Document Type

Report

Publication Date

4-2026

Abstract

In 2025, the U.S. Government designated six Mexico-based cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists. Cartel-associated drone encounters at the Southern border have grown sharply in frequency and sophistication, while in the Mexican interior a growing number of cartels are weaponizing drones against rivals, civilians, and security forces. U.S. defense and law enforcement leaders have linked these platforms to reconnaissance, smuggling, and kinetic operations that may threaten U.S. personnel, communities, and critical infrastructure. Addressing this trend requires expanding beyond tactical counter-UAS responses (detect and defeat) toward upstream interventions that characterize and disrupt the supply chains producing operational UAS capabilities for malign actors. To support this shift, NCITE has developed the Malign Supply Chain Operations Reference for UAS (M-SCOR UAS) model to map how terrorist and cartel actors plan, source, build, deliver, and recover UAS components and systems.1 The M-SCOR UAS model gives law enforcement and homeland security practitioners a structured view of the adversarial network, identifying the points where intervention is most feasible and most likely to degrade malign drone capability.

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