Small, explosive-laden drones were allegedly part of a foiled attack on the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House on Sunday, FBI Director Kash Patel announced via social media on Tuesday.
With well over 1 million drones registered in the U.S., incursions at sporting arenas, military installations, and other locations have become more rampant. Per an FBI affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, the White House is allegedly a target, too.
Patel said the FBI on June 10 was alerted to the “potential threat” to the UFC event and that multiple suspects have been apprehended. He called the plot a “multi-state operation.” Fox News, which was first to report the alleged plan, said five people are in custody as of Monday and that 23 people have been identified by the FBI as part of a “network” that communicated via an encrypted chat on the messaging app Signal.
Fox reported that, per court documents, one of the alleged perpetrators urged the group to procure “as many and as deadly [explosive-laden drones] as we can get.”
According to the affidavit, the group intended to stage a “demonstration” north of the White House before flying the drones into buildings, forcing a mass evacuation and steering the crowd of thousands toward a team of snipers.
“While the demonstration was taking place, the group would fly small, unmanned aircraft (i.e. drones) laden with unspecified explosive devices which would detonate over the north side of the UFC arena,” it said. “When the unmanned aircraft detonated, the intent was to force the crowd attending the UFC event and high value targets (HVTs) to evacuate to the south.”
Per the affidavit, the encrypted Signal chat contained blueprints for “sniper locations, potential drone launch locations, and other detailed tactical planning.”
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he had not heard about the alleged attack, NBC News reported.
Earlier this year, WPTV-TV in Palm Beach, Florida, reported that an anti-drone laser was installed near Palm Beach International Airport (KPBI) to protect Trump and his Mar-a-Lago estate. The Pentagon has been testing Aerovironment’s Locust counter uncrewed aircraft system (C-UAS), which similarly uses a directed energy laser, for potential wider deployment nationwide.
Countering Rogue Drones
U.S. officials and lawmakers are devoting more and more resources to the potential threat of uncrewed aircraft.
The NFL in 2025 said it recorded more than 2,000 drone incursions into stadium temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) in each of the league’s previous three seasons, with the figure rising each year. Earlier in 2026, the FBI investigated a string of drone incursions at Major League Baseball games, and the FAA warned drone pilots to steer clear of Coors Field in Denver.
Drones are largely prohibited from flying near sensitive locations such as military installations or congested airspace such as near airports. The FAA uses TFRs to inform pilots where they can and cannot fly and this year adopted a harsher enforcement framework for UAS violations.
Still, drones remain “one of the most significant safety concerns” for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Douglas Olson, the FBI senior coordinating official on the White House’s World Cup task force, testified in April.
Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401), a unit created last year to coordinate C-UAS activities across the federal government, has allocated $100 million for “mobile counter-drone technologies” in nine World Cup host states. That’s in addition to $250 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s C-UAS Grant Program that covers all 11 host states, as well as America’s 250th anniversary celebrations in Washington, D.C., such as Sunday’s UFC event.
Federal agencies have additionally ordered drone-catching nets, drone-controlling devices, and other C-UAS technologies for the World Cup. JIATF 401 has been training state and local law enforcement personnel to use them at the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center in Alabama. The task force has further assisted the FBI, Pentagon, and Homeland Security Department (DHS) with site protection plans.
It is unclear whether any C-UAS systems have been deployed at World Cup matches since the event began last week. The authorization to use such systems was only granted to state and local entities a few months ago, leaving the FBI and DHS as the lone agencies with years of experience handling drone threats.
Still, federal agents did not intercept multiple unidentified drones that flew over the military installation housing U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and State Secretary Marco Rubio. It is unclear what capabilities they may have had to deal with the alleged attack on the White House, had the FBI not foiled it.
