The FBI’s counter-drone school at Redstone Arsenal will more than double its capacity in its second year, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said after touring the Huntsville, Alabama, facility on Thursday, October 1. Woodward, the Justice Department’s third-ranking official, pointed to the more than 700 drones federal and local teams pulled out of the sky at this summer’s FIFA World Cup as the reason the training matters, and said every host city completed the course.
The school is the National Counter-UAS Training Center, created by executive order in June 2025 and graduating its first class before the year was out. Since July 1 it has also been the only place a state or local officer can earn the right to take a drone down under the Safer Skies Act. When that rule published, 61 officers in the whole country held the certificate. The school’s first class, in late October 2025, held 12.
The World Cup Ran on a School That Opened With a Dozen Seats
The FBI announced the center to every U.S. law enforcement agency in a September 24, 2025 memo scheduling a three-week Counter-UAS System Operator course for late October. The inaugural class was 12 officers from New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and California. The 2026 courses would prioritize World Cup host areas.
Congressman Dale Strong cut the ribbon on November 7, 2025, with the first graduates standing beside him, as DroneXL reported in December. The memo had been candid about what the certificate was worth at that point: nothing, legally, until Congress extended counter-drone authority to state and local agencies, which it did in the Safer Skies Act signed on December 18 inside the defense bill. Bloomberg reported in May that the FBI would field roughly 60 of those trained officers across the 11 U.S. host cities…