Tucson Mystery Drone Had Rotors According To Border Patrol Helicopter Aircrew’s Emails

A helicopter belonging to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, encountered what was described as a “highly modified drone” over Tucson, Arizona earlier this year on February 9 as it flew through controlled airspace near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. A Tucson Police Department Air Support helicopter was called in to aid the CBP crew, at which point both aircraft pursued the remarkably wily drone as it easily evaded them and eventually outran them to the northwest. Dan Marries of KOLD in Tucson broke the initial story of the drone encounter after interviewing a special agent with the FBI, which announced an investigation the same day. The War Zone has since obtained the Tucson Police Department’s official report from the incident, as well as air traffic audio recorded during the encounter. Now, we have obtained an after-action internal email from CBP that shows the aircrew was able to identify the craft as a drone with quadcopter-like rotors.

Our previous…