Joint Interagency Task Force 401 director, Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, delivers remarks at the Mark Center in Alexandria, Va., Nov. 25, 2025. (Photo/Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)
By Troy Turner
HUNTSVILLE — The War Department and FBI both have reasons to move forward fast in a strategic alliance to protect the nation from unmanned aerial threats, and Alabama is playing a strategic role.
Specifically, the FBI’s National Counter-UAS Training Center, which celebrated its opening late in 2025 on Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville as a specialized training center focused on drones.
Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, Joint Interagency Task Force 401 director, visited Alabama last week to solidify the strategic alliance being built to combine resources. One of those resources critical to the effort is the Huntsville training center, which some officials tab as one of the most advanced and sophisticated law-enforcement training centers in the world.
Task Force 401 was announced in August 2025, and in November, senior leaders from the War Department and partner agencies, including Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, met at the White House to discuss how to best leverage the new task force and defend the homeland.
(Photo/U.S. Army)
Representatives from the War Department, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Transportation Department, Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies — about 50 total — met for the first time at the Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia, as part of an introductory summit for task force partners.
“This was an opportunity to bring together all of the services, all of our interagency partners that have shared interests and equities with countering small UAS threats, because no one agency can solve this on their own,” said Ross, the joint force commander. “What we’re really trying to do is expand the community of interest into a community of action and make sure we’re taking tangible steps to defeat the UAS threat we face on a daily basis.”
Last week, it was Huntsville’s turn to host.
The world spotlight is coming
A primary focus of the Alabama meeting was enhancing efforts to coordinate security preparations for this summer’s FIFA World Cup.
“Countering drones is not just a battlefield problem — it’s a homeland defense imperative,” Ross earlier said.
Ross and Mike Torphy, FBI acting assistant section chief for UAS and counter-UAS, spoke with expert instructors who are teaching a specialized course for local law enforcement in each of the tournament’s 11 host cities across the nation.
Army Command Sgt. Maj. Kellen Rowley, left, Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, FBI special agent Mike Torphy and FBI agent Aaron Snyder pose for a photo following a visit to the FBI’s National Training Center for counter-small unmanned aircraft systems in Huntsville, Feb. 12, 2026. (Photo/Army Lt. Col. Adam Scher)
“The security of our homeland depends on a seamless, unified defense, and that is only possible through robust interagency collaboration,” Ross said. “The threats we face are shared, so our solutions must be as well.”
The World Cup this summer will be hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico; and the U.S. is slated to host the 2028 Summer Olympics in California.
“Our work with the FBI, to secure major events like the World Cup against the threat of drones, is a prime example of this strategy in action, but our goal is much broader: to build permanent, integrated -UAS capabilities across the federal government,” Ross said.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, continues to fast-track its own planning and implementation of new weapons and strategy in how to prepare the warfighters in the field to deal with UAVs and UAS threats.
Future efforts will include Task Force 401’s Joint Counter-Small UAS University in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, working closely with the FBI’s National Training Center to further execute the shared mission.
“This synergy is foundational to building a more resilient national counter-UAS capability and ensuring state and local partners are effectively trained and equipped for any threat,” the War Department said.
Army Lt. Col. Adam Scher, Joint Interagency Task Force 401, and C. Todd Lopez, Pentagon News, contributed information for this report.
Troy Turner is the editor and senior consultant for AlaDefense.com. He can be reached at [email protected]. His bio can be found here.
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