The El Paso airport was shut down late Tuesday night after the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fired an anti-drone laser at an object flying near the border. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered all flights grounded and closed the airspace up to eighteen thousand feet for a period of ten days in response. Or at least that was the plan until the FAA reversed course eight hours later and reopened everything.

It was a strange event, and a good bit of digital ink has been spilled in the time since attempting to get to the bottom of what caused the shutdown. As of now, here’s what we know:

• The Department of Defense (DOD) has been testing new anti-drone technology at Fort Bliss, which sits just outside of El Paso, TX.
• The DOD failed to inform the FAA that it would use this technology—a high-powered laser—creating a problem, as anti-drone weapons could potentially affect commercial aircraft that fly in and out of El Paso. Or, at least, that was the fear.
• After the laser was used to target what Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described as a cartel drone incursion into American airspace—other reports say it was actually just a party balloon—the FAA shut down the airport for ten days.
• The ten-day shutdown appears quite excessive until you consider that the Pentagon and FAA officials were set to meet on February 20—one day before the shutdown was originally scheduled to end—to discuss the safety implications of testing those weapons so close to a commercial airport.
• The Pentagon had previously told the FAA about the lasers and how they planned to use them, but reports indicate the FAA did not receive enough information to be comfortable keeping the airspace open.

So, given those details, what are we to make of their decision, and are we likely to see further shutdowns in the future?

What’s the real problem?

The speed at which the FAA removed the restrictions, coupled with the specific timeframe of the initial closure, makes it sound as though the shutdown was more to get the DOD’s attention than because they truly feared for the safety of the aircraft flying in and out of El Paso. That the FAA neglected to tell either the White House or the Pentagon of its decision further points to safety being a secondary concern.

Ultimately, the problem seems to be more about competition between the agencies and a general lack of communication, something both the FAA and the DOD have struggled to do well in recent months. Still, solving the drone problem is important.

While Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum claimed that her administration had seen no evidence of drone activity along the border, the US has told a very different story for quite a while now.

Steven Willoughby, the deputy director of the counter-drone program at the Department of Homeland Security, claimed last July that hostile forces had flown more than 27,000 drones within five hundred meters of the border over just a six-month period. NORAD echoed those findings, claiming that thousands of drone encounters between the US and Mexico happen every month.

And while these drones have not been used to attack Americans directly, US officials have seized thousands of pounds of drugs carried by drones in recent years. Moreover, the cartels have started using drones to drop bombs—at times carrying as much as fifty kilograms of explosives—on rival cartels. It would be a relatively simple transition to begin targeting Americans in the same way.

All of that to say, while the shutdown at the El Paso airport is unlikely to happen again and appears to have been more due to petty squabbling than a genuine threat, it would be a mistake to write the event off as inconsequential.

Two realities worth considering

When uncertainty leads us to jump to conclusions that turn out to be false, it can be easy to go too far in the opposite direction and downplay the reality of the situation rather than confront the aspects we got wrong. In this case, one aspect of that reality is that the DOD has lasers that can shoot down drones, and they’re openly testing them on the Texas border.

Given the increasing likelihood that the US will provoke an attack from Iran in the coming weeks, anti-drone technology could prove essential to the defense of our military forces in short order. Moreover, anything that helps to keep drugs out of the country is likely to be beneficial as well.

Are those benefits worth the risk of potentially downing civilian or military aircraft in the process? Absolutely not. But that’s why greater communication is a far better solution than a full cessation of the tests.

A second reality worth considering is that the drones cartels routinely send across the border must be destroyed, and it would be great to have a more reliable way to go about accomplishing that end. Again, how you go about achieving that goal is important, but it’s still a goal worth pursuing.

And what’s true of the situation in El Paso is often just as true in our lives as well.

What’s most important to you?

Pride is often one of the greatest impediments to growing in our walk with the Lord because it can keep us from recognizing and learning from our mistakes. And when that happens, it’s easy to find ourselves unable to see beyond the need to be right.

One of the most consistent themes throughout the Gospels is that the people who understood Jesus best and most readily accepted him as their Lord were those who also recognized the gravity of their sin and, as a result, the magnitude of his grace.

By contrast, many of the religious leaders were unwilling to accept him as the Messiah because they refused to accept the reality that they too were sinners in need of a savior. Even when they recognized that his parables and teachings targeted their sin, they doubled down on the idea that he was the problem (Mark 12:1–12).

While it is easy to read those passages about the religious leaders and offer a quick condemnation for their response to the Lord, the reality is that you and I are not always that much better at accepting the Lord’s accountability.

Think back to the last time God confronted you with your mistakes. Was your first response to get defensive and try to explain away your sin, or were you able to receive the Lord’s correction and make whatever changes he commanded?

This side of heaven, I’m not sure if we’ll ever get that choice right 100 percent of the time, but every day is likely to give us the chance to try again.

What will you do with that chance today?

Quote of the day:

“Self-awareness is indispensable to seeing the lines between what you want to be true and what is actually true.” —Jonah Goldberg

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