The Pentagon shoots down a Border Patrol drone with a laser near Fort Hancock, Texas.

OK. Hold the phone. I want to tell you a story about two agencies of the federal government of the United States that, on a Thursday in February 2026, in the air above Fort Hancock, Texas, on the same border they are both supposed to be securing, failed to coordinate with each other and one of them shot down the other’s drone with a laser.

I am not making this up.

Customs and Border Protection, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, flies unmanned aerial systems near the southern border to do its job, which is to protect the border.

The Pentagon, now branded as the Department of War, operates military airspace in the same region, including anti-drone laser systems recently deployed to take down unauthorized aerial vehicles.

On Thursday, CBP flew a drone into military airspace without notifying the Pentagon. The Pentagon, doing what it is paid to do when an unauthorized drone enters its airspace, engaged the drone with the laser and brought it down.

The Pentagon then said, in a calmly-worded joint statement: the engagement occurred when the Department of War employed counter-unmanned aircraft system authorities to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace.

Hon. Stay with me. The Department shot down the Department’s drone. The agency the Department of War was protecting itself from was the Department of Homeland Security, which is also part of the same federal government. The border the Department of War was protecting from the unmanned aerial system was being protected, on the exact same Thursday, by that same unmanned aerial system.

It is the second time in two weeks that the new anti-drone laser has shot something down over Texas soil. The first time, last week, the Pentagon shot down a small civilian drone. The system works. It works very well. That is not in dispute. What is in dispute is what the system is shooting at.

Buddy. I have run a kitchen with three line cooks on a Friday night. I have also not coordinated. I also have, on a Friday in July of 2007, sent the fish for table six to the wrong table. I have also shouted at the busboy about it. Fine. That is one kitchen. That is one boss. The kitchen in this story is the federal government of the United States, which has a budget of six and a half trillion dollars, and two of the agencies in it did not manage to send each other an email before Thursday afternoon about who is flying where.

You ever notice how the people who say the border is broken are the same people whose agencies keep shooting their own drones?

Funny. How. That. Works.