FAA closes El Paso and New Mexico airspace for 10 days

Mick West

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Article:
The Federal Aviation Administration issued unexplained notices late Tuesday closing airspace over El Paso and a large patch of southern New Mexico west of Santa Teresa for 10 days. El Paso International Airport is closed to all flights, the city said.

The orders close off all air travel in the affected area, which could cause massive disruption in the nation's 23rd largest city.

"THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION (FAA) CLASSIFIES THE AIRSPACE DEFINED IN THIS NOTAM AS 'NTL DEFENSE AIRSPACE'. PILOTS WHO DO NOT ADHERE TO THE FOLLOWING PROC MAY BE INTERCEPTED, DETAINED AND INTERVIEWED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT/SECURITY PERSONNEL," the notices said.

"THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT MAY USE DEADLY FORCE AGAINST THE AIRBORNE ACFT, IF IT IS DETERMINED THAT THE ACFT POSES AN IMMINENT SECURITY THREAT," the notice continued.


Very unusual. Other than a mistake or a very credible terrorist threat, I can't think of what this might be.
 
I saw that an El Paso city councilmember saw nobody received any warning in advance.


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/comments/1r1pqnp/10_day_tfr_issued_in_el_paso_due_to_special/


External Quote:

Hi y'all. El Paso City Councilmember here but also fellow avgeek. Not a usual sub for me, but here we are. We're all trying to work out why this crazy NOTAM was issued. What I know so far (as of midnight zero six local Wednesday):

• It isn't a typo or an error. FAA issued this NOTAM intentionally as written.

• Nobody local got advance notice. And I mean nobody — neither civilian nor military leadership.

• Military does not have carte blanche exemption. Army is fretting about their flights tomorrow just as much as everyone else.

• Albuquerque Center did not get advance notice.
 
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El Paso airport as flight hub and the desert area as area of operations?
NOTAM.webp
 
Speculation is rampant, the hypothesis I am seeing the most is that there is about to be some sort of military action against cartels across the Mexican border. (Recall the closure of air space across much of the Caribbean the day of the Venezuela attack.) But I'm not sure you'd tip your hand by announcing the closure in advance, so unless something happens in the next few hours I doubt that's it. (The Caribbean NOTAM was announced day-of.)
 
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purpleivan said:
Look like it might being lifted.

"The Latest: FAA lifts temporary closure of airspace over El Paso, Texas"
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/latest-faa-lifts-temporary-closure-142450098.html

Editing to add:

The New York Times is reporting the lifting of the temporary closure and that it was instated in relation to the testing of anti drone technology at Fort Bliss.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/11/us/faa-el-paso-flights-airport
Click to expand...
Sounds similar to the NOTAM for that Starship launch that blew up. The NOTAM was ready but not active until something went wrong?
 
Speculating, but maybe the DoD were using signals countermeasures to take down cartel drones. 10 days for the initial notice seems excessive given it was quickly lifted but if the Pentagon couldn't be specific about what they were doing then the FAA was probably erring on the side of caution and being overly broad, as they didn't know how long it'd go on for or if it could be an ongoing thing, and didn't want to just say a few hours or 1 day.
 
https://apnews.com/live/faa-el-paso...-updates#0000019c-4d28-ddd9-adbd-fffaff390000

External Quote:

'There is no danger to commercial travel in the region'


By JOSH FUNK



Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on the social platform X that the FAA and Defense Department "acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region."

He said normal flights are resuming.
So this was a planned test? Or there was a drone incursion? Maybe it was a test planned for whenever the cartels launched their next drone incursion.
 
Kyle Ferriter said:
Speculating, but maybe the DoD were using signals countermeasures to take down cartel drones. 10 days for the initial notice seems excessive given it was quickly lifted but if the Pentagon couldn't be specific about what they were doing then the FAA was probably erring on the side of caution and being overly broad, as they didn't know how long it'd go on for or if it could be an ongoing thing, and didn't want to just say a few hours or 1 day.
Click to expand...
Would make sense, though saying 10 days for a situation that lasts hours would create a lot of unnecessary chaos and angst.

(Which I guess should not be a surprise, causing chaos and angst seems to be a feature rather than a bug for much of the Federal Government now.)

I suppose it is possible that whatever it was was SUPPOSED to run for a week or ten days, but when they turned it on it went "kerflooey" so they cancelled the rest of it?
 
sigmops said:
https://apnews.com/live/faa-el-paso...-updates#0000019c-4d28-ddd9-adbd-fffaff390000

External Quote:

'There is no danger to commercial travel in the region'


By JOSH FUNK



Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on the social platform X that the FAA and Defense Department "acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region."

He said normal flights are resuming.
So this was a planned test? Or there was a drone incursion? Maybe it was a test planned for whenever the cartels launched their next drone incursion.
Click to expand...

Source: https://x.com/SecDuffy/status/2021594420806639787
 
If it had been a test, it'd have been set up in advance.

I'm taking guesses on whether these were drones or "drones", i.e. if they went away once the airspace was closed, it might've been the latter. Pretty sure drones don't reveal who is controlling them.
 
This article in the Texas Tribune makes it sound like a spat between the DOD and the FAA:

External Quote:

An industry official, who had been briefed on the matter by the FAA in a morning call and asked not to be identified, told the Tribune that the Defense Department has been operating unmanned aircraft, or drones, against drug cartel operations from a base near El Paso's airport without sharing information with the FAA.


"It has to do with the FAA's inability to predict where [unmanned aircraft systems] might be flying," the official told the Tribune. "They have been operating outside the normal flight paths."

Although the NOTAM over El Paso has been lifted, the air space in New Mexico along the international border is still shut down as of this writing

https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2234
 
Mendel said:
If it had been a test, it'd have been set up in advance.

I'm taking guesses on whether these were drones or "drones", i.e. if they went away once the airspace was closed, it might've been the latter. Pretty sure drones don't reveal who is controlling them.
Click to expand...
Bold of you to assume our government is operating with any level of competency.

AP reporting makes it sounds like a clown show.
Article:
The sudden and surprising airspace closure over El Paso, Texas, stemmed from the Pentagon's plans to test a laser for use in shooting down drones used by Mexican drug cartels, according to three people familiar with the situation who were granted anonymity to share sensitive details.

That caused friction with the Federal Aviation Administration, which wanted to ensure commercial air safety and the two agencies sought to coordinate, according to two of the people.

Despite a meeting scheduled later this month to discuss the issue, the Pentagon wanted to go ahead and test it, prompting the FAA to shutter the airspace. It was not clear whether the laser was ultimately deployed.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said earlier that a response to an incursion by Mexican cartel drones had led to the airspace closure and that the threat had been neutralized. Drone incursions are not uncommon along the southern border.

...

Duffy said in a post on X that the FAA and the Defense Department "acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region." Duffy said normal flights were resuming Wednesday morning. He did not say how many drones were involved or what specifically was done to disable them.

Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes El Paso, said neither her office, the city of El Paso nor airport operations received advance notice. She said she believed the shutdown was not based on Mexican cartel drones in U.S. airspace, saying that "is not what we in Congress have been told."
 
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A balloon!

Article:
A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that the U.S. military earlier this week shot down what was later determined to be a party balloon near El Paso, Texas, after initially assessing it as a possible foreign drone.

The misidentification eventually led to a total shutdown of airspace around the El Paso, Texas, airport.

A separate U.S. administration official had told Fox News that Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace near El Paso, Texas, and that counter-drone measures were taken to disable them.

The Pentagon has been testing out new counter-drone technology, including a high-energy laser, near the Army base at Fort Bliss, Texas. That laser was used to shoot down what appeared to be foreign drones — and was later identified as a balloon — prompting the airspace closure by the FAA, an official told Fox.
 
The Pentagon has been testing out new counter-drone technology, including a high-energy laser, near the Army base at Fort Bliss, Texas
Click to expand...

Do we take this literally, that the anti-drone laser system was setup in / near Ft Bliss which is generally NE of El Paso?

I am curious why the NOTAM in NM is still active. Could that be the actual location of the system, and the El Paso air closure was a warning shot from the FAA to the DOD?
 
Article:
A Pentagon plan to use a high-energy, counter-drone laser without having coordinated with the Federal Aviation Administration about potential risks to civilian flights prompted Wednesday's unprecedented airspace shutdown over El Paso, Texas, multiple sources told CNN.

A source familiar with the timeline of events said that the US military used the laser technology to shoot down four mylar balloons this week, contributing to the decision by the FAA to shut down local airspace.


This sounds like the FAA thought the military was using their lasers without adequate safeguards (and accidentally shooting down balloons), so they just shut down the airspace until the military agreed to stop.

Then the Whitehouse, as usual, tried to come up with some cover story.
 
Is there any way to know what the likely effective killing range of such a laser would be?

Ft Bliss looks to be about 2.4miles at its closest from the international border, but the base abuts El Paso International Airport.

If testing is happening at Ft Bliss it would perhaps be more a test of disabling drones that shut airports down, rather than drones crossing over the border with drug payloads.
 
sigmops said:
Is there any way to know what the likely effective killing range of such a laser would be?

Ft Bliss looks to be about 2.4miles at its closest from the international border, but the base abuts El Paso International Airport.

If testing is happening at Ft Bliss it would perhaps be more a test of disabling drones that shut airports down, rather than drones crossing over the border with drug payloads.
Click to expand...

Unlike bullets or missiles which come back to Earth, the laser will continue to propagate out into space. If a civilian aircraft were along the same line-of-sight as the actual target, it could easily be damaged. Without knowing the specifics of the weapon, it's impossible to determine how much danger there actually is/was.

Exclusive: AeroVironment's LOCUST counter-drone laser used by US Army near El Paso airport, sources say


Very short article which says largely the same thing - https://www.reuters.com/business/ae...d-by-us-army-near-el-paso-airport-2026-02-12/

U.S. Army receives truck-mounted LOCUST laser weapons


External Quote:
In September 2025, AV announced delivery of the first increment of AMP-HEL prototype systems – two LOCUST LWS integrated on the General Motors Defense Infantry Squad Vehicle platform. This second-increment system on the Oshkosh JLTV platform features the same 20kW-class LOCUST LWS with a larger aperture beam director – "improving lethality performance," said the AV statement.
Article about the delivery - https://optics.org/news/16/12/33

(edited for a typo)
 
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Matt33 said:
According to an article at CNN, a laser weapon from the military was loaned to Customs and Border Protection to shoot down balloons, and everybody kind of forgot to tell the FAA.
Sounds chaotic, unprofessional and irresponsible. The "cartel drone intrusion" explanation is IMHO nonsense.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/11/us/faa-el-paso-texas-flight-restrictions-hnk
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, sorry if it may sound naive, but are there other simpler means of shooting down those types of balloons rather than having to resource to advanced laser weapons? Are those today the standard weapons for downing balloons?
 
Anything kinetic/ballistic has the issue of unknown landing area for the munitions, a laser is the best choice, if available over potentially inhabited areas.

For the high altitude spy balloons the USAF used a AA missile launched from an F22 this was over remote areas though and the requirement was for an armed aircraft which had a service ceiling high enough to perform the intercept and a weapon capable of downing a large low pressure balloon, which necessitated the missile and high performance aircraft.
 
Rick Robson said:
Just out of curiosity, sorry if it may sound naive, but are there other simpler means of shooting down those types of balloons rather than having to resource to advanced laser weapons? Are those today the standard weapons for downing balloons?
Click to expand...
During the great Chinese Spy Balloon Panic, the USAF discovered that shells from standard aircraft cannon will pass completely through large scale high altitude research balloons without detonating, creating unnecessary hazards to people and property on the ground. Further the small holes only allowed the helium to leak out slowly making it difficult to predict where the payload, would eventually crash land.

IIRC standard procedure is now to use a missile which is detonated by a proximity fuse. The blast shreds the balloon envelope limiting the ground impact of the payload to a much smaller and more predictable area.

In theory a laser should slice the balloon envelop into a few large pieces making it as effective as a missile but at far lower cost.

Since the official cover story is now "drones" we don't have enough details to determine if the target warranted engagement by some other means.

(edit: @jarlrmai beat me by virtue of being less wordy in his reply)
 
Gary C said:
In theory a laser should slice the balloon envelop into a few large pieces making it as effective as a missile but at far lower cost.
Click to expand...
I was wondering about how a laser would interact with a metalized not-actually-Mylar balloon. This?
delme.jpg

If so, the issue of not being able to predict where a munition might fall seems to be mirrored (so to speak.) The most powerful laser I have is also a cat toy, so replicating this in a home experiment... scale may matter here!

Gary C said:
Since the official cover story is now "drones" we don't have enough details to determine if the target warranted engagement by some other means.
Click to expand...
As we recall from New Jersey, the Netherlands, etc. there seems to be some difficulty in telling drones from other aircraft -- maybe closing the airspace before they fired their laser was a good idea, that being the case.
 
Matt33 said:
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/11/us/faa-el-paso-texas-flight-restrictions-hnk
Click to expand...
umm...so this alleged laser is only good up to 18,000 feet? i'm confused. How does that work? (but i guess that explains why NASA wouldnt be involved to check satellite paths or International Space Station etc. Is it because it "cones out" and becomes less damaging?


Article:
Late Tuesday, the FAA abruptly issued a temporary flight restriction that immediately grounded all flights up to 18,000 feet around the city for 10 days, effectively shutting down El Paso International Airport.
 
deirdre said:
umm...so this alleged laser is only good up to 18,000 feet? i'm confused. How does that work? (but i guess that explains why NASA wouldnt be involved to check satellite paths or International Space Station etc. Is it because it "cones out" and becomes less damaging?


Article:
Late Tuesday, the FAA abruptly issued a temporary flight restriction that immediately grounded all flights up to 18,000 feet around the city for 10 days, effectively shutting down El Paso International Airport.
Click to expand...
Lasers diminish in power when shone through atmosphere like all light, due to absorption and scattering by particles in the air.

Safety margins are often exaggerated out of caution, but 18000 feet basically permits overflight by all big commercial traffic (major airlines)

Laser safety in this instance is mostly related to pilot vision rather than airframes getting damaged, most lasers need a decent time on target to heat it to a destructive level.
 
This is a natural progression from the recent drone panics in New Jersey and in Copenhagen, as well as older panics in Colorado and at London Gatwick. Judging from the video clips that have appeared on the internet associated with these panics, maybe 75% of these apparent 'drones' were distant aircraft misidentified by the observers, aircraft that were more than ten times further away than the observers thought they were.

A number of observers in Europe have attempted to shoot these 'drones' down, with no result, because they were using rifles and other kinds of ballistic weapon. If you fire a gun at a target that is ten times further away than you think it is, you will miss because the bullet follows a ballistic curve.

However, a laser beam follows a straight line geodesic, so you will hit it, whether it is a hundred yards away or ten miles away. I expect the FAA are not keen on drone defence systems that can shoot down balloons (or drones) being targeted in error at civilian aircraft.
 
deirdre said:
umm...so this alleged laser is only good up to 18,000 feet? i'm confused. How does that work?
Click to expand...
Lasers are collimated beam weapons, but they still follow the inverse square law, so that if you double the distance to the target you reduce the amount of energy (per square unit of target area) significantly. After 18000 feet presumably the beam is too spread out to cause significant damage.

However I really wouldn't like to have a weapons grade laser shining in my eyes, even at 18000 feet distance (five and a half kilometers).
 
Eburacum said:
This is a natural progression from the recent drone panics in New Jersey and in Copenhagen, as well as older panics in Colorado and at London Gatwick. Judging from the video clips that have appeared on the internet associated with these panics, maybe 75% of these apparent 'drones' were distant aircraft misidentified by the observers, aircraft that were more than ten times further away than the observers thought they were.

A number of observers in Europe have attempted to shoot these 'drones' down, with no result, because they were using rifles and other kinds of ballistic weapon. If you fire a gun at a target that is ten times further away than you think it is, you will miss because the bullet follows a ballistic curve.

However, a laser beam follows a straight line geodesic, so you will hit it, whether it is a hundred yards away or ten miles away. I expect the FAA are not keen on drone defence systems that can shoot down balloons (or drones) being targeted in error at civilian aircraft.
Click to expand...

Exactly right. The reported 20kw weapon system my be harmless to the aluminum skin of an aircraft at ten miles away but damage to a human retina occurs at beam intensities six orders of magnitude lower.
 
Eburacum said:
However I really wouldn't like to have a weapons grade laser shining in my eyes, even at 18000 feet distance (five and a half kilometers).
Click to expand...
Which is why there are laws against striking aircraft with laser pointers. Just weak little laser pointers are a problem, imagine being hit by a weapons-grade military laser!

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eoj3H7LMy2k&t=2s


This is why the whole "let's go out and psychically summon UFOs and communicate with them by shining lasers on them thing is so stupidly dangerous.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n-j04yMPZ10?feature=share


THis one is just a bug or bat, but given that planes are often deemed UFOs by somebody really wanting to see the mysterious it's just a dangerous thing to be doing..
 
Gary C said:
Exactly right. The reported 20kw weapon system my be harmless to the aluminum skin of an aircraft at ten miles away but damage to a human retina occurs at beam intensities six orders of magnitude lower.
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10km is 1000 times 10m, so the energy density of a 20kW laser at 10km (18,000 ft altitude at ~30⁰ elevation) is comparable to a 20mW laser pointer at 10m. But then there's also atmospheric attenuation with a factor of ~60¹, so like a 20mW laser pointer at 80m, or a 0.3mW CD player laser at 10m.

Generally, non-weapon lasers are a danger to pilots coming in to land, and helicopters, where the altitude is low. This is also why that 20kW laser may work on consumer drones, but they'd need to be close. So it'd work to protect a site, maybe.

¹ see table 3, 528nm, in Al-aish, Thair & Saleh, Mohammed. (2023). Simulation and Analysis the Attenuation Effect of Atmospheric Layers on a Laser Beam Within the Visible Range. Ibn AL-Haitham Journal For Pure and Applied Sciences. 36. 124-136. 10.30526/36.3.3093.
 
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A reminder that the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons has been part of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons for almost 30 years and has been signed on by 109 nations.

Signers agree not to use lasers as deliberate blinding weapons, though "Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition..."
 
Mendel said:
10km is 1000 times 10m, so the energy density of a 20kW laser at 10km (18,000 ft altitude at ~30⁰ elevation) is comparable to a 20mW laser pointer at 10m. But then there's also atmospheric attenuation with a factor of ~60¹, so like a 20mW laser pointer at 80m, or a 0.3mW CD player laser at 10m.

Generally, non-weapon lasers are a danger to pilots coming in to land, and helicopters, where the altitude is low. This is also why that 20kW laser may work on consumer drones, but they'd need to be close. So it'd work to protect a site, maybe.

¹ see table 3, 528nm, in Al-aish, Thair & Saleh, Mohammed. (2023). Simulation and Analysis the Attenuation Effect of Atmospheric Layers on a Laser Beam Within the Visible Range. Ibn AL-Haitham Journal For Pure and Applied Sciences. 36. 124-136. 10.30526/36.3.3093.
Click to expand...

Because of the high degree of collimation and the selection of laser frequency to minimize atmospheric attenuation, my sense is that the beam intensity remains dangerous to humans far beyond 18000 feet. The weapons system reported to be in use was not designed to around the engagement of quadcopters-size targets. It needs to be able to bring down the Turkish Baykar Bayraktar TB2 which is globally exported.

I need to get on the road. I'll try to do more research this evening.
 
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