US Secret Service plans drone exercises in Washington, DC
The US Secret Service has announced plans for conducting drone exercises in the Washington, DC, area in the next few days and weeks.
The federal law enforcement agency, which is charged with guarding the US president and other senior government officials, offered few details about the drills in the brief announcement issued on Tuesday.
The two-paragraph statement said exercises will be carried out in “normally flight restricted areas,” without providing specific dates, times or locations.
“The United States Secret Service, in conjunction with other inter-agency partners, will conduct a series of exercises involving unmanned aircraft systems, in the coming days and weeks,” the statement read.
“Because these exercises will be conducted within the normally flight restricted areas in the Washington D.C. area, they have been carefully planned and will be tightly controlled. In preparation for these exercises the Secret Service has coordinated with all appropriate federal, state and local agencies,” the statement added.
Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole Mainar on Tuesday did not provide further information about the drills and declined to answer questions about what types of unmanned aerial vehicles the agency would use and the nature of the drills.
The announcement comes nearly a month after a small drone crashed into the White House complex, prompting officials to declare a security lockdown.
The drone was reportedly operated by a government employee who told the Secret Service he did not mean to fly it over the White House.
The Secret Service is recovering from a series of embarrassing security breaches.
In September, a US war veteran was able to reach deep into the White House with a knife before being apprehended by Secret Service agents, an unprecedented security breach in recent decades.
According to a report by the Washington Post, it took the Secret Service five days to discover that a man had shot seven bullets at the White House in 2011.
A string of security lapses and misjudgments by the Secret Service led to the resignation of the head of the agency, Julia Pierson, in October.
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