Will States Be Ready with Counter Drone Tech for the FIFA World Cup?

Funding snafu, other issues delay counter-UAS ramp-up in Maryland, elsewhere

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.)

Despite the best efforts of federal, state and local officials, counter-UAS operations scheduled to be put into place in the state Maryland, and probably other locations as well, are unlikely to be totally operational in time for the FIFA World Cup games and America 250 events to begin this summer, the director of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security said in an interview.

Last month Travis Nelson, who serves as deputy chief of staff to Maryland Governor Wes Moore, had testified at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee that delays in the allocation of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding to states and cities had resulted in slowing down security preparations for major events, such as the World Cup and America 250 celebrations.

“We know that we’re taking on added responsibilities as states and that the president has made clear that the responsibility will align more with the states and localities to manage not just disasters, but to do more homeland security efforts,” Nelson told DroneLife.

“But simultaneously we saw a dramatic reduction in funding from Homeland Security and Urban Area Security Initiatives, which is what we utilize for not just our Intel analysts and our planners, but also for our capabilities.”

Only recently have federal monies earmarked for World Cup and America 250 event planning begun to flow to cities and states, he said. On March 18, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced the award of $625 million to empower 11 U.S. cities hosting FIFA World Cup 2026 matches to bolster security preparations ahead of the tournament.

In addition, the state of Maryland has received assurance that it will get its share of a $250 million FEMA grant earmarked specifically for standing up counter-UAS capabilities in advance of World Cup and America 250 events. As part of the National Capital Region, comprising Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C., Maryland will be able to access a portion of the $28 million FEMA has allocated to the NCR.

“We have a steering committee that’s comprised of state and local representatives from Virginia, D.C., and Maryland to identify how that award is going to be spent,” Nelson said. “They’re currently reviewing those applications now, and so we can hopefully have the capability launched ahead of America 250 in the summer.”

He said that Maryland has received an award letter guaranteeing the receipt of its share of the FEMA counter-UAS monies, and that once the state selects vendors and awards contracts, it will have the opportunity to apply to FEMA for reimbursement.

Nelson pointed to the policies of former Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem as being responsible for the federal funding logjam.

“There was a rule under Secretary Noem that any program or project that cost more than $100,000 had required the secretary’s review. This caused a tremendous backlog in all spending within DHS. Every state was experiencing this,” he said. “Shortly after Secretary Noem was removed and Secretary (Markwayne) Mullin started, all of the funds began to flow.”

Other road bumps encountered

Still, even with the spigot of federal monies opening up, Nelson said it is problematic to assume that the state will be able to establish the robust system of counter-UAS capabilities it had hoped to establish in time for the kick-off of the America 250 festivities.

“I don’t feel confident that we’ll have the full capability launched by July 4^th,” he said. “It’s an extremely aggressive timeline.”

He said the state is likely at best to be able to stand up a limited degree of counter-UAS capabilities by the start of the summer, but will be able to build on those capabilities in succeeding months.

“I’ll be honest, I think what’s most important right now is even if we don’t have physical capabilities, whether it’s through detection or mitigation, that we Invest heavily over the next few months in coordination and planning on how we would work with the federal partners on detection and response,” he said.

State to rely on feds for drone mitigations

One area in which the state will not be fully prepared to meet the potential threat of dealing with hostile drones will be to have its state and local law enforcement officers trained in the use of drone-mitigation technology. Under the Safer Skies Act, certain states were permitted to have their state and local police officers attend the FBI’s National Counter-Unmanned Training Center (NCUTC) in Huntsville, Alabama in order to be given the authority to operate equipment to bring down rouge drones.

However, to date, Maryland has not been able to send any of its personnel to receive that specialized training.

“The FBI started a training program and prioritized World Cup cities,” Nelson said. “We have not been able to send somebody to that course yet because it’s in very high demand. It’s a limited availability at the federal government level right now, so we’re waiting.”

In the meantime, the state will rely on the small group of federal law enforcement entities, whose agents are legally authorized to bring down drones identified as being a threat, should the need arise.

“The way that we currently operate is in a partnership effort,” Nelson said. “We have state and local law enforcement that deploys to potential launch locations or where a UAS is, and then coordinates more directly with our federal partners to try to do the mitigation.”

Key Bridge response

Maryland, more than most states, has had a great deal of experience in testing out the limits of state-federal cooperation in regard to drone-incursion response, in the wake of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March 2024. After being struck by a ship, the bridge fell into the lower Patapsco River, which connects the Port of Baltimore to the Chesapeake Bay.

The accident highlighted the potential points of conflict between federal and state agencies in their counter-UAS response to an incident, Nelson said.

“We had over a hundred UAS encroachments into the flight-restricted area around the bridge collapse,” he said, adding that there were several areas in which the federal response to the drone-incursion problem delayed state officials’ efforts.

“First, just to get the flight restriction that we needed to be able to enforce,” he said. “But then following on that was the need to be able to get the right qualified people and the right team together to actually mitigate these drones.”

Then, tracking the UAVs, identifying and locating the pilots in order to question them and determine their motivations proved to be an additional challenge.

“For one thing, we didn’t have a bridge that we could go across. So, deploying field resources to where the pilot of the UAS was, there was always a delay in trying to get to that individual,” he said.

“There was no hostile activity from the drones. We won’t ever know the true intent in most of these cases,” Nelson said. “The ones that we were able to contact — and that we also pursued federal charges against in cooperation with the FBI — all stated that they were hobbyists that were looking at trying to get video and footage of the crash. But again, there’s no real way to validate that.”

Collaborative effort

In spite of the previous hiccups in the relationship between the state and federal government in regard to counter-UAS operations, Nelson said the current efforts to prepare a robust counter-UAS response in time for the upcoming major events this summer represent a model for collaboration.

“This is really been truly one of the few items that we can say right now that is a collective effort. There’s no partisanship in how this should be handled,” he said. Governors on both sides of the political aisle have worked to present a united front to deal with the challenges they are facing.

“And I think this is an opportunity where the White House saw that listened and responded appropriately with capabilities. It amplifies that the states are willing to work with the federal government on joint efforts regardless of who is in the White House,” Nelson said.

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.