The Federal Aviation Administration’s abrupt and unexplained closure of airspace above El Paso, Texas, early Wednesday has given way to a blame game inside the administration, with key senior officials asserting they hadn’t been alerted to the decision beforehand,

The testing, which was taking place near Fort Bliss, was of high-energy lasers that are designed to protect against drones from drug cartels that could cross over the U.S. border, three of the sources say.

For several tense hours overnight, airspace over El Paso and a wide swath of southern New Mexico went dark. The