America's Counter-Drone Authority Is Real, The Capacity Isn't Yet

Here is a number worth sitting with: federal teams seized roughly 700 drones around World Cup venues this summer. Seven hundred — at one tournament, in one season, with the best-resourced counter-drone units in the world on the field. That figure is a success story and a warning in the same breath: the threat volume is enormous, and the federal government cannot be the only team suiting up for it.Until this year, it legally had to be. The power to disable a hostile drone belonged to a short list of federal agencies, which left a state trooper at a stadium gate or a corrections captain watching an aircraft hover over his yard with nothing but binoculars and a report form. Congress ended that with the SAFER SKIES Act in December's defense bill, and the DHS-Justice framework implementing it has been in force since July 1: state, local, tribal, and territorial police and corrections agencies that complete federal training and certification, on approved equipment, can now track a threatening drone and — against a credible threat — take it out of the sky above major venues, critical infrastructure, and prisons.And in the past week, Washington has shown it means to deliver. The Justice De...