A Humvee-mounted Avenger short-range air-defence system was visible near President Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, over the weekend of August 9-10, as he attended the final round of the LIV Golf New York tournament. The War Zone reported that images and video from the event showed the system, and said the White House confirmed the photos as authentic. The outlet also reported an AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air-defence radar visible nearby, and noted the Avenger has appeared near Trump’s golf outings before.
The deployment coincided with separate airspace enforcement activity. NORAD said its F-16s intercepted two general-aviation aircraft that violated temporary flight restrictions over Bedminster on August 9, safely escorting both out of the area, after a similar incident over the same airspace on July 19 that a NORAD press release confirmed at the time.
The Avenger deployment follows other recently disclosed security adjustments. The Washington Post reported that during last month’s NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, Trump was secretly transferred by catering truck from the ceremonial Air Force One to a smaller C-32A military jet amid an assessed Iranian assassination threat, while staff and journalists flew home on the original aircraft believing he remained aboard.
The Avenger fires Stinger missiles and functions as a rapid point-defence asset against low-flying aerial threats, a role increasingly built into presidential security planning as small drones and loitering munitions grow harder to detect and defeat with conventional protective measures. Taken together with the Ankara episode, the Bedminster deployment points to a broader pattern of layered, less predictable protective measures around the president.
