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Mexico is building its own surveillance drones as cartels acquire aircraft that can evade electronic defenses, potentially undermining the government’s investment in counter-drone technology.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said the Navy already runs a drone production plant, and the Defense Ministry is developing its own model. The devices are meant for security, territorial surveillance and weather monitoring, and the project brings together the Navy, the Science Ministry and public research institutions. It includes Quetzal, a prototype presented a week earlier by Science Secretary Rosaura Ruiz. Officials say it can stay airborne for up to six hours and cover 50 kilometers — or about 31 miles.
The announcement comes as a seizure in Sinaloa shows how quickly criminal groups are adapting. Authorities confiscated 15 first-person-view drones and 15 spools of fiber-optic cable on Oct. 4 in El Rosario, in the municipality of Mazatlán, along with seven pairs of drone goggles, 15 handheld controllers, three screens and 14 batteries. It was the first official record in Mexico of such technology adapted by organized crime.
Drone activity along the border is already extensive: ACLED, a conflict-monitoring group, reported that nearly 35,000 drone flights were detected near the U.S. southern border in 2025.
David Mora, senior analyst to Mexico of the International Crisis Group explains the technology isn’t entirely new in Mexico: first-person-view and fiber-optic drones have been arriving for months, with earlier cases limited to isolated videos and photos of single drones. He said the equipment reflects intense competition among criminal groups over innovation.
“For criminal groups, innovation is survival,” he added.
Unlike drones controlled by radio signals, fiber-optic models use a cable connection, which lets them bypass signal jammers. Mora described jammers as the Mexican government’s basic answer to drones, one it has invested in heavily. That technology could be “rendered obsolete earlier than expected,” he said.
“It’s not a matter of if, but when other groups will follow suit,” Mora said.
The seizure has also raised questions about whether Mexican criminal groups are acquiring expertise from the war in Ukraine, where fiber-optic drones are widely used because electronic jamming at the front is heavy.
A short video published by Al Jazeera shows at least 10 fighters in a forest. The person filming says they are Mexican, Colombian and Panamanian nationals fighting in Ukraine. One man tells the camera he belongs to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and says the person holding the phone is a former member of La Chapiza, the faction linked to the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Questions about the video’s authenticity reached Sheinbaum’s morning news conference, and she said authorities would investigate.
Analysts say battlefield experience in Ukraine could be accelerating cartels’ adoption of advanced drones. Reports indicate Ukrainian drone-piloting academies tied to the country’s foreign legion, initially reserved for Ukrainians, gradually opened to foreign volunteers, mostly Mexican and Colombian. The skills that groups seek include flying in forests and cities and modifying commercial drones to resist jamming. Cartels were using drones well before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Mora explains that authorities still need more intelligence on how criminal groups buy the aircraft and get training.
But building drones does not guarantee they will reach the places most exposed to attacks, Mora explains.
“What worries me a lot is all the instances of drones being used as weapons against civilians,” he says, violence that usually happens in rural areas. “It’s virtually impossible to think that we’re going to be able to deploy drones, government drones, in every single corner of Mexico.”
Mora says the focus should be on commercial drones, which he said are involved in most of the weaponized-drone cases documented and are readily available online.
“There’s little regulation in terms of who can buy one, who can purchase one, what you need to fly a drone,” he adds.
The government could intervene in those supply chains, he said, making it harder for criminal groups to get them, and disrupting supply chains should accompany investment in military and police equipment. Manufacturers could also add technical fixes such as geofencing and no-fly zones over areas of intense conflict. Those measures could help residents of communities that have been victims of “dronazos,” a term used in Spanish for drone attacks.
