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Mexican drug cartels are no longer just using machine guns and pickup trucks to wage war. Across parts of Mexico, criminal organizations have added weaponized drones to their arsenal, turning cheap commercial drones into tools for assassination and battlefield-style attacks.
The evidence that cartels are using drones inside Mexico is substantial and well documented. Mexican officials have publicly acknowledged that cartels have used explosive-laden drones to attack police and soldiers. In April 2021, Mexico’s defense secretary said criminal groups had carried out such attacks in at least Jalisco, Guanajuato and Michoacán. He pointed to a drone strike in Aguililla, Michoacán, that wounded two police officers.
In August 2024, Mexico’s army publicly acknowledged for the first time that some soldiers had been killed by cartel-operated bomb-dropping drones. And in October 2025, three explosive-laden drones struck a Baja California state prosecutor’s office, damaging vehicles with improvised explosive devices packed with nails and metal fragments.
These incidents show that weaponized drones are now a regular feature of cartel violence. Analysts say the tactic gives criminal groups a low-cost, high-impact way to attack rivals, terrorize communities and strike security forces from a distance.
Henry Ziemer, Americas Program researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Mexican government is being forced to deal with this new wave of high-tech cartel violence that is becoming more sophisticated and deadly.
“The fact is that Mexico has very limited counter drone systems. And the places that these are drones are being used, tend to be in rural areas or in hotbeds of cartel activity,” Ziemer told Texas Public Radio’s The Source.
He added that it would be next to impossible for Mexico to neutralize the weaponized drones with radio signal jammers or counter drone systems without being incredibly disruptive to civilian life.
“One thing that I always try to keep in mind is that organized crime, cartels and criminal organizations are nothing if not adaptable. They see what the state is using, they see what militaries are using in places like Ukraine, and they see and they ask themselves how they can adapt it with their own capabilities to, you know, maintain their illicit profits,” he said.
Intelligence reports have raised concerns that some cartel-linked operatives may have gone to Ukraine to learn those drone warfare skills.
A July 30, 2025, a report by Defense News said Ukrainian counterintelligence was investigating suspected infiltration of Ukraine’s International Legion by Latin American operatives with alleged cartel ties who wanted first-person-view, or FPV, drone training. According to that report, the investigation began after Mexico’s National Intelligence Center warned that some Mexican volunteers had joined foreign fighter units specifically to learn FPV drone tactics.
Ziemer said the fact the Mexican drug cartels are using weaponized drones means the United Staes should take the threat seriously on the southern border.
However, in recent weeks U.S. efforts to counter suspected Mexican drones in the El Paso area have led to embarrassing outcomes for the military, the FAA and U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement.
In February the FAA abruptly shut down the airspace over El Paso initially for up to 10 days. The restriction was lifted within hours, but it caused major disruptions. The White House said the move was tied to Mexican cartel drones that had crossed into U.S. airspace. But Ziemer said the problem was something else.
“Allegedly there was a balloon at a children's birthday party that was what flipped the switch and was mistaken for a drone,” Ziemer said.
Also, there was an internal dispute by the FAA and the U.S. Army over the possible use of a U.S. Army laser-based counter-drone system near civilian air traffic. In other words, the shutdown was not just about drones coming from Mexico, but also about how U.S. agencies were trying to respond to that threat and whether the counter-drone operation itself posed a risk to commercial aviation.
Then, days later, it happened again. This time the U.S. military had mistakenly shot down with a laser a Customs and Border Protection drone over El Paso during anti-drone operations.
Ziemer said this double FUBAR shows that protecting the southern border from drones is seen as a real and growing national security threat. But the El Paso incidents expose how messy and potentially dangerous the domestic response can be when military-grade counter-drone tools are used near a busy civilian airport.
Ziemer said the border U.S. counter-drone forces should talk to each other better.
“We should not have another incident where DoD (Dept. of Defense) attacks a CBP drone and where the FAA doesn't have visibility into when these operations are going on,” he said.
And he recommends that the United States could work with Mexico to install sensors on the southern side of the border to early detect drone activity.
