This story on drone technology from Ukraine reshaping surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico border was produced by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting, in collaboration with 100 Days in Appalachia, an independent nonprofit covering Appalachia. Generous support from the International Women’s Media Foundation made this reporting from Ukraine possible.
UZHHOROD, UKRAINE — In the far southwestern corner of Ukraine, a drone with an oversized battery pack buzzed above a children’s summer camp turned military base near the border with Slovakia. Against a landscape dotted with church spires in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, a soldier who goes by the call sign “Ravik” looked up.
“That sound is the scariest sound (on the front line),” said Ravik, who had a thick beard and wore a hoodie that covered the tattoos up and down his arms.
The officer had recently returned from nine months of combat in eastern Ukraine, where he led a team of soldiers flying inexpensive first-person view (FPV) drones armed with explosives into enemy territory. Advancements in drone technology, Ravik said, have made the battlefield more deadly. Back at the base, he was helping train other soldiers in the border guard’s combat unit to fly drones in battle.
Now in its fourth year of full-scale war against one of the most well-resourced militaries in the world, Ukraine has become the epicenter of modern drone warfare. The country burns through thousands of drones a month, challenging the might of Russia’s war machine and holding front lines in ways most thought was impossible. The drone arms race between Ukraine and Russia has made the war a proving ground for defense companies across the globe.
“If it flies in Ukraine, it’ll fly everywhere,” said Volodymyr Lymanets, the former head of the 190th Training Center, a major military training school. Facing Russia’s sophisticated electronic warfare, Ukraine’s military has had to rapidly improve its drones to match the pace of battlefield advancements. Other nations have taken notice.
A Ukrainian border guard pilots a DJI Matrice 30T Enterprise drone on the border of Ukraine and Slovakia on Oct. 13, 2025. Photos by P. Nick Curran | 100 Days in Appalachia
Drones and other technology tested or used in Ukraine are now being introduced along the United States border with Mexico, where the Trump administration has devoted tens of billions of dollars to bolster security in response to what it calls an “invasion” of migrants and drug traffickers.
One of the first U.S. agencies set to pilot the systems is the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona. The drone it’s testing, an earlier version of which was flown in Ukraine, can fly for up to seven hours and carry a payload of 100 pounds.
In doing so, the rural law enforcement agency has become a testing ground of its own as the Trump administration increases coordination between local police and federal agencies and expands its military presence along the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s a sign, experts say, of the increasingly blurred lines between such agencies and the wartime technology being rolled out on U.S. soil.
Once these tools and strategies are developed for military purposes, they “can easily be used in law enforcement and border control,” according to Kateryna Bondar, an expert on defense and international security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That spillover has fueled the rise of dual-purpose, military-grade technology in domestic border operations, adding to a virtual wall of cameras and sensors designed to make the boundary with Mexico impenetrable.
The influx marks a further escalation by the Trump administration to recast the border as a military zone within the United States at a time when illegal crossings are at 50-year lows. The administration has already declared an invasion, deployed active-duty military and labeled drug cartels and gangs like Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations.
“This narrative and rhetoric of ‘invasion, war, terrorism’ helps foster a sense of crisis or emergency in the country that will be able to help justify further power grabs down the road,” said Brian Finucane, a senior policy adviser at International Crisis Group. Finucane previously spent a decade at the State Department advising the government on military force and counterterrorism.
As these domestic operations become more frequent, few guardrails exist to oversee either the technologies or the agencies wielding them. In the past year alone, the administration has deployed Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and National Guard troops to U.S. cities in an unprecedented interior immigration enforcement campaign. Customs and Border Protection has also flown Predator drones to surveil protestors in Los Angeles, building on CBP’s decade-long use of Predator drones to assist local law enforcement.
“A lot of these more extreme measures that have played out at the border for decades” are now coming to the cities, said Timothy Dunn, a professor at Salisbury University in Maryland who specializes in the militarization of the southern border. “At a certain point, the police start looking like the military and acting like the military. And at another point, the military start acting like the police.”
The U.S. pioneered military drone use, but in Afghanistan and Iraq, it largely operated in airspace it controlled. Ukraine is fighting under very different conditions: It has turned cheap, off-the-shelf drones into frontline tools that must operate in contested skies against Russian aircraft and air defenses. The result, analysts say, is the world’s first true drone war.
Ukrainians initially flew commercial drones but quickly adapted them to counter Russia’s advanced systems. Today, the drones are resistant to electronic jamming, run custom software that obscures their launch point and fly longer thanks to fuel-burning or hybrid engines.
In a strip of forest outside Kyiv in October, soldiers in virtual reality goggles navigated FPV drones through an obstacle course made from hula hoops and pool noodles. The drone school, Dronarium, went from training civilians like journalists and filmmakers just three years ago to an essential component of combat readiness. Now, it’s taking operations abroad to places like Poland and Japan, recently training the Latvian National Guard.
A Ukrainian soldier learns to pilot a drone at Dronarium, a drone training center in a strip of forest in the Kyiv region of Ukraine on Oct. 9, 2025. Photo by Kostyantyn Chernichkin for AZCIR
The low cost and versatility of drones make them easy to use almost anywhere. Beyond carrying explosives to a target, they can support search-and-rescue missions in difficult terrain, deliver fertilizer to crops and monitor a border around the clock.
One drone can do the work of 30 guards or more, according to 1st Lt. Andrii Hrechka, who oversees the border guard along a stretch of Ukraine’s boundary with Slovakia. His unit, which once patrolled the agricultural region on foot, now relies on an inexpensive yet effective drone fleet.
In just three years, the commercial surveillance drones used by Hrechka’s guards have become more capable, with stronger antennas and more powerful cameras. Operators say software tweaks let the drones fly farther than off-the-shelf versions. At night, border guards launch infrared-equipped drones over high-traffic areas, maintaining a constant patrol by launching a new drone as soon as the previous one’s battery dies. One recently helped them catch 18 Ukrainians attempting to flee the country through a field.
For U.S. officials, these kinds of innovations are instructive. Federal agencies—and local law enforcement operating along the U.S.-Mexico border—have been studying how low-cost, adaptable drones can track people more safely and efficiently, particularly in rough terrain.
Arizona has become a major point of interest. Fort Huachuca, a sprawling military base near the state’s southern border, has long been the U.S. Army’s largest drone training center. Its controlled airspace has supported surveillance equipment testing since the Cold War, but its role expanded dramatically after 9/11, when the base became a key site for training soldiers to fly drones, including Predator-class aircraft, for operations in the Middle East.
Today, the kinds of military technologies deployed at bases like Fort Huachuca overlap with those used in border enforcement. Customs and Border Protection operates a fleet of unarmed Predator drones across the borderlands to detect drug smuggling and illegal crossings, and troops stationed at the border use military-grade radar and armored Stryker vehicles.
Cochise County, home to Fort Huachuca, is also piloting what its sheriff’s office calls a first-of-its-kind drone designed for border operations. Canadian manufacturer Draganfly is working with the office to develop the Outrider Southern Border drone, with the possibility of selling to other law enforcement agencies at the border. The sheriff’s office has said it plans to share the equipment with federal partners like Border Patrol as well.
Draganfly has touted its humanitarian work in Ukraine, including sending drones with temperature-controlled medical-delivery boxes, as part of its public messaging around the Cochise County project. “A version of the drone that we’re going to be providing to Cochise County was actually used to fly insulin into besieged cities,” CEO Cameron Chell told a local news station in July.
But the company later told AZCIR the Cochise County drone is not a replica of any system employed in Ukraine, nor adapted from a military context. In a statement, a spokesperson said the equipment “is purpose-built for the specific needs and constraints of that program,” though its design incorporates “broad lessons from past deployments—such as durability considerations and payload flexibility.”
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The Arizona drone will be larger than a standard surveillance drone—about nine feet across—and powered by a hybrid engine that will allow it to reach remote desert stretches while carrying heavier payloads. Draganfly has advertised a flight time of up to seven hours, far longer than the roughly 30 minutes typical of small surveillance drones, and sensors that can measure a human heart rate. During a public demonstration in Sierra Vista on Nov. 17, which AZCIR was barred from attending, officials highlighted how the drone could spot people crossing the border, assist in searches for missing individuals and deliver emergency supplies.
While Cochise County hasn’t yet purchased drones from Draganfly, the company’s humanitarian drone work has come under legal scrutiny elsewhere. A Florida charity that purchased the company’s drones to deliver medical supplies in Ukraine later sued Draganfly, claiming it received filming drones that weren’t suitable for a conflict zone. Draganfly disagreed with that characterization and challenged the case on jurisdictional grounds. The charity eventually withdrew the suit, citing a lack of funds.
Many Ukrainians are skeptical that “battle-tested in Ukraine” is much more than a marketing slogan. Western drones have performed poorly against Russian forces: They tend to be more expensive yet more vulnerable to jamming. Part of the problem is that American companies built drones to U.S. military specifications, which couldn’t keep up with rapid advancements on Ukraine’s battlefield, then were slow to respond to feedback. Questions remain about how well lessons from Ukraine’s electronic warfare proving ground actually transfer to domestic operations.
Skydio, the U.S.’s largest drone manufacturer, sent hundreds of drones to Ukraine at the war’s outset. CEO Adam Bry testified before Congress that the deployment informed the company’s next generation X10 surveillance drone, which can fly autonomously without GPS and features an advanced thermal camera. Bry said Ukraine has since requested thousands of the company’s updated system, though he has acknowledged that American drones, including his own initial version, have a poor reputation in Ukraine.
That hasn’t kept the U.S. government from investing in this and other drone companies. Skydio has partnerships with all branches of the military, including $12.3 million in recent contracts with the Army for its X10D drones, the defense version of the X10. Customs and Border Protection has begun purchasing Skydio’s X10D models as well.
The U.S. is also negotiating a deal in which Ukrainian companies would share their drone technology in exchange for royalties or other compensation. Joint U.S.-Ukrainian projects are already underway.
Photo by Kostyantyn Chernichkin for AZCIR
Drone technology’s shift from foreign battlefields to domestic law enforcement has coincided with a dramatic expansion of drone operations in the U.S.—and minimal oversight. Regulations haven’t kept pace, and there is no one federal standard governing how law enforcement should use drones or manage the data they collect.
In practice, agencies operate under a patchwork of state laws, internal policies and federal privacy principles that are largely nonbinding, giving many broad freedom to deploy drones without a warrant.
A 2024 Government Accountability Office report found that DHS lacks consistent requirements for evaluating bias or civil liberties risks across its detection and monitoring technologies, though the agency’s use of small drones did meet privacy requirements outlined in the Fair Information Practice Principles. Customs and Border Protection said it issued new privacy policies for its use of small drones in September but declined to share them.
With few checks to mitigate bias, the GAO warned, surveillance and monitoring tools could disproportionately impact certain communities or be used to target activity protected by the First Amendment, like protests. DHS initially agreed to the GAO’s recommendations but later resisted reforms around bias, citing staffing cuts within its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Meanwhile, drone use along the U.S.-Mexico border continues to surge. Today, CBP has a fleet of about 500 small unmanned systems, up from just a handful of drones six years ago.
Much of that growth has been in small reconnaissance drones similar to those flown widely in Ukraine, though a CBP spokesperson said the agency’s compact drones differ from the systems deployed there in unspecified ways. The smaller models are cheaper and more flexible than Predator-class aircraft, which carry a price tag of more than $28 million and cost thousands per hour to fly. The lower cost could allow for more extensive border surveillance, which some argue will deter crossings and protect officers navigating desert terrain.
“This 100% coverage with sensors and surveillance will make borders safer for both sides,” said Bondar, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Military presence along the southern border has grown at the same time. Under the Trump administration, more than 8,500 troops are stationed at the border, supporting surveillance operations and tracking drone incursions. Military leaders have openly discussed adapting Ukrainian tactics—at one base in Virginia, Marine Maj. Gen. Anthony Henderson instructed a colonel to replicate Ukraine’s rapid development of suicide drones after reading a New York Times Magazine article.
A military spokesperson called the influence of the Ukraine war at the southern border “transcendent,” saying lessons and technology from the conflict have helped U.S. soldiers detect “illicit and illegal activities.” Officials have said more than 1,000 unauthorized drones are spotted there each month, often used by cartels for reconnaissance or smuggling drugs and weapons.
Soldiers stationed at the border are tracking the unauthorized flights with an upgraded version of the Lockheed Martin radar systems Americans sent Ukraine to help defend against Russian aerial attacks in 2015.
Some experts question whether the current administration’s highly militarized response is warranted. Finucane, the former State Department attorney, has said he’s not aware of any drone attacks on U.S. personnel at the border that would demand combat-level escalations.
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“The border militarization under this administration has been political theater,” Finucane told AZCIR. “It fits into the broader narrative of casting immigrants as military adversary and enemy, and characterizing undocumented immigration as invasion.”
Some analysts warn that escalating counter‑drone operations could push the border region toward a form of electronic warfare. In Ukraine, both sides constantly adapt their drones to evade jamming and interference. If cartels and U.S. agencies follow the same cycle of rapid adaptation, the border could become the site of a similar technological arms race.
The United States has long imported battlefield tactics and equipment to the border, from Nixon’s war on drugs through the post-9/11 expansion of Homeland Security. But today’s political climate magnifies the stakes. Customs and Border Protection already has broad search and seizure powers within 100 miles of an international border—an area that covers two-thirds of the U.S. population and includes major cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and all of Florida—and beyond that zone, border agents can function like any other federal law enforcement.
Those powers are being exercised more aggressively nationwide. The Trump administration has deployed Border Patrol and ICE agents for raids and street arrests, many escalating into violent interactions documented on social media. National Guard troops now occupy growing numbers of U.S. cities despite local and state opposition. Legal permanent residents and U.S. citizens have been detained or arrested in these operations, while international students have faced detention for expressing political views that angered the administration.
Advocates fear that a rapidly expanding, lightly regulated drone surveillance system could be used in similarly retaliatory ways. With wide discretion for law enforcement, federal watchdogs and civil rights groups warn that drone use could infringe on civil rights or discriminate against certain groups.
“If you set up a whole system of enforcement with very little oversight and massive amounts of discretion and resources, you create the situation where, if somebody of ill will comes in, they can do a whole lot,” said Dunn, the border militarization expert.
“Once you empower this, it’s hard to take it back.”
This reporting was generously supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation. P. Nick Curran with 100 Days in Appalachia and Konstantin Chernichkin contributed photography and video. Olha Konovalova and Oleksei Oliyar contributed reporting from Ukraine.
