We are seeing real momentum in 2024 toward expanding who can detect and mitigate unwanted drones, and that momentum is starting to look, at face value, like a loosening of the long-standing U.S. taboo against civilian jamming. That does not mean the baseline legal prohibition is gone. It means federal policymakers are carving narrow, controlled exceptions and building frameworks that could allow certain nonfederal actors to use active countermeasures under specific, authorized conditions. The details matter, and the devil will be in the implementation.

The legal baseline remains harsh and unambiguous. Federal law and the regulatory regime enforced by the Federal Communications Commission make it unlawful for nongovernmental actors to market, import, sell, or operate radio jammers that interfere with authorized communications. The prohibition exists because indiscriminate RF interference can disable emergency calls, disrupt public-safety communications, and have cascading effects across adjacent bands and systems. That statutory and regulatory baseline is the starting point for any discussion about changing who may be permitted to take active measures against drones.

At the same time, 2023 and 2024 Congressional activity plus state-level pressure on regulators reveal political appetite for narrowly-authorized jamming or other mitigation tools in constrained contexts. There are at least two parallel threads to watch.

First, criminal-justice and corrections lobbying has been persistent. Federal legislation and state attorney general actions have sought carve-outs that would permit jamming inside prisons to block contraband cellphones. The Senate bill S.1047, and related state advocacy and letters from attorneys general, reflect a push to let correctional facilities use certain jamming solutions under controlled terms. Those efforts do not rewrite the general prohibition; they ask Congress or the FCC to create tightly defined exceptions.

Second, the national security and critical-infrastructure thread is broader and more consequential for civilian owners of airports, utilities, and other high-value sites. The House-prompted Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act of 2024 and associated committee report contemplate extending and refining DHS and DOJ counter-UAS authorities while giving the FAA a formal role in setting minimum performance requirements for counter-UAS systems. Importantly, the legislation contemplates authority for owners or operators of covered sites to acquire and operate approved counter-UAS systems, and it directs federal agencies to stand up pilot programs and operator standards. If that framework is enacted and implemented, certain nonfederal actors could, under federal authorization and oversight, operate mitigation tools at their sites. That is a meaningful policy shift from the existing one-size-fits-all ban, but it is not a free pass to run jammers from a parking lot.

From an engineering and operations point of view, this is where caution and specificity are essential. Active RF mitigation, including jamming and command-link takeover techniques, is not a surgical tool. Practical systems can have significant collateral effects: GPS or GNSS jammers degrade position services for nearby vehicles, cell-site jammers can disrupt 9-1-1 calls, and wideband RF mitigations can deny unrelated spectrum users. Any regulatory loosening must be accompanied by hard technical requirements: narrowband, directional mitigation; mandatory geofencing and scheduled windows; automatic public-safety cutouts; spectrum coordination; auditable event logs; and operator certification with stringent training and liability rules. The committee report and bill language begin to point in that direction by requiring minimum performance and training standards. Those are the right levers to manage risk, not blanket permission.

There are also less invasive mitigation options that too often get short shrift in policy debates. Detection plus soft-mitigation methods such as RF command-link takeover using authenticated protocols, drone-capture nets, trained birds, remote ID enforcement combined with law enforcement intercepts, and kinetic removal remain valuable tools in many scenarios. Investing in robust detection, attribution, and layered defenses reduces the pressure to greenlight blunt RF jamming for wide civilian use. Remote ID enforcement and enforcement-ready telemetry are also part of the equation; the FAA has been moving to tighten Remote ID compliance and enforcement as a foundation for attribution and response. That administrative work matters because the ability to find and hold an operator accountable reduces the political demand for someone to simply “turn off” radio signals.

Policy trade-offs are not only technical. Civil liberties, privacy, and chain-of-custody issues arise when a private owner intercepts or disrupts a device that may belong to a lawful user. Liability questions for collateral harm will drive conservative legal strategies by insurers and integrators. Public trust will depend on transparent authorizations, narrow scopes, and strong oversight. If authorization regimes end up opaque or decentralized, we will quickly see a proliferation of poorly configured mitigations that create more harm than benefit.

If Congress and the agencies mean to let certain nonfederal actors operate counter-UAS mitigations, here is a practical checklist I would press them to require:

  • Closed, auditable authorization process with time-limited waivers and public reporting.
  • Minimum performance standards for mitigation devices: directionality, spectral masks, automatic emergency cutouts, and logging.
  • Mandatory training, operator certification, and drills, plus minimum staffing requirements for safe use.
  • Spectrum coordination with adjacent licensees and public-safety agencies, and pre-deployment spectrum studies.
  • Liability and redress mechanisms for collateral impacts and a clear rulebook for evidence handling when mitigation leads to criminal investigations.

The policy moves of 2024 are not a wholesale relaxation of the jamming ban. They are targeted attempts to reconcile two facts: drones present new attack surfaces and critical-site owners want effective tools, but jamming can inflict broad public-harm if used without strict controls. If policymakers proceed, the responsible path is narrow, technical, and highly supervised. Anything else will trade immediate convenience for long-term systemic risk to public-safety communications and civilian trust in spectrum governance.

If you are a site owner, integrator, or operator, start by investing in detection, hardened procedures, and vendor systems that support noninterference modes. If you are a policymaker or regulator, insist on technical specs and independent field testing before authorizing any active RF mitigation beyond federal law enforcement and military users. The temptation to solve a hard problem with the blunt instrument of jamming is understandable. Resist it, unless the instrument is fitted with a governor and a clear audit trail.