Facility managers overseeing large-event venues, prisons or critical infrastructure may soon have new tools to combat drone intrusions under the Safer Skies Act.

The law, which President Trump signed last year as part of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, gives local, state and federal law enforcement agencies authority to use radio frequency detection to identify, track and, if necessary, take control of drones that pose a threat.  

Industry specialists call the law a paradigm shift in how authorities address drone threats. Until now, it’s been illegal for any entity to interfere with the operation of a drone, even an unwanted one that poses a danger, because the federal government considered drones aircraft under the jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Administration. Only a few federal agencies, under limited circumstances, were authorized to apprehend them. 

Those longtime restrictions are intended in part to prevent countermeasures from escalating the danger of drones and putting people and property at risk, a 2023 Rand report says. 

“Legal limitations notwithstanding, there are significant questions about the practicality, safety, and effectiveness of [shooting down drones],” the report said. 

“This is a game-changer,” Jeffrey Starr, chief marketing officer at counter-drone company D-Fend Solutions, said in an interview. “State and local authorities are now empowered to use counter drone technology. This is brand new.”

Technology advances

The law was driven by advances in radio technology that make new types of counter-drone efforts possible, Starr said. Until now, the two main options for countering drones create risks that FAA rules guard against. What law enforcement calls kinetic defenses — shooting down drones — creates risk from shrapnel. 

“If you miss the [projectile] comes down and could hurt someone,” said Starr. “But even if there’s a successful hit, you’ll have … debris and other kinds of things coming down. There have been incidents where people were not hurt by the drone, but by the fragments after interception.”

The other defense — remotely jamming the drone’s controls — creates its own risks. 

“When you’re jamming an area, you’re jamming everything in the area — communication, navigation, transportation, operations,” Starr said. “You can really disrupt things, not to mention the jammed drone itself can come down, plummeting down to the ground,” which could cause damage or injury.

The law takes into consideration a new drone defense approach. Radio frequency detection, or RF cyber technology, enables authorities to access identifying information about the drone and take action — including commandeering the drone — based on what the drone is doing and who’s doing it, Starr said.  

 With RF detection, the law enforcement authority “knows the make, model, serial number — all those identifiers — and then, in accordance with regulations and if used by authorized personnel, [enforcement operators] can actually take over a drone and land it safely in a predesignated area,” Starr said.

Commandeering a drone would likely be seen as a last resort, Starr said. Most unwanted incursions will be by people who either don’t know they’re not supposed to be flying a drone in the area or are being reckless about it without having a malicious intent.

“You’re always going to have the careless and the clueless,” he said. “[You have] a kid playing with his drone where he shouldn’t, or people thinking they’re going to get a great picture of something.” 

In these cases, the likely countermeasure will be an intervention with the operator. Using information from RF detection, authorities can go to where the drone operator is located and intervene, Starr said.

“You can … approach or engage the pilot and tell them immediately to move the drone,” he said. “You can tell them to land it or provide a penalty or just give a warning.”

At the Rock the Runway music festival in London, Ontario, last fall, which attracted some 25,000 people to a runway at London International Airport, local law enforcement used RF detection technology to intervene in multiple instances of drone intrusions, Starr said. 

“That was a very complex airspace in terms of the location,” Starr said. 

The objective in defending against drones at events like a concert is safety continuity — not letting the safety action disrupt the continuity of the event, Starr said. 

“The main goal is to not only deal with a threat, but actually make it a non-incident,” he said. “You’ve seen a lot of drone incidents in stadiums and events over past years … where the games were interrupted.”

The Safer Skies Act gives the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, working in consultation with the FAA, 90 days to come up with their first round of rules for this new approach to drone defense. Based on the statutory language, only state, local, territorial and tribal agencies that have met training and certification requirements can direct the use of RF detection in coordination with federal authorities. The agencies will have to meet other requirements, including filing reports with the federal government on every incident in which action is taken.  

At least initially, the law will likely have the most impact in the context of big events like outdoor concerts and in curbing unwanted drops of contraband within prison facilities — a growing problem in that industry. It will also likely become important in protecting critical infrastructure, including utility grids. But over time, and if given the authority to do so, other types of facilities, like manufacturing plants, could start deploying the technology to continuously monitor their airspace, Starr said.

 “Drones have become so ubiquitous … that these threats emerged,” Starr said. “With the Safer Skies Act, lawmakers have realized [the problem], and now the technology is there” to respond to threats.