New Federal Counter-Drone Rule Gives Local Police and Jail Agencies a Path to Disable Drones

A DOJ and DHS rule could affect Kentucky jails, state prisons, police agencies, airport authorities, public-event security, and local budgets.

Jul 06, 2026

A drone in flight. A new DOJ and DHS rule creates a pathway for trained law enforcement and correctional agencies to conduct counter-drone operations around facilities, public events, and critical infrastructure. Photo: Samuel Schwendener / Wikimedia Commons / CC0

On July 6, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security published a 51-page interim final rule creating a counter-drone framework for state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement and correctional agencies. The rule is already in effect. It took effect on July 1, 2026, and public comments are due by September 4, 2026.

The rule does not give every police department or jail in Kentucky immediate permission to take down drones. It creates a pathway.

A Kentucky agency would need training, certification, approved technology, an operations plan, legal review, federal coordination, and reporting before using the authority covered by the rule.

The new federal rule opens the door for local and state agencies to build counter-drone capacity. Whether Kentucky agencies walk through that door will depend on decisions made by the Kentucky State Police, the Kentucky Department of Corrections, county jailers, sheriffs, police chiefs, fiscal courts, city councils, airport boards, and federal agencies that control training and equipment approvals.

DOJ and DHS wrote the rules for local counter-drone authority

The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security issued an interim final rule titled “Counter-UAS Authority for State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Law Enforcement and Correctional Agencies.” The rule was published in the Federal Register on July 6, 2026, under Docket No. FBI-2026-0001. It amends 6 CFR Part 124 and 28 CFR Part 124.

The rule implements part of the SAFER SKIES Act, which Congress passed as part of the fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. The Act amended federal law to allow state and local law enforcement and correctional agencies to conduct certain counter-drone activities after meeting federal training and certification requirements.

Before this change, state and local agencies generally could not conduct many counter-drone actions on their own because drones are aircraft and because federal communications, computer-fraud, wiretap, aircraft-piracy, and other laws create barriers to intercepting signals, disrupting control, or seizing an aircraft. The Federal Register rule says earlier federal law authorized DOJ and DHS to act in certain settings, but did not authorize state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies to take those measures themselves.

The new rule covers two broad categories of activity. The first category includes detecting, identifying, monitoring, tracking, warning, and confiscating drones. The second category is mitigation, which can include disrupting control, seizing control, disabling, damaging, or destroying a drone when the rule’s requirements are met.

The rule applies to law enforcement and correctional agencies. That makes it immediately relevant to jails, prisons, police agencies, sheriffs’ offices, airport security, large public gatherings, and critical infrastructure.

The rule creates a pathway, not automatic permission

What changes in practice are that DOJ and DHS have now written the operating rules for state and local agencies that want to use this authority. Congress created the authority in the SAFER SKIES Act. DOJ and DHS created the regulatory framework for training, certification, authorized technologies, operations plans, airspace coordination, spectrum coordination, reporting, privacy protections, data retention, and compliance.

The authority is not unlimited. An agency cannot simply buy a device and begin interfering with drones. The rule requires an agency to use systems or technologies on federal authorized lists maintained by DOJ, DHS, the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Communications Commission, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

The rule also separates lower-level detection and warning activity from more serious mitigation activity. Detection and warning certification may be available through online training. Mitigation authority is more restricted and requires certification through the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center, known as NCUTC.

The Federal Communications Commission issued a related order on July 2, 2026, granting 180 days of Special Temporary Authority for qualifying state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement and correctional agencies to conduct counter-drone activities that comply with the SAFER SKIES Act. The FCC order matters because many counter-drone systems use radio or electromagnetic means that implicate federal spectrum rules.

DOJ and DHS expect the program to scale quickly. The rule estimates that about 1,500 agencies may certify at the detection tier and about 150 agencies may certify at the mitigation tier within the first two years.

Training, approved equipment, operations plans, and federal coordination

The legal authority is now found in 6 U.S.C. § 124n. That statute allows trained and certified state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement and correctional agencies to take counter-drone actions when necessary to mitigate a credible threat to people, facilities, assets, large-scale public gatherings, critical infrastructure, or correctional facilities.

The statute authorizes several types of action. Agencies may detect, identify, monitor, and track a drone or unmanned aircraft system without prior consent, including by intercepting or accessing communications used to control the drone. They may warn the operator. Under stricter conditions, they may disrupt control, seize or exercise control, confiscate the drone, or use reasonable force to disable, damage, or destroy it.

The new rule adds the procedure. A participating agency must designate an Agency Approving Official. That person must hold a senior rank, or, in a smaller agency without an equivalent rank, the agency head or designee may serve in that role. The Agency Approving Official may approve counter-drone operations, but may not serve as the mitigation operator for the same operation.

Each mitigation operation, and some detection and warning operations, must be authorized through a C-UAS Operations Plan signed by the Agency Approving Official. The plan must include the submitting agency, points of contact, the operation type, planned dates, geographic location, venue type, any mutual-aid agencies, and other information required for federal coordination.

For fixed sites, including correctional facilities and critical infrastructure, the rule allows a standing operational window of up to 365 days, renewable with a renewal plan. That provision is important for Kentucky because prisons and jails are fixed facilities. An agency might seek recurring authority around a prison perimeter, jail building, airport, or other permanent location rather than asking for a one-day event approval each time.

The rule also creates reporting duties. Under the statute and FCC order, a mitigation action must be reported to DOJ and DHS within 48 hours. The report must include information such as date, time, location, and the action taken.

Privacy rules are part of the framework. Records of communications generally may not be kept longer than 180 days unless an exception applies, such as an investigation, prosecution, litigation, an ongoing security operation, or another legal requirement. The rule treats extracted “pattern data” differently, which means some information derived from operations may not be subject to the same 180-day limit.

The First Amendment provision deserves close attention. The rule says counter-drone authority may not be used solely to seize, monitor, deter, interfere with, or disrupt people exercising First Amendment rights. When operations occur at events where people are exercising those rights, personnel must minimize the collection, retention, and dissemination of information about those people.

Public records are another issue. The rule tells participating agencies to take steps available under state or local law to protect operationally sensitive information from disclosure through public records requests or civil discovery. It also says nothing in the rule requires an agency to act inconsistently with state or local public records law.

For Kentucky readers, that means the fight will not only be over whether an agency can stop a drone.

The local fight may be over what the public can see: budgets, vendor contracts, training records, implementation policies, legal reviews, data-retention rules, and after-action reporting.

Kentucky’s jails, prisons, airports, and public events are likely touchpoints

Kentucky has several obvious touchpoints.

The Kentucky Department of Corrections oversees 14 adult correctional facilities. Its Division of Local Facilities is charged with overseeing community-based residential programs and enforcement of minimum jail standards.

Kentucky also has a large county jail network. The Kentucky Association of Counties reported that Kentucky has 70 full-service jails, while 43 counties operate no jail and contract with neighboring facilities.

That jail network matters because correctional facilities are one of the clearest examples named in the federal rule. If a county jailer or the Department of Corrections seeks counter-drone authority, the decision could affect jail budgets, county procurement, training, mutual-aid agreements, open records, detainees, jail staff, nearby residents, and local taxpayers.

Drone contraband is not theoretical. DOJ announced in June 2026 that twelve people were indicted in an alleged drone-smuggling conspiracy involving ten prisons, including allegations tied to FCI Manchester in Kentucky. That federal prison case does not prove Kentucky state prisons or county jails have the same problem, but it shows why correctional agencies are likely to view drones as a security concern.

Kentucky airports are another point of contact. The Kentucky Department of Aviation is part of the Transportation Cabinet and provides support and service to Kentucky’s public airports, private runways, and heliports. Counter-drone operations near airports would require attention to federal aviation and spectrum rules, not only local police judgment.

Large public events may also become part of the conversation. The federal rule applies to venues or sets of venues used for large-scale public gatherings or events. In Kentucky, that could include events requiring law enforcement, emergency management, airport coordination, and local budget approval.

This is also a local government story. A sheriff’s office, police department, airport authority, or jail may pursue equipment, software, maintenance, training, or federal grant support. The public may first see the issue through a fiscal court agenda, a city council budget item, an airport board procurement, a state grant notice, or an open records dispute.

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What to watch and what you can do

The first action window is federal. Comments on the interim final rule are due by September 4, 2026, through Regulations.gov under Docket No. FBI-2026-0001. DOJ and DHS say comments sent by email or letter to department personnel will not count as comments on the rule.

Ask Kentucky agencies whether they plan to participate. Start with the Kentucky State Police, Kentucky Department of Corrections, county jailers, sheriffs, city police departments, airport boards, and emergency management offices.

Ask whether the agency has applied for training, certification, accreditation, federal grant funding, or access to the FBI Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal for counter-drone purposes. Ask who will serve as the Agency Approving Official.

Ask whether the agency has adopted or drafted an implementation policy. That policy should address who can operate the equipment, who can approve operations, what legal review occurred, what data may be collected, how long data may be kept, and what information will be available through public records.

Ask local fiscal courts and city councils whether any counter-drone equipment, software, maintenance agreement, vendor contract, or grant acceptance appears in the budget. The federal rule says it does not itself fund purchases. Local and state funding choices will determine whether this capacity appears in Kentucky communities.

Ask jailers and DOC what problem they are trying to solve. If the concern is contraband, request incident numbers, dates, reports, costs, and policy documents. If the concern is public-event safety, request the event plan, budget, law-enforcement agency involved, and federal coordination documents.

Ask how First Amendment protections will be enforced at protests, marches, political events, labor actions, vigils, public meetings, campaign events, and news-gathering activity. The federal rule contains First Amendment language. Kentucky agencies will have to translate that language into training, supervision, and records.

Ask what will remain public. Agencies may claim that some operational details are sensitive. Still, budgets, contracts, grant awards, vendor names, general policies, training counts, and retention rules should not disappear from public view without a specific legal basis.

For open records requests, ask for specific categories:

Any application, certification, accreditation, or correspondence related to DOJ, DHS, FBI NCUTC, FAA, FCC, or counter-drone authority.
Any counter-drone equipment purchase, vendor contract, subscription, maintenance agreement, grant application, or grant award.
Any implementation policy, detection and warning policy, data-retention policy, legal review, privacy review, or First Amendment guidance.
Any fiscal court, city council, airport board, jail, police department, sheriff’s office, or DOC agenda item involving counter-drone equipment or authority.
Any report of drone incidents at a jail, prison, public event, airport, courthouse, or critical infrastructure site.

No source reviewed for this article proves that Kentucky State Police, the Kentucky Department of Corrections, a Kentucky county jail, a sheriff’s office, or a city police department has already applied for this authority, bought equipment, or adopted a policy.

That is the next reporting question.

The federal rule is already in effect. The Kentucky decisions may come later, in budgets, grant paperwork, public-safety plans, jail policies, and procurement records. Those are the documents to watch.

Dispatches from Kentucky

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