DHS lab equips World Cup cities with counter-drone guidance.
By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
(Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories on efforts to establish new counter-UAS protocols in the U.S. to protect high-profile sporting events and critical infrastructure from the potential threats posed by drones flown by careless or hostile actors.)
As U.S. cities set to host FIFA World Cup events race to establish their counter-UAS capabilities in time for the start of the tournament next month, a small agency of the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is offering a guide to procuring the best counter-drone technology to meet their needs.
The National Urban Security Technology Laboratory (NUSTL) has published the C-UAS Purchasing Tool, which NUSTL describes as “a critical resource for first responders and security agencies.”
“As drones become a permanent fixture in our airspace, front-line responders must have the right C-UAS tools for the mission,” NUSTL Laboratory Director Alice Hong said in the press statement. “By providing a data-driven framework to compare vendor offerings, our purchasing tool empowers public safety agencies to make informed, mission-focused procurement decisions with confidence.”
The launch of the C-UAS Purchasing Tool comes at a critical moment, as the U.S. prepares to become one of three North American countries to host World Cup host FIFA World Cup 2026 matches, fan festivals and related events. Under a $250 million grant awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), security officials in 11 World Cup host states and the National Capital Region are scrambling to purchase counter-UAS systems and train officers in the use of the technology.
In a recent episode DHS’s Technologically Speaking podcast, posted by the department’s Science and Technology Directorate (STD), Hong described how NUSTL works with federal, state and local security officials, and private entities to provide guidance in making selections among the myriad of counter-UAS systems currently on the market. NUSTL is a division of STD.
NUSL has been involved in researching and helping to develop tools in the counter-UAS field for more than a decade, having begun working with New York City Police Department’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau in 2014.
“The counter-terrorism group alerted us to the growing number of incidents around the city involving drones: drones in the path of commercial planes, a small drone crashing into an office building in Midtown,” Hong said. “And then fast-forward to what was basically a national security flashpoint in 2015 just a few months later when a drone bypassed White House radar and landed on the South Lawn. Suddenly, drones were seen as a real threat to national security.”
However, at the time, American security officials were largely in the dark about how to respond to the threat that UAVs potential could pose to well-attended sporting events such as a Super Bowl, or to critical infrastructure or sensitive military sites.
“DHS didn’t even have explicit authorities to mitigate. They didn’t have any equipment,” Hong said. “The operational components in DHS didn’t have the whole counter-UAS toolbox that they currently have.”
NUSTL Becomes Leading Government Testing Agency
Over the past decade, NUSTL has studied the rapidly evolving field of counter-UAS technology, focusing on providing guidance to ensure the development of UAS tools that are effective without compromising public safety.
“Since then, the lab has grown to become the lead federal test agent within the department, testing all the equipment basically that the department deploys,” Hong said.
Most recently, DHS has named NUSTL as the primary technical advisor for the FEMA counter-UAS grant program. The $500 million grant was divided into two parts, with the first $250 million going out to state and local law enforcement agencies in cities associated with World Cup events and the America250 celebrations to be held later this summer. The second tranche of $250 million will be distributed more broadly across U.S. communities.
“To secure these events, law enforcement across these 11 sites need to quickly purchase, train and deploy counter-UAS,” she said. “This is where we come in. Through our testing and evaluation of counter-UAS systems, we have a wealth of knowledge and data on these systems, and so we’re working closely with state and local partners to ensure that they’re making informed, data-driven procurement and deployment decisions.”
Using tools such as the C-UAS purchasing guide, NUSTL helps state and local police agencies select the best counter-UAS systems to fit the drone security needs of their particular community, Hong said.
“We really need to empower the operator community with our technical expertise to cut through that marketing noise because there are so many vendors in this space right now,” she said. “We need to ensure that these public safety agencies are making investments in capability that really advance their security posture, especially as we approach major events like World Cup, which is going to be the largest sporting event in the history of the world.”
But Hong emphasized that in order to establish a robust and effective counter-UAS system, officials cannot just rely on obtaining the latest and greatest counter-drone hardware.
“The equipment alone is not enough. The technology itself is only one piece of the puzzle,” she said. “I think one of our biggest values is our ability to connect across state and local agencies, as well as across federal, state and local private industry — to work together and coordinate to enhance our security posture.”
Hong said that although NUSTL’s biggest focus currently is concentrated on ensuring that World Cup host cities have the systems and personnel in place to be able to protect sports venues and related sites, federal, state and local security officials must work together collectively to ensure the harmonious operation of a broader coordinated system of counter-UAS tech.
“I’m living and breathing World Cup every day,” she said. “Federal, state, local and even the private stadium operators are all going to be bringing their counter-UAS kits. But without a highly coordinated plan that’s informed by things like line-of-sight analysis, radio frequency or RF surveys and site-specific assessments, these systems can actually interfere with one another and create gaps in coverage.”
Looking beyond the World Cup games, Hong say NUSTL is seeking to expand the network of counter-UAS-protected sites well beyond sports venues.
“We also have deep relationships in the private industry domain,” she said. Beyond the isolated deployments around stadiums, NUSTL is coordinating with utility companies, commercial real estate firms, correctional facilities and airports to establish counter-UAS protections for facilities likely to be the target of rouge drones.
Many of these high-value sites have their own drone-detection equipment, but are not equipped to conduct drone mitigations, Hong said.
“When we partner with these agencies — and a lot of it is through our DHS brothers and sisters at [the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] and elsewhere, we create these partnerships a wide-area surveillance network,” she said.
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
