Drone swarms are a problem Secret Service says they have not solved yet

The Secret Service is working out how to handle threats that have evolved beyond a lone gunman to attack drones.

Deputy Director Matthew Quinn is leading the agency’s new multimillion-dollar program to develop offensive and defensive drone capabilities. Among the new tools in the agency’s arsenal is an artificial intelligence and radar-guided drone hunter, which disables enemy drones and captures them with a net.

“Swarms are a huge problem and a big threat,” Quinn said. “I’d love to tell you the swarm problem is solved. It’s not. I will tell you that at the White House, White House is the safest place on Earth.”

Drones and the Secret Service 

The war in Ukraine has become a testing ground for the weaponization of drones. And that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Secret Service.

“We know that technology is going to hit the homeland at some point,” Quinn said. “So we’re using lessons learned there to build our program and make sure we’re ahead of it before it gets here.”

It’s about planning ahead, Secret Service Director Sean Curran said. 

“We have to assume that it’s possible,” Curran said. “The second we’re not, we’re going to get caught flat-footed.”

The concern is that a small, rudimentary drone could be weaponized with explosives and do serious damage to a large concert, sporting event or campaign rally. 60 Minutes has learned the Secret Service used electronic jamming equipment to take down a drone at the December Army-Navy game, where the president and members of Congress were in attendance. 

Confronting a rise in threats to protectees 

The Secret Service is confronting both new types and a rising number of threats.

There have been 10,000 threats made against Secret Service protectees so far this year; it’s a 40% year over year increase in cases involving full-time protectees, according to Curran.

“I think a lot of it has to do with the internet,” he said. “You know, people are more accessible. Information is more accessible.”

Mr. Trump, one of the most polarizing political figures in American history, has survived several attempts on his life, including at a Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally, at his Florida golf course, and at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“I would say there’s people on both sides of the aisle that either love or hate any president. I think the biggest factor we’re dealing with today is mental health issues for sure,” Quinn said. “More people are being pushed over the edge in either direction.”

The agency doesn’t look at which side of the political aisle threats come from, Curran said. 

Research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization, showed a spike in incidents from the left in 2025. It was the first time the number of attacks from the left have been higher than right-wing attacks in 30 years. This year, that trend has reversed, with more attacks coming from the right so far.

The Secret Service is also dealing with threats coming from outside the country, including threats from Iran. Top leaders there have vowed revenge against the U.S. for the killing of their supreme leader.

“Turn on the TV and you can see the funeral where there are massive banners saying ‘Kill President Trump.’ So do we recognize the threat environment has increased? Absolutely,” Quinn said. “How we do it and how we change, that’s where we prefer to stay in the background.”

Changes at Secret Service

The Secret Service has undergone internal changes in recent years after facing backlash for its failure to prevent Thomas Crooks’ attempt on Mr. Trump’s life in Butler in 2024. Curran was the lead agent in charge of protecting Mr. Trump that day. He said he had requested additional resources for the event, but that he’d “rather not get into the past.”

Kimberly Cheatle, who was head of the Secret Service during the Butler incident, stepped down. When Mr. Trump’s second term began, he appointed Curran as head of the agency.

This past June, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General released a report on Butler. It found the Secret Service “missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt the assassination attempt.” 

Curran, guiding several changes at the agency, said he’s convinced nothing like the day’s events will happen again.

Many candidates are now in training for the Secret Service, which has been dangerously understaffed for years. A Homeland Security Inspector General’s report found the counter-sniper team is staffed 73% below the level needed to protect the nation’s most senior leaders. There are 942 people in training today compared to “maybe 200” last year, Quinn said.

And with the president back on the campaign trail ahead of the midterm elections, Curran has added new training for agents to avoid the mistakes of Butler.

Even the president’s limousine is getting regular updates, most of them classified. It weighs up to 10 tons, with bulletproof glass and defensive countermeasures. 

“I don’t want to get into its capabilities. But it can do a lot,” Curran said.

He’s added a medical response truck, housing a trauma unit and a field surgeon ready to treat gunshot wounds. There’s also a new armored personnel carrier in the president’s motorcade.

“When you look at some of the significant civil disturbance events we’ve had, how do you move people? You look at getting teams to the Capitol during the January 6th event. This provides us the ability to get people where they need to be and take care of them. Keep them safe,” Quinn said.

“The mission is to protect the president of the United States”

That protection extends to the new Air Force One, a 747 donated by the Middle Eastern country of Qatar. It cost the U.S. nearly $400 million to add security enhancements to that plane, according to the U.S. Air Force.

Curran said the plane is trusted, but declined to explain what was behind that trust. 

Despite his confidence, the Secret Service would not let the president fly home on that plane from Turkey in July after intelligence reports of an Iranian plot to fire a missile at the presidential jet. Mr. Trump was secretly slipped away to another plane, while Cabinet members, White House staff, the press and Secret Service agents were left on the decoy plane — the old Air Force One.

“That’s not the first time we’ve done that,” Curran said. “We wish that wasn’t reported, because that takes some of our tactics away from being able to do something similar again. It certainly wasn’t the first time where we did something like that.”

Curran wouldn’t specifically say whether Mr. Trump had been on a decoy plane on other occasions. Quinn stressed that the focus is on keeping the president safe.

“When you’re operating in any protective detail with the president of the United States, for any president, the priority is the president,” Quinn said. “Everyone else — staff, agents, media, personnel involved — are not the priority, including our own personnel. As hard as that may be for some to understand, the mission is to protect the president of the United States.”