DHS Plans Experiment Running ‘Reconnaissance’ Drones Along the US-Canada Border

The US Department of Homeland Security, in collaboration with the Defense Research and Development Canada, is looking to send autonomous drones and vehicles along the US-Canada border this fall, testing which products can stream surveillance video and sensor data between the two countries using commercial 5G networks. A new DHS call for participants frames the experiment, known as ACE-CASPER, as a multiday exercise “simulating a national emergency response scenario,” with drones and ground vehicles relaying live feeds to a bi-national command-and-control center as they cross the border. Vehicle autonomy, the document notes, is secondary to its primary aim: demonstrating “resilient, persistent 5G communications.” DHS and DRDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Scheduled for November, the tests would be the first joint US-Canada cross-border technology experiment along their shared border in nearly a decade. From 2011 through 2017, the two governments staged five cross-border drills under a program called CAUSE, testing whether emergency responders on either side of the line could share radios, video, and data with their counterparts across the border. While couched in public safety, search and rescue, and emergency response, DHS describes many of the capabilities the experiment will exercise in martial terms, asking vendors to demonstrate, for instance, the ability of autonomous vehicles to gather “real-time battlefield intelligence.” The sought-after aerial systems are described as “Command and Control: Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance” platforms—or C2ISR—an acronym borrowed from the US Department of Defense, linked to the improvement of “kill chains.” DHS announced the drone trials through government procurement channels by the department’s research and development branch, the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), in partnership with Defense Research and Development Canada, its northern counterpart. The directorate sits at the technical center of the US federal government's domestic counter-drone program following restructuring under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in 2025. Last week, S&T's National Urban Security Technology Laboratory launched a counter-drone purchasing tool, designed to guide police and emergency-response agencies in the Washington, DC, region—and the 11 US states hosting FIFA World Cup matches this summer. The same executive-order package also prioritized procurement of American-made drones and reserved government contract opportunities for domestic manufacturers—a major market opening for the US drone industry, further widened by a recent Federal Communications Commission designation that bars new foreign-made drones from US wireless networks. Any universe of companies positioned to respond to the call for the November trials would include multiple vendors with ties to the president’s elder adult sons. Powerus Corporation, the Florida-based drone manufacturer that recently merged with a golf course company that has backing from Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., is one. Anduril Industries, in which Trump Jr.'s own firm invested last year, produces a suite of drones geared toward battlefield surveillance for the Pentagon, while holding DHS’s largest border-security contract: a $1.1 billion agreement to deploy AI-powered surveillance towers along the southern border. “Powerus welcomes any effort by DHS to strengthen border security through advanced autonomous systems,” Powerus cofounder Brett Velicovich tells WIRED.…