Hello and welcome to the program UFO Warning.
In this episode we're talking about El Paso drones and UF OS.
That's correct, El Paso drones and UF OS.
And I bring up UF OS because as far as I found so far, they
haven't actually shown us any of the drones that were supposedly
brought down. A lot of crazy stuff going on
down there in El Paso with what the current administration is
describing as a drone invasion from the cartel.
Now, this seems crazy to me. I don't know why they would even
do that. And if they did, you would think
that the Department of War would have gone down there and taken
care of business. But I guess this is one of these
stories that we're just following kind of as it goes
along. Couple different weird things
coming out here. The first articles from
apnews.com says live updates Pentagon FAA dispute over lasers
to thwart cartel drones led to airspace closure, AP sources say
this article just came out February 11th 1:42 PM edited by
Bridget Brown, Sal Crist, Curtis Yee and Lisa Payne.
So and they got a bunch of the writers on this one.
The sudden and surprising airspace closure over El Paso,
TX, stem from the Pentagon's plan to test a laser for use and
shooting down drones used by Mexican drug cartels, according
to three people familiar with the situation who were granted
anonymity to share sensitive details.
So for what it's worth, we don't have any names attached to this.
We just have more anonymous sources.
Don't really care for that. That caused friction with the
Federal Aviation Administration, which wanted to ensure
commercial air safety, and two agencies sought to coordinate,
according to two of the people. Despite a meeting scheduled
later this month to discuss the issue, the Pentagon wanted to go
ahead and test it, prompting the FAA to shutter the airspace.
It was not clear whether the laser was ultimately deployed.
Now we're going to hear a different take on this in a, in
a couple minutes here. So you have the Department of
War saying, hey, we need to shoot these drones down with
lasers. And you have the FAA saying, no,
you can't do that because you've got passengers full of planes up
there. A little different, a little
different reaction to what we saw here a couple years ago when
these things were flying over the East Coast.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said earlier that the
response by the Defense Department, see, they're still
refusing them to call the Department of War.
So that kind of gives you an idea of the slant here from AP
and the FAA to neutralize an incursion by Mexican cartel
drones had led to the airspace closure.
Gun incursions are not uncommon along the US Mexico border.
Officials at the White House, FAA and Department of
Transportation did not respond immediately to a request to
comment on the dispute. The Pentagon said it had nothing
to add to its statement That largely mirrored Duffy's
comment. The FAA had originally announced
A10 day closure of the airspace, confusing travelers at the
airport in the border city with a population of nearly 700,000
people. The order was lifted a few hours
later. No Mexican airspace was closed.
More, more confusion, man. I mean, you got a, you've got a
population base with 700,000 people and all of a sudden
they're told they can't travel. I mean, come on.
Representative Ronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes
El Paso, said neither her office, the city of El Paso nor
airport operations received advance notice over the closure.
She asserted that the shutdown was not caused by a drone in US
airspace, saying that that is not what we in Congress have
been told. Mexican cartels have long used
drones to traffic drugs, control migrant crossings along the
border and wage war with rival cartels and authorities.
Mexico first issued an international alert about the
use of remote controlled aircraft in 2010, and their
practice has only continued to expand.
Nice. It's just like the last time we
have reports of these drones and then we have confusion.
And this time it seems like the Department of Defense has tried
to step in and say, hey, we're going to knock these things out
of the sky. But once again, you have the FAA
stepping up and saying no, you can't do that.
You really have to wonder what the heck's going on here?
Are these things UFOs or drones like they claim they are?
Now this next article that I found, I'm not sure if this is
actually the truth because I haven't seen the damage, you
know, from the wreckage that was supposedly shot down yet.
Maybe it's a cover story, I don't know, but it's
interesting. I found this over at
thedailymail.cu.uk title says Trump administration shoots down
party balloon with laser after mistaking it for a cartel drone
and El Paso airspace chaos. Now you kind of get the flavor
for this. I don't think they're trying to
put the Trump administration in a very good light here.
They're just trying to come off as though these guys don't know
what they're doing. I think these guys know a lot
more about what's going on than we're being told.
Now. This is written by Stacey
Livitor says and the published, and this is February 11th, 2026,
the Trump administration announced it had taken down a
Mexican cartel drone flying into US airspace, only to confirm
hours later that the object was nothing more than a party
balloon. Well, this is the sort of thing
we run into all the time. Remember under the Biden
administration when they took out those three UFOs up there in
Alaska, Yukon and Michigan, and then we kept getting these
changing stories about the whole thing.
The chaos began when anti drone technology was deployed near the
southern border to target what officials initially believed
were foreign drones. The object was later identified
as a party balloon, according to sources.
At least one was shot down. Multiple sources said the
incident forced the Federal Aviation Administration to
initially shut down El Paso airspace, which spans 2 border
states, for 10 days. On Tuesday night, FAA
Administrator Brian Bedford moved to close the airspace
without alerting the White House, the Pentagon or Homeland
Security officials, sources told CBS.
It's like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's
doing. So for all these people that
claim that Trump is some kind of a dictator, I don't know how he
could be a dictator when 80% of the people working for him were
hired by somebody at administration that hated him.
So you just see what's going on here.
It's just almost like chaos. Hours later, the agency lifted
the ban, noting that there was no ongoing threat to commercial
travel. However, the White House stated
on Wednesday saying Mexican cartel drones breached US
airspace. The Department of Defense took
action to disable those drones. OK, can we see one of the drones
that were shot down? That would be interesting.
Now you should keep in mind here that we have Briggs Army
Airfield, which is just north of El Paso International Airport.
Why would the Mexican cartel be flying drones over there?
Wouldn't that seem counterproductive?
The FAA order announced at 11:30 PM on Tuesday covered 10 mile
wide area roughly 5 miles southwest of Texas City from the
ground up to 18,000 feet. So apparently the FAA guy
thought that he had the authority to close down Biggs
Army Airfield Base, and it sounds like he found out
otherwise. El Paso Airport describes itself
as the gateway to West TX, southern New Mexico and northern
Mexico. Southwest, United, American and
Delta all operate flights from there, among others.
Pilots who failed to follow the restriction were threatened with
questioning or detainment by law enforcement or security
personnel. Almost like they're operating
under the cover of law here. This is strange.
The last time US airspace was shut down for national security
was after 911. The FAA also temporarily closed
airspace over New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, but
that was due to storm damage. Unlike previous restrictions,
the El Paso closure blocked all flights over the city, including
police and medical helicopters. It is a move rarely, if ever,
seen in modern US aviation. So you tell me what's going on
here? Is this guy just doing this
because he's overreacting to the Department of War?
Is this some kind of power play or are we looking at something a
little bit more serious than drone activity?
A spokesman for El Paso Airport said the FAA on short notice
issued a temporary flight restriction halting flights to
and from El Paso. Now, think about this.
The FAA, you know, they don't seem to care about dozens of
balloons, weather balloons and research balloons that are
released every single day of the week that fly up there at the
same altitude as commercial airplanes do.
Nobody seems to already track these things.
It's just like, OK, well, no big deal.
It's just another balloon flying by the airplane.
No one cares about that. But all of a sudden we're
worried about these drones. We have to shut down this entire
region. Come on.
Commercial airlines operating out of El Paso are being
informed of the restriction, which appears to be security
related. Another one of these kind of
kind of dubious terms. El Paso International Airport
handled more than 4 million travelers in 2024, the most
recent year for which statistics are available.
Major airlines including Southwest, United, American and
Delta operate flights at the airports and nearby U.S.
Army base Fort Bliss sits less than 3 miles away.
At the direction of the FAA, Southwest has temporarily paused
all operations to and from El Paso.
The airline said it had notified affected passengers and will
share data and will share updates as more information
becomes available. Nothing is more important to
Southwest than the safety of its customers and employees, the
spokesman said. United Airlines announced that
travelers with flights to or from El Paso during the airspace
shutdown can adjust their plans without incurring change fees or
fare distances. The waiver applies to new
flights booked between February 21st and February 28th, the
company confirmed. Veronica Escobar, A
congresswoman who represents El Paso, said the FAA's move to
shut down the Apasa airport for 10 days was unprecedented.
I can't guess that's correct from what my office and I have
been able to gather overnight and early this morning.
There's no immediate threat to the community or surrounding
areas, she said in a statement. We have urged the FAA to lift
the temporary flight restriction placed on the El Paso area.
I will continue to make information public as I learn
it. El Paso, a border city with a
population of nearly 700,000 and larger one including the
surrounding metro area, is a hub of cross-border commerce with
neighboring Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.
The flight restrictions did not affect the Mexican airspace,
where planes are flying above 18,000 feet.
The latest commercial flight to land before the shutdown was in
American Airlines from Chicago, which touched down at 10:57 PM,
according to NBC News. A private plane from Everett,
WA, is scheduled to arrive at 1:13 AM.
Wednesday was diverted to the smaller Acrucis International
Airport. El Paso City Council member
Chris Canales said local officials were not given any
advance notice of the restriction.
What's especially troubling is that there appears to have been
no advance notice to local government, airport leadership
or even local air traffic control or local military
leadership, he added. Grounding all flights for 10
days would have cost the city millions of dollars, he said.
Well, either there's something that happened there that they're
not telling us, or this is just another example of bureaucratic
overreach. And it just goes to show you how
these bureaucrats can negatively affect your life.
If you're down there in El Paso and you're looking to take a
flight home or you need a ride on a medevac and some bureaucrat
with the FAA decides that he doesn't like Pete Higgseth.
He doesn't like the idea of these drones being shot down,
then all of a sudden he can just put a big giant wrench in your
day. Or maybe something's happened
that they aren't telling us about.
Either way, I don't think that the FAA has a long history of
being open and transparent based on their decades long denial of
UFOs and the way they handle that whole subject.
We do have another article explained that they have
reopened airspace, but I'm looking at this map and we've
got military bases all over the place down there.
I mean you've got White Sands Missile Range not that far from
there, you've got Home and Air Force Base, you got Fort Bliss,
you got Fort Bliss McGregor range that says military
installations everywhere. I have a hard time imagining why
the cartel would be so stupid to fly drones this vicinity at all.
You think that they would fly these things low enough if they
were just trying to transport drugs that they could just fly
them across the border, drop them off?
I don't know why they would make an attempt to send a swarm of
these drones over the US border. That's just begging for trouble,
especially after what we've seen happen with Maduro and
everything stacking up in Iran. We've got a big distraction
going on there with this, with a with that, with the news lady's
mom being kidnapped or whatever's happened, poor lady.
And then we have the island files going on.
You think the cartel would be intelligent enough to know that
Washington probably we would love nothing more than the
distraction of of vaporizing some of these guys just to get
people's minds off of things they don't want to talk about.
That's just my opinion. So I'm still not really
convinced that these are just normal drones going across the
border. There's a lot of stuff here that
we're not being told. Now this articles from bbc.com
and says US reopens airspace over Texas border town after
cartel drone incursion. You know, once again, just
jumping to conclusions. the US Department of Defense, OK, now
they've renamed this the Department of War.
OK, now, you may like Trump, you may hate Trump, you may not like
everything they're doing. I didn't particularly like it
when Obama renamed it Mount McKinley to Denali.
But you know what? That's what they got to do.
Elections have consequences now. Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico
to the Gulf of America. Whatever.
And they renamed the US Department of Defense to the
Department of War. Actually it makes a lot more
sense because it seems like we make a lot more war than we do
defense anyway. That being said, the article
goes on. the US Department of Defense said it had disabled
drones being used by Mexican cartels when it shut the
airspace over El Paso, TX on Tuesday night.
Mexican cartel drones breached US airspace.
I'm just going to keep calling this thing the Department of War
because that's what it's not called.
The Department of War took action to disable the drones,
the Trump administration official said after the area
reopened Wednesday morning. The Federal Aviation
Administration, that's the FAA, on Tuesday suddenly ordered
flights in and out of El Paso International Airport.
They'd be halted for 10 days, causing shock and confusion.
So it seems like these drones reported somehow and the
Department of War is saying, yeah, we blasted them.
They took action. They're not saying exactly what
that action was. And then the FAA guy, I don't
know, maybe you got his feelings hurt a little bit and suddenly
became concerned about passenger safety and said, oh, got to
close this whole thing now for 10 days.
Boy, talk about bureaucratic overreach.
That's what I'm saying. Because now it's open back up
saying the FAA had worked with the Pentagon to address a call a
cartel drone incursion, quote UN quote.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X hours later
that the restrictions had been lifted.
CBS News, the BB CS U.S. media partner, though, reported on
Wednesday that the brief closure stem from a disagreement between
the FAA and the Defense Department over drone related
testing in the area. Drone related testing.
So now you see what's happening here.
They're changing the narrative already.
First they tell us, well, the cartel is, they sent a drone
swarm over that over the border and we had to blast them.
And the FAA comes out and says, no, you don't.
We're closing this whole space down.
They're going to tell the Department of War what to do.
The Department of War gets on the phone to the head of the FAA
and says, hey, we got to get this under control.
And now we hear the FAA saying, well, we had a disagreement
about drone testing. Well, certainly the Department
of War wasn't testing those drones if it was a cartel.
So who was it? Was it the cartel?
Was it the Department of War or were these things?
UFOs goes on, it says, citing multiple sources close to the
matter. CBS said the Pentagon had
planned to test new military technology, reportedly high
energy laser, to practice taking down drones near a military base
next to the El Paso airport. Meetings to discuss the
technology safety were scheduled with FAA, but the Defense
Department wanted to test it sooner, prompting the FAA to
close the airspace, according to CBS.
Wow. So we have two completely
different narratives with a third one thrown in.
Don't forget the party plan. First.
We're told this is a drone swarm from the cartel.
The drug dealers are sending these over in mass.
Why, I have no idea. Now we're told the FAA and the
Department of War had a little feud about the Department of War
practicing drone targeting near the El Paso airport.
I mean, you've got half of the western United States to
practice this stuff in and you need to do it next to an
airport. Come on.
The BBC has not independently confirmed the reported dispute,
and it has contacted the FAA in the Pentagon.
The Associated Press on Wednesday published a similar
report, citing 3 people familiar with the situation.
Of course, all anonymous local officials said they did not know
to expect the closure until it was announced on Tuesday night.
City Council member Chris Canalis, who represents an area
on the southwestern side of El Paso, told the BBC that local
authorities did not receive any advance notice or reason for the
closure. El Paso Mayor Bernard Johnson
confirmed that they were not notified during a news
conference on Wednesday after the airspace had been reopened.
We woke up just like many of you at midnight last night, one in
the morning, to the text and calls that we received that our
airspace was shut down, he said. Our community was scared, he
continued. You just cannot do that.
Johnson added that this should have never happened and that the
failure to communicate is unacceptable.
Medical evacuation flights were diverted because of the closure,
he said. Another flight that was carrying
surgical equipment did not show up here in El Paso.
Renard said he was still waiting to hear from the FAA, the
primary agency that made the decision to shut down our
airspace, the official reason. We're still trying to get that
answer of why it was closed down here in El Paso and southern New
Mexico. He said long term airspace
closures are rare. Since 2018, the FAA has cut
airspace closures from an average of more than four hours
per launch to just more than two hours, according to its website.
This restriction covered a 10 mile radius around El Paso,
including parts of southern New Mexico West of the town of San
Teresa. After the initial closure, El
Paso International Airport said in a statement that it was told
on short notice to hold all flights and contacted the FAA
For more information. The notice was published without
any advance notice to local governments or to local air
traffic controllers. Canal said the cancellations
were so abrupt that people reported being told by airlines
that their flights were still scheduled even after the FAA's
announcement. Just called United Airlines
about my flight this morning and they said it's still scheduled
to leave. One woman commented on Instagram
early Wednesday. Some on social media speculated
about broader conspiracy theories and wondered if the US
was on the brick of war. Well, kind of kind of an
internal war, a war of bureaucrats.
It is significant that the US shut down a major airport, Mick
Mulroy, a former U.S. Marine, CIA paramilitary officer
and deputy assistant Secretary of Defense, told the BBC.
If the purpose was for counter drone activity related to cartel
drones, it makes sense as the primary means to do so is
through electronic warfare. He added.
EW poses a real risk to civilian aviation, therefore it was
prudent to do so. Mulroy said the alleged cartel
drones weren't most likely being used for surveillance and not
anything offensive. Well really, do you think the
cartels going to risk the wrath of Trump?
Really after what they after what just happened to Maduro and
he's already been threatening to blow him up?
This looks like one of two things.
The DoD Department of War, I should say, the Dow was going to
do drone practice like they're saying.
And this FAA guy got a little bit a little bit angry about it
and decided, I'll show you and decide to close the whole
airport down the whole airspace for 10 days a little.
I don't know what you call that man.
A little bravado maybe. And that caused a big problem,
such a problem. The Department of War had to get
a hold of the person that actually runs the FAA and say,
hey, get your get your guard dog in here, man.
We got to get this straight now. So you kind of see, you see this
kind of war between the bureaucrats, it's awful.
And then who's victimized by it? We are.
And this all comes from decades of no accountability.
Decades of no accountability. Mexico's COA.
The war is is just South and West of El Paso and U.S.
Army base Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range lied to the
north. Yeah, and apparently a FAA
bureaucrat decides that he's going to shut down our
Department of War, Army, Air Force, whatever.
Airfields. Crazy.
Fort Bliss is a military post focused on training, and White
Sands Missile Range is the country's largest overland
testing range for missiles, rockets and advanced weapons.
Yeah, why didn't they just go up there to White Sands and, and do
the testing there? And Mexico's interior cartels
have used drones to drop explosives on rivals or security
forces. And one cartel, the Jalisco New
Generation Cartel, has a specialized drone unit.
And that's what they're telling us.
But along the border, drones are used primarily to help cartels
gather intelligence and mostly for human smuggling operations.
They monitor the position of Border Patrol agents and relay
that to migrants to direct them across the border, said Parker
Asman, an expert in Mexican cartels at the Washington based
think tank Insight Crime. And do we need another think
tank? It's about gathering
intelligence, surveillance and doing reconnaissance.
In the Apostle area, which Osman called a hub for human
trafficking, drones are a newer technology performing work that
would have previously been done mostly by spotters in the hills.
Drone activity in the area, however, is extremely regular,
and it remains unclear why the reported incursion on Wednesday
prompted a sudden and large scale airspace closure.
There you have it, three different stories.
First, we're told that the drug cartel is moving swarms of
drones across the border and the Dow Department of War has to go
in and shoot these things down. And the FAA, they just found it
necessary to to grab everybody for 10 days, just randomly 10
days. I mean, if they can't clean
those drones up in the first couple of hours, we have
something that's really wrong here.
I mean, I mean, we can we can drop bombs halfway across the
world and do operations that last a couple hours, but yet it
takes 10 days to locate and destroy some Mexican cartel
drones. Doesn't make sense to me.
Then we're told that the Department of War, I think
called the Department of Defense, was going to do some
drone target practice. And the FAA, local FAA guy got
upset about that because he felt that it was a danger to
airplanes in the area. Well, probably is, but is it any
more of a danger than the barrage of weather and research
balloons that are released every day that nobody seemed to care
about? Seemed like he was a little bit
angry that he wasn't included on the decision and he decided that
he'd show them. He closed the airspace down for
10 days And hey, by the way, that includes multiple Air Force
Army bases and I don't know, maybe even grow up into the
White Sands Missile Range. He's going to show them.
So that's the second story. And the third story that
Department of Defense is so incompetent that they actually
use this gazillion dollar laser to shoot on a party balloon.
Well, party balloons everywhere. Boy, that's, that's really,
that's really convenient, isn't it?
Same thing Biden said when he was in there, when they shot
that balloon down over Michigan. Oh, it's a bunch of kids.
They put up a they put up a research balloon.
Yeah, that's it. Of course, we never saw the
wreckage. We never saw any of it except
for the Chinese balloon that was shot down off the coast.
It was at North Carolina, South Carolina.
They showed that one. But the other three we never
saw. And these we haven't seen and I
don't suspect that we'll ever see.
So there you have it. That is the drone slash UFO
situation in El Paso. And to me, they're still UFOs
because nobody's told us what they've are.
And you've got to see one of these things on the ground
knocked out of the sky. So make up your own mind.
And another week, another, another changing narrative from
our government. Until next time.
This is UFO warning over now.