It's Friday, February the 13th, 2026, and this is Denison Forum's daily article podcast.

Welcome. I'm narrator Chris Elkins, voicing today's daily article written by our senior editor for theology, Dr. Ryan Denison.

The El Paso Airport was shut down late Tuesday night after the Customs and Border Protection

Agency fired an anti-dron laser at a flying object near the border. The Federal Aviation

Administration, the FAA, ordered all flights grounded and closed the airspace up to 18,000 feet for a period of 10 days in response.

Or at least that was the plan until the FAA reversed course eight hours later and reopened everything.

It was a strange event and a good bit of digital ink has been spilled in the time since,

attempting to get to the bottom of what caused the

shutdown. As of now, here's what we know. The DOD, the Department of Defense, has been testing

new anti-dron technology at Fort Bliss, which sits just outside of El Paso, Texas. The DOD failed to

inform the FAA that it would use this technology, a high-powered

laser, creating a problem as anti-drone weapons could potentially affect commercial aircraft

that fly in and out of El Paso. Or at least, that was the fear. After the laser was used to

target what Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described as a cartel drone

incursion into American airspace. Other reports say it was actually just a party balloon. The FAA

shut down the airport for 10 days. The 10-day shutdown appears quite excessive until you consider

that the Pentagon and FAA officials were set to meet on February 20th,

one day before the shutdown was originally scheduled to end, to discuss the safety implications

of testing those weapons so close to a commercial airport.

The Pentagon had previously told the FAA about the lasers and how they planned to use them,

but reports indicate the FAA did not

receive enough information to be comfortable keeping the airspace open.

...