Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn says drone swarms are still a huge unsolved problem for presidential protection even as the agency fields new countermeasures and faces a sharp rise in threats.
60 Minutes sat down with Quinn and Director Sean Curran as the agency builds a multimillion-dollar program of offensive and defensive drone tools, including an AI- and radar-guided hunter that disables hostile aircraft and snags them in a net.
Quinn put the core gap in plain terms. Swarms remain the hard case.
"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."
The agency already used electronic jamming to knock down a drone at the December Army-Navy game, where the president and members of Congress were present. Officials treat weaponized drones as an inevitable homeland risk and are pulling lessons from the fighting in Ukraine to stay ahead of it.
"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."
Curran struck the same note of urgency. The service has to plan for a drone attack as a live possibility.
"We have to assume that it's possible. The second we're not, we're going to get caught flat-footed."
Threat volume climbs while mental health and open access drive the surge
Curran reported roughly 10,000 threats against Secret Service protectees so far this year and a 40 percent year-over-year jump in cases involving full-time protectees. Quinn pointed to mental health as the largest driver and noted that people on both sides of the aisle 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."
He also cited the open internet and graphic public rhetoric. "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."
Curran linked part of the rise to how easily people and information travel online. Research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies showed a 2025 spike in incidents from the left, the first time in three decades that left-wing attacks outpaced right-wing ones, before the trend flipped again this year with more attacks from the right so far.
President Trump has already survived multiple attempts on his life, including the 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania, rally shooting by Thomas Crooks, an incident at a Florida golf course, and a plot tied to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. An armed man arrested at a Trump golf course later turned up with detailed sketches and Secret Service material, underscoring how concrete these risks remain.
Butler failures forced a leadership reset and a training surge
A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report released this past June found the Secret Service "missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt the assassination attempt" at Butler. The same review found the counter-sniper team staffed 73 percent below the level needed to protect the nation’s most senior leaders. Then-Director Kimberly Cheatle stepped down. When Trump’s second term began, he put Curran, who had been the lead agent on the ground at Butler, in charge of the agency.
Curran declined to dwell on past resource requests. He said he is convinced nothing like Butler will happen again and has poured effort into preparation as the president returns to the campaign trail ahead of the midterms.
Training numbers show the shift. Quinn said 942 people are in training today compared with "maybe 200" last year. New agent training has been added specifically for the midterm cycle. Curran has also hardened the motorcade: the presidential limousine can weigh up to 10 tons, a medical response truck now carries a trauma unit and field surgeon, and an armored personnel carrier has been added so teams can move people safely during major civil disturbances.
Quinn explained the carrier’s purpose by pointing back to January 6 at the Capitol. "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."
He was equally blunt about mission priority on any presidential detail. "When you're operating in any protective detail with the president of the United States, for any president, the priority is the president. 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."
Iran threat forced a decoy flight out of Turkey
In July, intelligence pointed to an Iranian plot to fire a missile at the presidential jet after the killing of Iran’s supreme leader. While in Turkey, the president was secretly moved to another aircraft. Cabinet members, staff, press, and agents left on the old Air Force One as a decoy.
The New York Post reported that Trump was taken off Air Force One in an airport catering truck and flown on a separate C-32A military plane; that aircraft landed at Mildenhall about nine minutes ahead of the decoy jet before he rejoined the official party and later boarded the Qatari-gifted aircraft.
Breitbart added that Secretaries Rubio and Bessent stayed on the decoy flight, that journalists and some staff believed they were traveling with the president, and that the switch was ordered to avoid using the new jet on the first leg home. Trump later said he simply followed Secret Service and military direction.
Curran confirmed the method is not new and regretted the publicity. The Washington Examiner carried his warning that open reporting burns future options.
"That's not the first time we've done that. 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."
The same protective logic now surrounds the next Air Force One. Qatar donated a 747; the U.S. Air Force has put nearly $400 million into security enhancements. Curran said he trusts the aircraft but would not detail its capabilities. "I don't want to get into its capabilities. But it can do a lot." Separate coverage has tracked Boeing’s repairs and cost overruns on new Air Force One jets, another reminder that the presidential fleet itself remains a high-stakes engineering and security project.
How the service moves the president, and how it keeps tactics quiet, matters as much as the hardware. Quinn put the preference simply: "How we do it and how we change, that's where we prefer to stay in the background." Readers following presidential air movements have also seen Air Force One make unexpected low passes and fights over who boards the plane, all under the same protective umbrella.
The Turkey catering-truck extraction fits the pattern Curran described: when intelligence flags a missile or other airborne threat, the priority is getting the president onto a different airframe fast, even if that means leaving senior officials and the press on a decoy.
Quinn’s bottom line on drones still hangs over every other upgrade. The White House may be the safest place on earth, yet the swarm problem is not solved. The agency is buying hunters, jamming systems, armored carriers, field surgeons, and decoy options because the threat picture, foreign plots, domestic mental-health crises, and cheap flying weapons, keeps expanding faster than any single fix.
Protecting the president is not a press release exercise. It is a daily race against technology and intent, and the people running that race are finally saying out loud what still does not work.
