Widespread cell phone disruptions are set to hit thousands of Americans across Texas just as the state recovers from chaos in El Paso this week.
Military personnel at Fort Hood are scheduled to test anti-drone systems that can interfere with satellite navigation signals across a wide area, potentially degrading GPS accuracy for aircraft, drones, and consumer devices.
The interruptions, which began February 2, are expected to continue on Friday and Saturday mornings through February 27, with the final round scheduled from February 23 to 27.
The affected zone spans major cities, including Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and extends as far as Oklahoma City.
Operators of aircraft, drones, and other GPS-reliant systems are being warned to plan for degraded navigation and consider alternative methods.
The testing comes just days after US airspace was abruptly shut down in El Paso following a security incident involving what was later identified as a party balloon.
In the hours before the shutdown, an eyewitness near El Paso International Airport reported seeing a large object releasing smaller objects, footage that was shared with the crowdsourced UFO-reporting platform Enigma.
The sighting occurred shortly before the FAA closed a large swath of airspace for ‘special security reasons’ at 11:30 p.m. MT on February 10.
Widespread GPS disruptions are affecting Central Texas and parts of the surrounding region, caused by military testing of anti-drone systems near Fort Hood
Magnified images of the craft revealed a large object appearing near the sight of a major FAA shut down which was issued on February 10
Pilots experiencing problems with GPS-reliant equipment are urged to report anomalies following standard FAA procedures.
The disruptions could also affect cars, phones, tablets, watches, and other GPS-dependent devices across an area more than 190 miles wide, though not all systems are expected to be impacted.
The tests are likely being conducted with support from electronic warfare units to simulate a degraded GPS environment.
The US Army regularly conducts counter-unmanned aircraft training and technology demonstrations at Fort Hood, using a mix of radar, kinetic interceptors, and electronic warfare tools designed to detect and defeat drones.
The scheduled GPS disruption tests are described by the FAA as ‘GPS interference testing,’ typically meaning the military is intentionally creating GPS-denied conditions to train forces and evaluate how systems perform when signals are blocked or unreliable.
Although the FAA has not specified the hardware being used, such exercises generally involve radio-frequency jamming or spoofing systems designed to overwhelm or confuse GPS receivers.
The testing comes amid growing concern over military counter-drone activity after the FAA abruptly closed airspace over El Paso late Tuesday night.
The mysterious shutdown was originally announced to last for ten days and included all commercial, cargo, and general flights within a ten-mile-wide area roughly five miles southwest of El Paso, from the ground up to 18,000 feet.
In a dramatic example of the risks, the FAA abruptly closed El Paso airspace on Wednesday after the military targeted what turned out to be a party balloon with an anti-drone laser system
However, the chaotic shutdown by the FAA was quickly called off, with the Trump Administration changing the story of what triggered the alert multiple times within a matter of hours on Wednesday.
White House officials initially announced the US had taken down a Mexican cartel drone flying across the southern border, only to claim hours later that the object struck by a high-powered laser was a party balloon.
Now, UFO researchers and witnesses in the area have alleged that something other than a balloon or drone was spotted on multiple days near the US-Mexico border before the FAA warning.
‘Looks like the mothership. It’s huge. And there is stuff coming out from the bottom of it and going off to the left a little bit as it landed,’ the driver on Tuesday said.
According to the witness recording the hovering craft, it appeared on video ‘like a dot’ after moving off far into the distance, but the object was allegedly incredibly large and looked somewhat like ‘a blob.’
Enigma, which allows people to report sightings and share pictures or videos of UFOs on an app, also revealed that two other witnesses submitted strange sightings in the El Paso area, one on February 8 and another at 5.46pm ET on the same day as the FAA shut down.
Both sightings involved what the witnesses described as floating orbs high in the sky which were clearly not normal planes or any type of military aircraft.
‘Every time I use my drones in this area, especially in a certain frequency I always have orbs run by,’ the witness on February 8 reported in a video on the Enigma app.
However, the driver traveling by El Paso International Airport on Tuesday supplied the clearest evidence that what the military encountered was not a simple balloon.
‘They are reporting today that it wasn’t drones but a party balloon! It never ceases to amaze me how stupid they think the public is,’ one commenter on X wrote.
‘I feel like I’ve seen this story before…’ one person on social media wrote next to a picture of the weather balloon debris the military claimed was actually the Roswell UFO in 1947.
However, many skeptics criticized the video for being so out of focus that it made a clear identification of the object impossible.
