday.
“A lot of the ground units now have tactical [unmanned aerial systems, or UAS] that they might bring in,” the official said during an off-camera briefing at the Pentagon.
On the condition of anonymity, they and another top defense official took questions from the media regarding the Defense Department’s first official statement about how its components plan to rapidly respond to President Donald Trump’s executive mandates to tighten security at America’s southern border with the support of the U.S. military.
The press briefing marked the first at the Pentagon since Trump re-entered office Monday, and it was attended by some of his administration’s first political appointees to trickle into the five-sided building. Border security was a major tenet of the president’s campaign commitments in the lead-up to this election and previously in 2016.
https://defensescoop.com/2025/01/23/trump-drones-at-border-dod-dhs/
