Super Bowl fans warned to keep drones at home with flights banned over big game

As fans from around the country descend on California to watch the New England Patriots take on the Seattle Seahawks in Sunday’s Super Bowl, officials are telling them to leave their drones at home.

The police chief in Santa Clara, where this year’s big game will be played, said authorities are prepared to shoot down a drone, if necessary.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, can be easily purchased online and are increasingly popular with hobbyist drone pilots, including sports fans who want to film their favorite events.

But the risks posed by drones are real, whether a hobbyist drone malfunctions and falls into the stands or a bad actor uses a drone to drop something into the stadium.

Retired Army Col. Bill Edwards, who runs counter-drone training at Washington, D.C.-based tech company ENSCO, expects people will try to fly drones at the big game.

“We have to expect it at every major event that’s happening in the country,” Edwards said in an interview.

To get ahead of the issue, the Federal Aviation Administration has issued a ban on all drone flights over the Super Bowl, which has been classified by the federal government as a top special event that merits extensive interagency support.

The FAA says it is collaborating with the FBI to detect, track and assess unauthorized drone activity, and drone operators who fly them in restricted airspace without authorization face fines of up to $75,000, confiscation of their drone and federal criminal charges.

Law enforcement agencies working on Super Bowl security use layers of responses and mitigation efforts for drones.

“Everything from ground intercept teams to contact the pilot on the ground to redirecting it, landing it or even shooting it down depending on the circumstances,” Santa Clara Police Chief Cory Morgan said.

Technological advancements to drones made overseas during the Russia-Ukraine war and conflicts in the Middle East pose new challenges to law enforcement.

Edwards, who trains such police departments as the New York Police Department on drone threat mitigation, points to fiber-optic drones that can evade radio frequency detection systems as a particular concern.

“It’s promulgating the technology’s capability 20 years into the future — now,” he said. He also said, “The threat level has increased a hundredfold.”