FPVs Make Near-Border Naval Basing Untenable | Forbes
Craig Hooper argues in a Forbes piece called “FPV Drone Attack Risk Sinks Future Navy Infrastructure At U.S. Border” that FPV drones have rendered the 100-mile zone along the U.S. southern border functionally indefensible for critical naval infrastructure. The problem is that the Navy doesn’t want to do anything about it.
The Threat Is Credible
Ukraine’s strikes on Kronstadt and dark fleet vessels demonstrate that FPV drones can reach and damage hardened naval targets. In the US, Border Patrol detected 27,000 drone incursions near the southern border in the final six months of 2024 alone. Drug cartels, absorbing lethal kinetic pressure on their smuggling networks, have both the motive and the emerging capability to escalate. Hooper points out that three nuclear carriers and 61 warships sit eleven miles from Mexico. And a drone launched from Tijuana reaches them in under ten minutes.
Lack of Institutional Inertia is a Strategic Liability
The Navy has studied this problem for over a decade, yet produced little beyond what he calls “admiration of the threat.” Peacetime preferences, career incentives for retiring admirals, and the sheer pleasantness of San Diego have calcified into a posture of deliberate inaction. Active countermeasures, meanwhile, collide with urban realities. Anti-drone lasers near San Diego’s airport and civilian neighborhoods create their own liabilities.
The Solution, and Friction
Hooper’s remedy is to freeze contracting in border zones, push infrastructure 100 miles north, and then leverage dispersal in Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, and Alaska. The friction, though, cultural. Telling San Diego its Navy is leaving is a fight in congress, a fight in San Diego, and a fight in the industrial base all at the same time.
Bottom Line
Can the U.S. military accept that the homeland is now a contested zone, even in peacetime? That’s what it comes down to.
