The Challenge
Hosting World Cup matches meant Kansas City needed real-time visibility into every drone in its airspace — friendly, commercial, and unauthorized — across multiple agencies with no shared system to coordinate it.
Multiple agencies already operated their own detection systems, with no way to see across networks or coordinate response. The Kansas City Police Department needed a single shared operating picture — not another siloed tool.
The clock made this harder. In December, the U.S.. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) committed $250 million in grants to help World Cup host cities fund counterdrone equipment — but a 76-day DHS shutdown early in 2026 delayed grant processing nationwide, leaving many host cities scrambling to install equipment and train personnel in the final weeks before kickoff. With input and support from Airspace Link, Kansas City got its paperwork in the day before the shutdown began, giving it a head start most cities didn't have — but even with that advantage, standing up entirely new detection, coordination, and response infrastructure in months, not years, meant building something most cities had never operated before, against a deadline that wouldn't move.
