Border Protection Officials Defend Use of Anti-Drone Laser After Unexpected Airspace Closure

It comes to pass, as these things often do, that a government agency entrusted with the solemn duty of protection has protected a bit too vigorously. Late Tuesday evening, as the sun dipped below the Rio Grande, the good folks at Customs and Border Protection in El Paso, acting on a loaned authority from the Pentagon, decided to test a newfangled anti-drone laser. Their intention, one supposes, was as pure as the driven snow—to safeguard the nation's aerial frontiers from unseen threats. But as with many well-intentioned government projects, from the digging of canals to the institution of tariffs, the outcome was rather more comprehensive than anticipated.

The laser, a device of such sophistication that its operators are still deciphering the user manual, was fired into the twilight sky. Its purpose was to neutralize unauthorized drones, those pesky modern buzzards. Instead, it appears to have interpreted the very concept of 'airspace' as the target. The result was not merely the disabling of a few hobbyist quadcopters, but an abrupt and total closure of the sky above El Paso. The Federal Aviation Administration, that usually unflappable body of regulators, was left with no choice but to announce that the airspace was, for all practical purposes, shut. Not for cleaning, not for repairs, but because it had been rendered temporarily uninhabitable by a beam of concentrated light.

Now, the curious effect of this laser was not to destroy anything, but to suspend it. Pilots radioed in with bewildered reports that their aircraft had ceased moving forward, though engines roared with customary vigor. A Southwest Airlines flight from Phoenix, carrying 180 souls eager for Tex-Mex, was found to be hanging perfectly still at 32,000 feet, its nose pointed dutifully toward a destination it could no longer reach. Flight attendants, demonstrating a professionalism that would make a saint weep, continued to offer passengers peanuts and soda, though the bags, once released, drifted lazily in the cabin like feathers in a jar.

On the ground, Border Protection officials held a press conference to defend their action. A spokesman, a man with the patient demeanor of a schoolmaster explaining a simple sum to a dull child, said the laser's performance was 'within expected parameters.' When pressed on the matter of the immobilized flights, he allowed that it was an 'unforeseen side effect' of ensuring border integrity. He suggested that the travelers, now suspended between states in a literal sense, were merely experiencing a heightened form of the security scrutiny that all who cross borders must endure. It is, when you ponder it, the ultimate checkpoint—a place where no one enters or leaves.

The situation has created a peculiar form of bureaucratic horror. The FAA cannot reclaim the airspace until Border Protection declares it secure. Border Protection cannot declare it secure until it is satisfied that the laser's work is complete. And the laser, having done its job too well, has left the sky in a state of perfect, unassailable protection. It is a frontier of a new kind, a monument to the human capacity for solving problems we did not have with solutions we do not understand. The passengers float on, a silent testament to the fact that when you build a wall, even an invisible one made of light, you must be prepared for what gets trapped on either side. One wonders if this is not the most honest form of border control ever devised: a barrier so effective it stops everything, even time itself, in the name of safety.