Pentagon authorizes DHS testing of Active Denial System for possible border use
Rights & JusticeWell-coveredThe Facts
- The Pentagon authorized DHS to test the Active Denial System for possible use at the southern border.
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed the authorization memo last month.
- The authorization provides DHS one Active Denial System on a seven-month temporary loan.
- The Active Denial System emits an invisible beam of electromagnetic waves.
- The system is designed to cause a burning sensation on a person’s skin.
- The authorization does not mean DHS will deploy the system at the border.
- DHS has not specified where or how it would test or use the system.
- The memo says Department of War personnel will not operate the system.
Context
What is the Active Denial System?
It is a military-described nonlethal directed-energy system that sends an invisible electromagnetic beam over a distance of more than half a mile and produces a burning sensation on the skin. CNN International Hindustan Times abc15 Arizona
What did the Pentagon authorize?
The Pentagon approved a temporary seven-month loan of one system to DHS for testing and development of tactics for potential southern-border operations. Axios Hindustan Times Military
Has the system been approved for deployment at the border?
No. The authorization permits testing and tactical development, and reports said DHS had not specified testing locations or methods. Axios Hindustan Times Economic Times
Where Left and Right agree
Left and right largely agree on this one.
- What both sides accept
- Both frame the authorization as genuinely limited and currently unspecified — a seven-month loan with no stated location or method — and both want DHS to specify those details before deployment proceeds.
- Where Left and Right differ in emphasis
- The left and the right both want DHS to specify details, but differ on what the gap means.
How left and right read it
Putting a weapon built to burn skin into an agency's hands without saying where or how it will be tested puts power ahead of accountability. The Pentagon's own personnel will not operate the system, yet nothing says who will, or when, which is why deploying it at the border would be, as CNN notes, an unprecedented step. The rules for its use should be settled before any test.
“Deploying the heat ray at the US border would be an unprecedented step, even for the Trump administration, which has made border security and clamping down on immigration a top priority.” — CNN International
A sovereign nation that controls its border has every right to test new tools before ruling on their use, and the restraint built into this authorization is the point. DHS should be made to specify where and how it tests the system before anyone treats this as a green light for the border.
The authorization is a seven-month loan still missing rules for who runs the device and where — filling that gap is the real ask.
The receipts — 48 sources
Independent coverage (48)
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