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.
Los Alamos’ new counter-unmanned aircraft system (UAS) was installed and tested during the spring and early summer of 2018, and became operational in late summer, a lab spokesperson said. The system is not autonomous and relies on human operators for intercepts.
The system deployed at Los Alamos is a “commercial counter-UAS platform,” the NNSA said. Agency and lab representatives refused to 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.
Neither the NNSA nor the lab would say whether the system had detected or intercepted any drones.
Los Alamos’ counter-UAS system is the first of four 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.
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 the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
