The 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games will present one of the most complex security challenges the United States has ever faced. LA28 will involve multiple stadiums, transportation corridors, hotels, training sites, public gathering areas, and critical infrastructure distributed across one of the nation’s largest metropolitan regions. Protecting this environment requires more than point defense around venues.
Ground Defense Is Not Effective
A threatening UAS could be launched from a street, rooftop, parking structure, vehicle, or other location only minutes from an Olympic venue. Los Angeles’ buildings, stadium structures, transportation infrastructure, terrain, and urban clutter can restrict ground-level detection and visual line of sight, reducing the time available to identify the aircraft, determine whether it presents a credible threat, authorize mitigation, and safely respond.
Ground-launched interceptor UAS faces a challenge. They begin below the threat, may have to climb through complex populated airspace, and can lose visual line of sight behind buildings or other obstructions during the engagement. For many LA28 locations, by the time a threatening UAS reaches the immediate venue perimeter, the safest opportunity to intercept it may already have passed. That is why LA28 should have an Airborne C-UAS layer operating in conjunction with, not as a replacement for existing ground-based defenses.
Airborne C-UAS Changes the Engagement Geometry
Aeros is developing an Airborne C-UAS architecture combining an FAA type-certified manned airship, persistent multi-sensor detection and tracking, airborne command and control, and reusable non-explosive interceptor UAS.
The principal advantage is geometry. An elevated platform can operate above many urban obstructions, maintain observation across a broader area, extend sensor line of sight, and position interceptor capability substantially closer to the altitude and direction of an approaching threat. The objective is straightforward: Detect earlier. Identify earlier. Decide earlier. Intercept farther from Olympic venues and spectators.
Airborne C-UAS is intended to establish an outer airspace-defense layer around the Olympic security environment.
The Airborne Platform Should Be an FAA Type-Certified Manned Aircraft
For LA28, the persistent airborne platform must be an FAA type-certified manned aircraft, rather than experimental or unmanned aircraft. The mission requires sustained operation over a densely populated metropolitan area and integration with highly controlled Olympic and National Special Security Event airspace. An FAA type-certified aircraft provides an established airworthiness foundation for flight operations, maintenance, continued airworthiness, and FAA coordination.
A manned FAA TC platform provides another critical advantage: law enforcement personnel on board the airship provide direct situational awareness, positive human control, and substantially non-obstructed visual observation than is impossible from ground positions surrounded by buildings and infrastructure.
Airship-Launched Net-Capture and Controlled Recovery
A mitigation element of Airborne C-UAS is the reusable interceptor UAS launched directly from the airship and equipped with net-capture systems. The objective of net capture is fundamentally different from simply destroying the threatening UAS.
Launching from altitude creates a fundamentally different engagement geometry from ground-based interception. The interceptor begins closer to the target altitude, has a shorter path to engagement, and can maintain a substantially less obstructed visual relationship with both the interceptor UAS and the target UAS. Instead of climbing upward from the protected venue, the interceptor can be launched outward toward an approaching threat, creating the opportunity to engage it before it reaches stadiums, spectators, transportation corridors, or other critical Olympic infrastructure.
After capturing the hostile UAS in flight, the interceptor is designed to transition the combined interceptor-target system into a controlled descent and recovery sequence. Rather than allowing the target, its payload, or resulting debris to fall uncontrolled over a populated area, the captured UAS could be directed toward a pre-designated secure recovery location. At that location, law-enforcement personnel, a bomb squad, or an explosive-ordinance-disposal team could isolate, inspect, and render safe any suspected payload. This changes the mitigation objective from Destroy the hostile UAS to Capture the threat, control its descent to secure recovery location.”
For LA28, that distinction is critical. A hostile UAS carrying an unknown payload cannot simply be knocked from the sky over tens of thousands of spectators. Airship-launched net capture is intended to move the engagement away from the crowd and support-controlled recovery at a secured location, thereby minimizing falling-debris and collateral risk while preserving the target aircraft and payload for forensic and law-enforcement examination.
Addressing Threats Electronic Mitigation Cannot Stop
RF detection, jamming, spoofing, and protocol manipulation will remain important elements of LA28 security whenever the target presents an exploitable electronic signature. An RF-silent UAS does not provide command signals. A fiber-optic-controlled UAS does not rely on an RF command link. The autonomous GPS-independent aircraft do not respond to navigation spoofing.
The appropriate LA28 architecture should be layered: RF detection when RF exists. EO/IR acoustic array for non-emitting targets. Electronic mitigation when effective and safe. Airborne physical interception and controlled recovery when electronic defeat is unavailable.
Stopping the Drone is Only Half the Mission
On July 6, 2026, DOJ and DHS issued parallel regulations 6 C.F.R. and 28 C.F.R. Part 124 “ Counter-UAS Authority for State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Law Enforcement and Correctional Agencies.”
The new federal C-UAS framework places significant emphasis on proportionality and collateral risk. The rules recognize falling debris, injury, property damage, communications disruption, and aviation-safety consequences as risks that must be considered when mitigation is undertaken. Stopping a threatening UAS may not eliminate the danger if the aircraft, payload, interceptor, or resulting debris then falls into the crowd. Similarly, wide-area RF mitigation may create secondary risks if it interferes with police, fire, EMS, cellular communications, Wi-Fi, 5G, aviation systems, GPS/GNSS, emergency-vehicle navigation, or other infrastructure supporting Olympic security. The key question is Can we stop it early enough, far enough from the crowd, control where it comes down, and avoid creating a greater danger through the mitigation itself?
Airborne C-UAS is intended to create the additional time, distance, line of sight, engagement geometry, and recovery control needed to answer that question. Interception at LA28 must remain under positive human control. Maintaining that continuous visual relationship is difficult from the ground in dense urban terrain. An elevated manned platform can provide an unobstructed perspective and allow the operator to maintain target verification, airspace awareness, recover area awareness, and safely execute interception and transfer of the captured UAS to bomb-squad or EOD personnel.
LA28 Must Be Ready for the New Generation of Drone Threat
Less than 24 months remain before the LA28 Opening Ceremony on July 14, 2028. California and its federal partners therefore have a very limited window to evaluate, demonstrate, fund, procure, integrate, and deploy counter-UAS capabilities. The security architecture protecting the Games must be designed for the threat environment of 2028, not the drone technology of several years earlier.
LA28 needs an answer before the Opening Ceremony.
