Cartel drones are a flashpoint for US and Mexico

The chaos that occurred at the El Paso Airport overnight on Tuesday, which U.S. officials initially blamed upon an invasion by a Mexican cartel drone brought to light the increasing use of unmanned aircraft among criminal groups, and the escalating tensions between countries about how they should deal with them.

In the last year, U.S. officials have expressed increasing concern over the use of drones in Mexico by cartels. These cartels?mostly? use crudely-adapted versions of commercial models to deliver drug packages and monitor trafficking routes. In parts of Mexico that are further from the U.S. Border, there have been instances where cartels used the remote-controlled aircraft to drop explosives during deadly attacks. Drones are being used more and more by Mexican cartels as technology transforms traditional warfare around the world, including in Ukraine.

Experts claim that there has never been a drone attack by a Mexican cartel on U.S. territory or against U.S. police.

Conflicting Accounts on the Closure

Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary of the United States, who is in charge of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), said that the presence of a Mexican cartel drone within U.S. 'airspace was the reason for the El Paso ban on air traffic, originally scheduled to last 10 days but later reduced to seven hours.

Government and airline officials later, under condition of anonymity contradicted Duffy’s claim, saying that the FAA closed the airspace because it was concerned that a nearby laser-based anti-drone system that the U.S. Army is testing could cause dangers to air traffic. Aviation experts said that drones near airports would "typically" cause a pause in traffic and not a complete closure. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also cast doubt Thursday on the official U.S. report, saying that there was no information regarding drones near the border where the Texan city of El Paso is located just across a Mexican city called Ciudad Juarez.

She said that U.S. officials would have to explain the situation at a press conference. Sheinbaum's office did not respond immediately to a question about the growing tensions surrounding cartel drones.

Anna Kelly, White House Press Spokeswoman, said that U.S. president Donald Trump had "left all options open" in response to an inquiry about drones as a point of contention in bilateral relations.

"INCURSION NOT ATTACK",

Vanda Felbab Brown, a security specialist, says that Mexican criminal groups have used cheap commercial drones to transport contraband and conduct surveillance for over a decade.

She said that although the technology was crude, it still caused violence in Mexico. She said that some of the biggest crime groups, such as the New Generation Jalisco Cartel have equipped commercially available drones to carry crude bombs and other explosive devices in order to attack Mexican security forces, civilians, especially in central Mexico, including the state of Michoacan.

Cartels use drones along the border to either airdrop drugs, or spy on U.S. Border Agents in order to better evade these agents during smuggling. Pentagon officials have said that there are over 1,000 drone incursions each month along the U.S. Mexico border.

Scott Brown, a retired special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Arizona who was involved with law enforcement's anti-drone efforts on the border, said, "It is an incursion and not an attack." There's a distinct difference.

U.S. authorities and Mexican authorities have joined forces to fight the growing threat of drones in the border region. This week, officials of New Mexico and Chihuahua, a neighboring Mexican state, met to discuss the risks.

THREAT OR PRETEXT?

The U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that he would like to use military force in the U.S. against "the Mexican cartels," which he claims "run Mexico."

Sheinbaum said that any unilateral U.S. actions on Mexican soil would constitute a grave violation of Mexico's sovereignty, and a crossing of a "red line". Sheinbaum stated in November that the United States took over half of Mexico during the Mexican-American War, which lasted from 1846-1848.

Trump's administration is increasingly concerned about the threat posed by cartel drones.

"When I first heard of the airport closing, my initial concern was: 'Is this a pretext to launch a counterstrike against the U.S.?' Brown said.

Steven Willoughby testified in July to Congress that "it is only a matter of a time before Americans and law enforcement in the border area are targeted."

Carlos Perez Ricart is a Mexican expert in security who disputes such a description.

He said that there was no evidence the cartels would use drones to attack the U.S.

"But such narratives do serve Trump's interest in creating a reason for military action." (Reporting and editing by Stephen Eisenhammer, Stephen Coates, and Laura Gottesdiener)

(source: Reuters)