A new report from Defense One shows the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is installing an invisible shield along President Trump's Mexico-US border wall that will deny access to drug smuggling drones.
CBP recently signed a $1.2 million deal with Citadel Defense Company to install an automated, invisible defense shield at the border to detect and engage unwanted drones using proprietary machine learning algorithms.
The contract is for six systems, and each will provide a 1.8-mile hemisphere of protection horizontally and 1,000 feet vertically on an unknown part of the wall. This contract is likely a pilot run, and if the results exceed expectations, more systems could be deployed across the border.
According to Citadel, the "autonomous, artificial intelligence-enabled counter-drone solution" is essentially a drone jamming tool that can easily be deployed within minutes. The system monitors the airspace above, can commandeer a drone's navigation system and reroute its path back to its home base or safely land it on the ground.
