FBI Director Kash Patel told U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Montgomery) Tuesday the Bureau wants to triple the size of its counter-drone school at Redstone Arsenal – and named college football games among the targets the Huntsville program exists to protect.
Britt asked at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing what the FBI needs from Congress, with the 2028 Olympics and “the football games that we see every weekend” ahead, “to continue that success that we saw with the World Cup?”
“We had about 7 million people come for those World Cup games, and over the course of 38 days, what we were able to do was establish a system of localized law enforcement, partner with the federal government to train them on the counter-UAS programs … which take place at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, the first of its kind,” Patel said.
“We saw threats based on counter-UAS systems that could easily target innocent Americans at sporting events, state fairs, college football games, World Cup, what have you. So we found a way to alleviate that threat by training state and locals, and by deploying assets into the field instead of keeping them in Washington, D.C.”
“We need more resources to get more personnel to the field, but we also need more resources to get the right kit … We need every state and local authority to have their own resources … We want to triple the size of our counter drone-school down at Redstone Arsenal.”
The FBI opened the National Counter-UAS Training Center at Redstone in November 2025 under President Trump’s executive order.
U.S. Rep. Dale Strong (R-Huntsville) cut the ribbon with the first graduating class.
Patel made the same Redstone pitch to Britt at a Senate appropriations hearing in May.
Strong first filed the National Training Center for Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Act in 2024 and refiled it this Congress.
In March he told a House Homeland Security hearing that rogue drones over stadiums “may represent one of the greatest security challenges we face.”
Patel also pitched Britt on the FBI’s Kinetic Cyber Range at Redstone.
“The kinetic cyber range is maybe one of the best things that we have in the FBI. We literally built a town indoors in Huntsville, Alabama—an entire town consists of housing, schools, car shops, streets so we can practice and train against the modern cyber threat on all ecosystems.”
Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
