The US Division of Homeland Safety, in collaboration with the Protection Analysis and Growth Canada, is seeking to ship autonomous drones and automobiles alongside the US-Canada border this fall, testing which merchandise can stream surveillance video and sensor information between the 2 nations utilizing business 5G networks.
A brand new DHS name for members frames the experiment, often known as ACE-CASPER, as a multiday train “simulating a nationwide emergency response state of affairs,” with drones and floor automobiles relaying dwell feeds to a bi-national command-and-control heart as they cross the border. Car autonomy, the doc notes, is secondary to its major purpose: demonstrating “resilient, persistent 5G communications.”
DHS and DRDC didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Scheduled for November, the assessments could be the primary joint US-Canada cross-border expertise experiment alongside their shared border in almost a decade. From 2011 by 2017, the 2 governments staged 5 cross-border drills beneath a program called CAUSE, testing whether or not emergency responders on both aspect of the road may share radios, video, and information with their counterparts throughout the border.
Whereas couched in public security, search and rescue, and emergency response, DHS describes lots of the capabilities the experiment will train in martial phrases, asking distributors to reveal, as an illustration, the flexibility of autonomous automobiles to collect “real-time battlefield intelligence.” The sought-after aerial techniques are described as “Command and Management: Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance” platforms—or C2ISR—an acronym borrowed from the US Division of Protection, linked to the development of “kill chains.”
DHS introduced the drone trials by authorities procurement channels by the division’s analysis and growth department, the Science and Know-how Directorate (S&T), in partnership with Protection Analysis and Growth Canada, its northern counterpart.
The directorate sits on the technical heart of the US federal authorities’s home counter-drone program following restructuring beneath an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in 2025. Final week, S&T’s Nationwide City Safety Know-how Laboratory launched a counter-drone purchasing tool, designed to information police and emergency-response businesses within the Washington, DC, area—and the 11 US states internet hosting FIFA World Cup matches this summer season.
The identical executive-order bundle additionally prioritized procurement of American-made drones and reserved authorities contract alternatives for home producers—a serious market opening for the US drone trade, additional widened by a current Federal Communications Fee designation that bars new foreign-made drones from US wi-fi networks.
Any universe of firms positioned to answer the decision for the November trials would come with a number of distributors with ties to the president’s elder grownup sons.
Powerus Company, the Florida-based drone producer that recently merged with a golf course company that has backing from Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., is one. Anduril Industries, through which Trump Jr.’s personal agency invested last year, produces a collection of drones geared towards battlefield surveillance for the Pentagon, whereas holding DHS’s largest border-security contract: a $1.1 billion agreement to deploy AI-powered surveillance towers alongside the southern border.
“Powerus welcomes any effort by DHS to strengthen border safety by superior autonomous techniques,” Powerus cofounder Brett Velicovich tells WIRED. “Defending American borders is precisely the mission our expertise was constructed for, and we’re inspired to see the federal government shifting urgently on this route.”
Uncommon Machines, an Orlando, Florida, drone-components maker the place Trump Jr. beforehand served as adviser and obtained inventory that’s price roughly $4.4 million at this time, doesn’t promote on to the federal government, an organization spokesperson tells WIRED, however does promote to suppliers who do.
Xtend, the Israeli drone maker now backed by Eric Trump, additionally opened a Tampa, Florida, headquarters in summer season 2025 and introduced a multimillion-dollar contract from a Pentagon special-operations workplace final fall. Xtend declined WIRED’s request for remark.
