By facility type
Drone security by facility type. Each guide covers the threat model, the regulatory position and the practical constraints that apply to that kind of site.
- Correctional facilities Corrections is the one facility type where the drone is delivering something rather than looking at something, and the only one the SAFER SKIES Act names directly alongside law enforcement.
- Electric utilities and substations Transmission assets are numerous, unmanned and geographically dispersed, and they sit under a physical security standard that already requires assessment. That combination shapes the whole problem.
- Nuclear power plants Nuclear is the one facility type with an explicit federal requirement to report drone sightings, and an equally explicit position that site security forces may not interdict them.
- Refineries and petrochemical sites Refineries combine a very large footprint, continuous operation and hazardous-area electrical rules that dictate where equipment may be installed, inside a compliance framework that has been unenforceable since 2023.
- Data centres Data centres are driven by customer audit obligations rather than statute, their exposed assets are on the roof rather than behind the fence, and unlike most infrastructure someone is always there to receive an alert.
- Schools and campuses Schools face a genuine problem with drones and are the facility type least likely to be helped by buying detection. What the actual vectors are, and what tends to work instead.
- Water utilities Water systems serving more than 3,300 people already owe a recurring statutory risk assessment covering malevolent acts and physical barriers, which is where aerial exposure belongs rather than in a separate purchase.
- Ports and maritime facilities Port facilities operate under a Coast Guard security regime with a designated security officer and a required facility security assessment, and their waterside boundary cannot be fenced.
- Dams and hydropower Licensed hydropower projects work to a FERC security programme with a defined assessment and a five-year exercise cycle, at sites that are frequently open to the public.
- Government buildings and courthouses Federal facilities work to an established risk management standard that sets a facility security level and matching countermeasures, at buildings that must remain open to the public.
- Hospitals and medical campuses Hospitals have an aviation problem that other facilities do not, because a drone near a helipad affects medical flights carrying patients, on a site that cannot restrict access.
- Communications infrastructure A small number of cable landing stations and switching centres carry a disproportionate share of national connectivity, in buildings that are deliberately unremarkable at ground level.
- Critical manufacturing and semiconductor plants At manufacturing sites the realistic concern is commercial and technical intelligence. Construction phases, process layouts and product development are all visible from above.
- Food production and livestock Livestock and food production sites face two concerns that no other sector shares: disease introduction, and documentation by activists that reaches customers rather than regulators.
- Emergency services and dispatch centres Emergency services face aerial risk at two places: fixed dispatch and communications sites, and the incident scenes where drones interfere with aircraft that are actively working.
Stadiums and airports
Stadiums, arenas and events are covered under venue airspace security, and Part 139 certificated airports under airport UAS response plans.