SAN ANTONIO — The Texas Department of Public Safety has added a remotely launched drone to security operations at the Alamo in downtown San Antonio, according to reporting from News 4 San Antonio and DPS officials. The addition comes after DPS took over overall security operations at the historic site in December.
According to DPS, the drone gives troopers live video and faster situational awareness before they physically reach an incident downtown. A DPS pilot told News 4 San Antonio that a drone response can take anywhere from seconds to minutes, giving troopers a view of a scene before arriving, an advantage amid the dense crowds that fill downtown San Antonio around the Alamo. The pilot said the system is designed to detect obstacles and automatically navigate around them, which matters given that flights near the site have to account for construction, buildings, cranes, other aerial hazards, and large crowds of visitors.
Eric Herrera of DPS said the drones give the agency another tool to help keep visitors safe at one of Texas’s most recognizable landmarks.
DPS said the drone could also serve as an additional resource for San Antonio police or Bexar County deputies responding to incidents downtown, though the agency hasn’t indicated whether either has used it yet.
According to DPS, the Alamo program could expand in the coming years, though no current timeline has been set. The agency said it looks forward to working with state lawmakers when the 90th Legislature convenes in January to secure resources that keep Texas a leader in UAS technology and threat mitigation, including expanding DPS’s unmanned aircraft operations at the Alamo specifically.
This isn’t DPS’s first deployment of drone technology at a major Texas landmark. The agency has flown drones at the Texas Capitol complex since early 2019 and assigned its first full-time unmanned aircraft system operators there in late 2022, giving the department a longer-running comparison point as it expands the technology to San Antonio.
The Alamo program fits into a much larger operation. DPS’s Aircraft Operations Division is one of the largest airborne law enforcement units in the country, operating from 13 duty stations across Texas with roughly 27 to 28 aircraft and more than 100 personnel, including about 50 police pilots and 35 Tactical Flight Officers. Aircraft Operations Division Chief Pilot Stacy Holland has described the division’s aircraft as force multipliers rather than simple transportation platforms. DPS owns more than 420 unmanned aircraft systems in total, used for missions ranging from border security and Capitol security to traffic accident reconstruction and crime scene investigation. The division has received the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Excellence in Police Aviation Award four times over the past 15 years.
The expansion also comes amid growing concern from DPS over unauthorized drone activity along the Texas-Mexico border. According to prior testimony from a DPS official overseeing drone operations, DPS-owned sensors identified 1,216 UAS border incursions between April 2024 and April 2025, with some incidents tied to transnational criminal organizations attempting to monitor or exploit vulnerabilities in border security operations.
