U.S. Just UNLEASHED Star Wars Weapons on the Cartels

The Military Show

Become a Member Today and Unlock EXCLUSIVE Videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKfak8fBm_Lhy4eX9UKxEpA/join  The U.S. military has deployed directed-energy weapons along the southern border, using the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) to burn cartel-operated drones out of the sky for just $3 per shot. As drug cartels expand their use of drones for cross-border surveillance and attacks, America is countering with laser technology and mass-produced counter-drone swarms. Discover how this futuristic defense system is reshaping border security and neutralizing cartel threats.     ⏱️ CHAPTERS: 00:00 - US Military Deploys Anti-Drone Laser 01:08 - AMP-HEL Laser Destroys Cartel Drones 02:18 - Xbox Controller Operations and Drone Swarms 03:32 - $3 Per Shot AMP-HEL Laser Costs 04:46 - Drone Jamming Countermeasures vs High Energy Lasers 06:02 - Weather Vulnerabilities of Directed Energy Weapons 07:18 - Mexican Drug Cartel Drone Surveillance History 08:34 - Cartel Weaponized Drones and Smuggling Tactics 09:50 - MQ-9 Reaper Drones Anti-Cartel Operations 11:06 - US Army Bradley UGV Drone Carrier 12:20 - Rio Grande Valley Cartel Drone Traffic 13:36 - US Customs Border Protection Directed Energy 14:52 - Joint Task Force Southern Border Defense 16:08 - Mexico Deployment Against Cartel Drone Warfare 17:22 - Is the US Winning the Border Drone War?  Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join  #militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis #themilitaryshow  SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/ipbFF32N

Transcript

00:01As we look at how modern militaries respond to threats and our mind boggles, the weapons

00:06of the future have become the weapons of today, and they're doing so at such a rapid rate

00:12that it feels like we're in a sci-fi movie.

00:15That's how the cartel members operating on the US border must feel right now.

00:19A new Star Wars weapon has been unleashed on the cartels, as the US has levelled up its

00:25campaign against the drug lords who create the poison that is being shipped into America.

00:30This is the future made current.

00:33Lasers are being used to burn drones to cinders, and the cartels' attempts at asymmetric warfare

00:39against the US are falling apart in front of their eyes.

00:43Toward the end of August, the news broke that the US military had destroyed three cartel-operated

00:48drones near the border shared by the US and Mexico.

00:51Big whoop, you might think.

00:53It's three drones.

00:55Hardly a newsworthy event.

00:57And in any normal situation, we'd be inclined to agree with you.

01:00However, the reason why this trio of drones is so important isn't because of the types

01:04of drones they were or what they carried.

01:07These three drones matter because of the weapon that the US used to send them crashing

01:11to the ground.

01:12It wasn't missiles, nor was it bullets.

01:15America used a laser weapon named the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser to fry these

01:22drones as they flew.

01:24We reveal more in a moment, but first this channel is built by real people who care about

01:28getting the story right.

01:30Subscribe, join the conversation below, and consider becoming a member to support human-made

01:35military reporting and unlock exclusive content.

01:38The US hasn't revealed exactly where on the border this incident took place, likely to

01:44hide the exact location of its new laser weapon.

01:47But it did reveal that the drones in question posed a physical threat to US Customs and Border

01:53Protection agents, as well as the US military, which was more than enough reason to take them

01:59down.

01:59America isn't trying to hide the fact that this weapon exists.

02:02If anything, it's happy to publicize the new laser weapon, as it knows that doing so will

02:07give cartel members something to think about whenever they attempt to use drones in the

02:11border regions.

02:12No less than the US Department of Defense has also reported on the destruction of the

02:18three drones.

02:19And it shares a quote from Major General Curtis Taylor, who is the commander of Joint Task Force

02:25Southern Border.

02:26The successful defeat of these adversarial drones is a direct testament to the readiness,

02:32vigilance and technological edge of the Joint Task Force.

02:36By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed energy capabilities like

02:41this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance,

02:46Taylor declares.

02:47What we have just seen is the very first instance of the use of a laser system to destroy drones

02:52used by the cartel.

02:53Well, this is the future of warfare happening today.

02:57And that laser is being joined by a swarm of American drones that will also be used to

03:02counter the cartel threat on the border.

03:04The future of warfare is obviously going to include mass attritable drones, a Department

03:09of Defense official declares, as the department reveals that it's developing a multi-layered counter-drone

03:14system that will combine drones and what it calls directed energy systems.

03:19Indeed, the US seems to be going all-in on drone technology, both counter and offensive.

03:24Toward the end of 2025, the US Army revealed plans to build a million drones per year.

03:30An impressive number, sure, but perhaps not as impressive as the eight million drones that

03:35the national interest reports China can build annually.

03:38But it's a good starting point, indicating that the US is developing an industrial base for

03:42mass production of drones.

03:44Ars Technica adds that the Pentagon has also requested $54 billion for various drone-related

03:49projects.

03:50That's more than the military budgets of most nations, showing that the US is taking drone

03:55technology more seriously than ever before.

03:58That's bad news for the cartels.

04:01They thought they had the jump on the US when it came to drones, only to discover that America

04:05is going to spend so much that it will blow right past the drug lords that it's fighting.

04:11Still, it's not the influx of drones that the cartels will be most worried about.

04:15It's all of this news about a laser.

04:18Somehow, the US has come up with a weapon that seems as though it's been pulled straight

04:22out of Star Wars, and it's placed that weapon in the worst possible place for the cartels.

04:28Here's what we know about the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser.

04:32Also known as Amphel, this laser appears to have been operational even before the Department

04:37of Defense revealed the information about the trio of drones that it destroyed.

04:43Migflug reports that the laser has actually been firing since August 25th, and that the

04:48three drones reported on August 28th aren't its only kills.

04:52In fact, 11 drones have been lasered out of the sky in 10 days of operation.

04:57That tells us how effective this weapon is.

05:00The Amphel is a vehicle-mounted laser that is aimed using devices that you could go online

05:05and purchase in a matter of minutes.

05:07A tablet computer is used to provide a visual readout of the surrounding area, enabling

05:12targeting.

05:13To ensure that the laser is pointed in the right direction, operators use a controller from

05:17an Xbox video game system.

05:19As crazy as that might sound, it's a smart move.

05:23These devices are familiar to a huge portion of the US Army.

05:27According to a Taylor & Francis study, around 43% of 10,000 soldiers surveyed play video games

05:34at least once a week.

05:35Unsurprisingly, the numbers rise as soldiers get younger.

05:38Junior enlisted soldiers are the most regular players, with up to 59% of them spending time

05:45with their joysticks in their hands at least once per week.

05:48Analog gaming joysticks, we mean.

05:50So what the Amphel does provide is a method of control that is already used by over half

05:56of the young soldiers in the US Army.

05:59That's ideal for training.

06:01Soldiers who spend their time playing Madden and Call of Duty aren't going to take long

06:05to figure out a combined tablet and Xbox controller setup, meaning they'll be firing lasers with ease very quickly.

06:12America's new drone destroyer costs somewhere between $17.4 and $25 million per unit.

06:19Which may sound like a lot, but it's set to become one of America's most important anti-drone devices.

06:24However, that high unit cost is balanced out by something very important.

06:29Each shot of the Amphel laser weapon costs just $3.

06:34If you need to know why that's so important, you only need to look at how the US was dealing

06:38with aerial threats

06:39during Operation Epic Fury.

06:41The US is believed to have burned through a little over $13 billion worth of various interceptor missiles,

06:47including Patriot, THAAD, Standard Missile 3 and Standard Missile 6 interceptors.

06:52Some of those individual interceptors cost millions or even tens of millions of dollars each.

06:58Cartel drones will often be slower, simpler and far cheaper,

07:02making such a massive expenditure even harder to justify on the border.

07:06So it's clear why burning a cartel drone out of the sky with a $3 laser shot is far more

07:12economical

07:12than firing a multi-million dollar missile at it.

07:15But what about jamming?

07:17If the US wants a low-cost option to deal with cartel drones,

07:20jamming their signals might be just as cheap and effective as the Amphel in operation.

07:24And the electronic warfare devices used to emit jamming signals would cost significantly less.

07:29This is true in some respects and not true in others.

07:33A jammer is cheaper to build and doesn't cost much to use, sure.

07:38But think about what happens to a jammed drone.

07:41Jamming simply affects the navigational signals being delivered to a drone.

07:45With a one-way attack drone, such as those Russia uses against Ukraine or Iran used against the US,

07:51then that's fine.

07:52An attack drone will usually crash somewhere away from its target once its signals are jammed.

07:57But the types of quadcopter drones the cartel typically use are designed to fly back and forth.

08:03If one of those drones is jammed, an operator could just fly it out of the range of the device,

08:08causing the jamming, and eventually bring it back to base.

08:12The drone is stopped for a night, perhaps, but it can be sent out again later.

08:16And even if they can't, the cartels will be able to use these types of incidents to map out

08:20where the US has installed its signal jammers.

08:23A laser weapon that can fire over massive distances and destroy drones in seconds is far more effective,

08:29both in terms of simply taking a cartel drone out of the game

08:32and when it comes to concealing US operations.

08:35However, for as impressive as the Ampel is, it isn't the perfect anti-drone weapon.

08:41It, along with all laser weapons, has a distinct weakness that means this laser is best used

08:46as part of a multi-layered defense system, just as Taylor and the Department of Defense suggest.

08:52But before we explain more, this is a reminder that you're watching the military show.

08:56If this is the kind of insight you want to see, then make sure you are subscribed and have notifications

09:01enabled.

09:02We break it down like this every single day.

09:06There is one thing that stands in the way of any laser weapon, the weather.

09:10Various weather conditions can impact a laser's effectiveness even though a laser beam moves at the speed of light.

09:16High winds are one of those conditions, as has been discovered in ongoing evaluations of the Locust laser weapon system.

09:24Any conditions that lead to reduced visibility, such as fog, cloud and haze, can impact a laser,

09:31though these conditions also impact drones, particularly their sensors and navigation systems.

09:36The same can be said for high winds.

09:38It's not easy to keep a lightweight quadcopter drone on course when the wind is blowing hard.

09:42More worrying is that rain and water vapor can scatter a laser beam, limiting the amount of power that can

09:48be delivered to a target.

09:50We won't say that drones are rain-proof – they're not – but they can operate better in the rain

09:56than a laser.

09:57As a result, the Ampel needs to be part of a multi-layered system, which is why the US is

10:02combining it with other forms of defense,

10:04including the incoming swarms of drones we mentioned.

10:08Weaknesses aside, the Ampel is here, and it's burning through cartel drones on the border.

10:13The weapon is only just getting started, and it seems likely that more will arrive as these initial engagements have

10:20proven its effectiveness.

10:21That's bad news for the cartels.

10:24These organizations often act like small armies in their own right, and that extends right through to the use of

10:30the sorts of asymmetric tactics that we've seen come to the fore in the 21st century.

10:34In other words, drones account for a large amount of modern cartel operations.

10:38Just how much might surprise you?

10:41It really shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that the cartels are using drones, of course.

10:45Why wouldn't they? Small and difficult to spot flying machines that can cross the border into the US with relative

10:51ease sounds perfect for drug lords.

10:54But as Small Wars Journal points out, cartels have been employing drones as early as 2010, primarily to smuggle drugs

11:01over the border.

11:02In a sense, the cartels figured out how useful drones could be far earlier than the US.

11:07And as time has gone on, cartel use of drones has gotten more creative, and in many cases, more lethal.

11:13The same outlet notes that 2017 saw Mexican Federal Police discover a cartel drone that was loaded with explosive,

11:20which is something of a precursor to the way that we now see strike drones being used in places like

11:25Ukraine.

11:26A couple of years later, the cartels were using their drones to gather intelligence and conduct reconnaissance.

11:33It's easy to see how a drone buzzing along the border could spot the presence of border guards and, more

11:38importantly,

11:39gaps in border defences that could be exploited by drug-carrying drones or even people on the ground.

11:45The Atlantic Council points out that cartel innovation goes even further than that.

11:50They pioneered submersible boats equipped with Starlink to evade maritime patrols, built heavily armoured narco tanks to storm enemy strongholds,

11:58and engineered sophisticated smuggling compartments hidden in tractor trailers, the think tank says in a September 2025 article.

12:07There is even some evidence to suggest that cartel operatives travelled to Ukraine under false pretenses to receive training in

12:13the Ukrainian Foreign Legion

12:15before escaping back home with their ill-gotten knowledge.

12:18Today, the cartels use drones for all sorts of purposes.

12:21There are the obvious, which we've already covered.

12:24Drones are ideal for carrying drugs over the border,

12:26and they can be loaded with video cameras to provide real-time surveillance footage of border defences.

12:32According to Brookings, some 1,000 drones were crossing over from Mexico into the US back in March 2024,

12:39and it wouldn't be surprising to see that the numbers have increased substantially since then.

12:44However, cartels don't just use drones on the border.

12:47They also use them to gather intelligence on other cartels, and in some cases, on entire regional populations.

12:54In this sense, drones are as much a tool for intimidation for the cartels as they are required for pure

12:59utility.

13:00Just imagine that you're a regular person living in a town where a cartel is active.

13:05Whenever you leave the house, you hear the tell-tale buzzing of a drone overhead.

13:09Maybe it pauses, watches you for a moment before moving on.

13:13You now have this ever-present threat that the cartel is watching what you do,

13:17which also means that any interaction you have with any law enforcement

13:20or anybody that the cartel considers a threat could be observed and then held against you.

13:25Maybe the next drone you see will be loaded with an explosive.

13:29Perhaps it won't. You would never know until it's too late.

13:32Cartels are now using drones to carry out attacks,

13:35such as we see with the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación bombing of rural areas in Michoacán,

13:41which help to keep normal people out so that the cartel can use the land for whatever it wants to

13:46use it for.

13:47The same group also carried out a drone attack against the state prosecutor's office in Tijuana back in October 2025.

13:54And as the drone technology improves, so does precision,

13:58making the cartels that have adopted this technology even more lethal.

14:01The US can't stop all of this drone usage.

14:05Anything happening inside Mexico or beyond is outside of American jurisdiction unless some sort of deal is struck.

14:11But we tell you all of this to show how expansive the cartels' collective use of drone technology has become.

14:18The stats bear this out.

14:20According to Border Report, cartel drones flew along the US border around 60,000 times in a six-month period

14:27in 2025.

14:28Most didn't cross. That wasn't the point.

14:31But this breaks down into an average of 328 cartel drones coming within 500 metres of the US border every

14:38single day.

14:39The cartels are also increasingly using drones in the sorts of attacks we touched on.

14:43Small Wars Journal says that 221 weaponized drone incidents attributed to cartels or other criminal groups happened in Mexico between

14:522021 and 2025.

14:5477 people were killed in total.

14:56It's not too much of a stretch to assume that the cartels may one day decide that using weaponized drones

15:01against border guards could become a viable tactic.

15:04So when the US says that drones are the biggest physical threat that its border forces face, it isn't lying.

15:10The counter is a laser weapon so lethal that it can burn a drone out of the sky in seconds

15:15at a cost of just $3 per drone shot down.

15:18For the US, the emergence of Amphel on the scene means that the border defense against cartel drones has just

15:23gotten a whole lot stronger.

15:25Not that the US wasn't already proving effective before.

15:28According to News Nation, the US has shot down at least 300 drones with suspected links to the cartels between

15:36January and September, and these operations are escalating.

15:40100 of these drones were destroyed in August, which includes the trio that Amphel took out to start its laser

15:47-based rampage against the cartel drones.

15:49On September 9th, unnamed sources with Customs and Border Protection claimed that the number of cartel-linked drones flying in

15:56Texas's Rio Grande Valley has fallen by 75% since the US deployed its new laser weapon.

16:02We don't know what that means in full context, as the sources didn't provide any numbers beyond the percentage, so

16:08we can't say what this reduction looks like in real figures.

16:11But it's a good start, and the US will be hoping that more Amphels on the border could have similar

16:16effects elsewhere.

16:18Adding to cartel concerns is that both the US and Mexico are taking other anti-drone measures.

16:24On September 19th, Task and Purpose revealed that the US is moving MQ-9 Reaper drones that it had stationed

16:30in Africa to Latin America.

16:32These drones are capable of carrying out airstrikes, and it's being reported that they're heading to Latin America in preparation

16:38for the ramping up of anti-cartel operations.

16:42Ecuador has also confirmed that there are US Green Berets actively conducting anti-cartel operations on its territory right now,

16:50along with US Marines.

16:52And according to a September 14th report by Texas Public Radio, Mexico is also deploying troops at a higher rate

16:58to counter cartel-drone activity on the border.

17:01The cartel's halcyon days of being able to use drones to get drugs into the US are coming to an

17:08end.

17:08A laser weapon pulled out of Star Wars is just the start.

17:12As it rattles off $3 beams of light that burn drones in the air, American drones, border forces from both

17:18US and Mexico,

17:19and even operatives working inside Latin America are all combining to shut the cartels down.

17:25The future is here.

17:27And finally, it's looking like the US is pulling ahead of the cartels in the use of modern technologies.

17:33Of course, the cartels should be worried about America's new laser weapon.

17:37But this is far from the only innovation that America has brought to the table recently.

17:42The US is adapting M2A4 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles to become carriers of swarms of unmanned ground vehicles that it

17:50may soon be able to deploy in war zones.

17:52Find out everything you need to know by watching our video.

17:55Though before you do, we're real people producing researched and fact-checked military reporting.

18:00If you want to support that, subscribe, share your thoughts below, and consider becoming a member for exclusive content we

18:07don't publish publicly.

18:08And thank you for watching.

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