U.S. MQ-9 Drone Just Flew A Mission Deep Into Mexico
The flight of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Guardian drone comes as the Trump administration is ramping up its campaign against Mexican drug cartels.
Howard Altman
Aug 13, 2025 5:59 PM EDT
185
A Customs and Border Protection MQ-9 flew deep into Mexico today.
An MQ-9 Guardian medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) drone operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) flew deep into Mexico this morning, according to flight tracking data. What at least appears publicly to be a very rare event comes as the Trump administration has reportedly authorized the military to take action against cartels in Mexico.
The drone, using the call sign TROY701, took off from San Angelo, Texas, at about 4 a.m. Eastern Time and flew more than 800 miles south, including about 600 miles deep into Mexican airspace, according to data provided by FlightRadar24 and shared on X by our friend @thenewarea51.
TROY is a known Department of Homeland Security (DHS) callsign and San Angelo is one of three locations where CBP has MQ-9s. The military variant of the Guardian is the MQ-9 Reaper, which can employ a variety of weapons in addition to collecting data from a vast array of reconfigurable sensors. CBP’s MQ-9 variants are not armed.
As far as the flight track that is visible to the public, the drone conducted several orbits in an area in the southern state of Mexico, to the west of Mexico City. Sometime after flying over this area, about six hours into the flight, the MQ-9 disappeared off online tracking software.
https://www.twz.com/air/u-s-mq-9-drone-just-flew-a-mission-deep-into-mexico
