World Cup Kicks Off With U.S. Counter-Drone Defences Still Catching Up
· TexaHub · Drones, Defence & Security, Regulation & Ethics
No-drone zones, FBI intercept teams and new grants cover all 11 U.S. host cities, but the homeland security secretary told Congress the country is still “a little behind”.
No-drone zones and penalties
The FIFA World Cup runs in the United States from 11 June to 19 July, and the Federal Aviation Administration has wrapped the tournament in temporary flight restrictions it calls “No Drone Zones” around stadiums, fan festivals, team hotels, training sites and base camps [1]. On match days, all aircraft operations, drones included, are prohibited within a three-nautical-mile radius of stadiums and up to 3,000 feet above ground level unless air traffic control authorises them; fan events generally carry a one-nautical-mile, 1,000-foot restriction [1].
The FAA warns that unauthorised flights may bring fines of up to $100,000, confiscation of the drone and potential criminal charges [1]. “Drone operators should expect swift action if they violate restricted airspace,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said, and the agency linked the restrictions to its new Drone Expedited and Targeted Enforcement Response (DETER) initiative, which it says is designed to speed up the identification of violations and enforcement against operators [1].
Criminal exposure has also grown. A first offence can bring up to a year in prison as a federal misdemeanour, and the Safer Skies Act, which became law last December as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, added a felony penalty of up to five years for subsequent offences [5]. States are repeating the message: the Texas Department of Public Safety says it secured drone mitigation technology earlier this year that can detect and mitigate drones operating unlawfully in restricted airspace, and its chief pilot, Stacy Holland, said unauthorised drone activity “will not be tolerated” [4].
Who runs the defence
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told the House Homeland Security Committee on 3 June that DHS agencies, including Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard, would oversee counter-drone operations at eight of the stadiums hosting matches, with the FBI covering three [3]. He also said all 11 U.S. World Cup stadiums currently have counter-drone equipment [2].
Michael Torphy, who heads the FBI's operational programmes for unmanned aircraft and counter-UAS in its Critical Incident Response Group, told DroneLife that the bureau shares leadership at stadiums with DHS agencies including the Federal Protective Service, and acts as technical lead at other sites such as FIFA Fan Festivals [5]. FBI field offices in host cities lead a task force called the Ground Intercept Team: on detecting a potential threat drone, two or three officers are sent to the pilot's location to interview them, potentially seize the drone and refer the case for prosecution [5].
The Safer Skies Act also allows the FBI to deputise state, local, tribal and territorial officers to take down drones under narrow conditions [5]. Since its first class graduated last October, 60 state and local officers from about 43 agencies have taken the two-week mitigation course at the FBI's National Counter-UAS Training Center at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama [5]. Torphy said the FBI is authorised to use kinetic measures but would use them sparingly: “we don't want the cure to be worse than the disease, and we have to avoid collateral damage” [5].
Money, software and vendors
The Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded $250 million in counter-drone grants to Washington, D.C., and the 11 host states on 30 December 2025 [6], the first year of a two-year, $500 million programme created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act [5]. A new DHS Program Executive Office for drones and counter-drone systems, launched on 12 January, said it would invest $115 million in counter-drone technology for World Cup venues and the America250 celebrations, and the Pentagon's Joint Inter-Agency Task Force 401 committed a further $100 million in April [6].
Agencies have said little about specific systems, citing operational sensitivity [7], and Torphy declined to name the FBI's industry partners [5]. Two vendors are on the record. DHS awarded Fortem Technologies a multimillion-dollar contract in February centred on its DroneHunter interceptors and autonomous threat-response software; according to Fortem's website, its systems use AI that predicts rogue drone movements to adjust mitigation [7]. An analysis by Forecast International lists Fortem's TrueView R30 radar, SkyDome command-and-control software and net-capture interceptors in the DHS package, along with Robin Radar Systems' IRIS radar, used to detect, track and classify drones [6]. Ondas says its subsidiary Sentrycs, whose tool lets law enforcement take control of unauthorised drones and land them, is in use at more than half of the World Cup locations [7].
In the systems described publicly, the common thread is software doing the first pass: sorting radar tracks into likely drones, ranking threats and recommending a response. The final step in most of the plans officials describe remains human, whether an intercept team knocking on a pilot's door or an operator deciding whether mitigation is proportionate.
The gaps officials admit
Officials have been unusually candid about shortfalls. “The biggest concern I have is, honestly, with drone defense,” Mullin told lawmakers. “It is one of the areas that we are struggling with every single day” [2]. He added that on counter-drone measures “everybody's a little behind” and that DHS is “not totally caught up” [2]. He blamed the partial government shutdown, which ran from 14 February to 30 April and delayed distribution of the FEMA grant money [3].
The volume problem is real. Mullin said eight drones entered restricted airspace at the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix in May and 12 breached the no-fly zone at the Masters in April [2], and during the 2024 NFL season 2,300 drones were detected around stadiums in violation of game-day restrictions [6]. Mullin said he is most concerned about the “soft areas” outside stadium security, such as fan festivals [3], while Representative Michael McCaul pointed to the kind of drone warfare seen in Ukraine and Russia [3]. Forecast International notes that drones steered over fibre-optic cable are unaffected by some non-kinetic countermeasures, which is why it argues for layered defences [6].
With the tournament under way, the restrictions are in effect across stadiums, team hotels and fan-fest sites, and DHS and the FBI say they are ready to enforce them [7]. The next five weeks will show whether the intercept-team model can handle hundreds of careless hobbyists without missing a deliberate threat. Mullin has said that once the tournament ends on 19 July, DHS will turn to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics [3], and Torphy said the FBI is still finalising the implementation framework for Safer Skies [5].
Sources
[1] FAA Creates World Cup No-Drone Zones Across U.S. Host Cities — DroneLife, 29 May 2026
[2] DHS ‘struggling’ with counter-drone measures leading up to World Cup — FedScoop, 3 Jun 2026
[3] DHS Secretary: U.S. Still Building Counter-Drone Defenses for World Cup — DroneLife, 5 Jun 2026
[4] DPS Reminds Drone Operators to Follow FAA Restrictions Ahead of 2026 FIFA World Cup — Texas Department of Public Safety, 5 Jun 2026
[5] FBI, DHS Take On the Challenge of Building Counter-UAS System — DroneLife, 8 Jun 2026
[6] Safeguarding the World Cup: The Critical Role of Counter-Drone Systems — Forecast International Defense Security Monitor, 10 Jun 2026
[7] FBI, DHS emphasize no-drone zones as World Cup kicks off — FedScoop, 12 Jun 2026