The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) says it has deployed a system at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that can “detect, identify, track and intercept unsanctioned and suspicious drones.”
The Department of Energy agency announced the news in a press release Nov. 19, shortly before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. The NNSA did not say when Los Alamos’ new counter-unmanned aircraft system (UAS) became operational.
This is the first of four such systems the NNSA plans to install at Category 1 facilities that handle special nuclear materials: the Pantex Plant at Amarillo, Texas; the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and the Nevada National Security Site in Nevada. The other systems are due to be deployed in 2019.
Hazard Category 1 Nuclear Facilities are those that pose “significant” potential risks to people, places, and things outside federal property, according to the Department of Energy.
The system deployed at Los Alamos is a “commercial counter-UAS platform,” the NNSA said. The agency did not identify the vendor, or vendors, for the system’s component parts, or specify what those components are. The NNSA did say the Sandia National Laboratories, which has been researching counter-UAS systems for years, tested the Los Alamos system.
In 2017, the Federal Aviation Administration banned drone flights from the surface to 400 feet above ground level at seven Department of Energy sites: the Hanford Site in Washington state; Pantex; Los Alamos; the Idaho National Laboratory ; the Savannah River Site in South Carolina; and Y-12 and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
