Texas Now Has a Drone Fleet Nearly as Large as the US Border Patrol’s |
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This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook, X, and Bluesky.
Texas Republicans have been wary of unmanned aerial vehicles, with some even backing proposed laws to allow the citizenry to gun down invasive airborne drones. Now, thanks to years of Operation Lone Star, Governor Abbott’s multi-billion dollar border mission, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is ushering in what might fairly be called the Drone Star State with an expansive fleet of flying eyes in the sky.
A decade ago, DPS didn’t even have a drone program. Now, in 2025, it touts one of the largest in the country. Since the launch of Operation Lone Star in 2021, DPS has more than doubled its drone fleet.
In December 2020, the state police had fewer than 200 drones; now the agency’s inventory has ballooned to more than 450 drones, and nearly 400 employees are trained to remotely operate them, according to DPS records obtained by the Texas Observer. (Agency records indicate that 95 of those drones were not operational as of September.) DPS says the fleet is valued at around $3.7 million.
That puts the Texas state police in the same league as the U.S. Border Patrol, which maintains around 500 drones, a spokesperson for the federal agency told the Observer. DPS’ fleet also exceeds that of the state police agency in Chihuahua, the northern Mexico state that borders much of West Texas. Chihuahua purchased 75 drones as part of a $200-million........