Israeli experts: the drones along the U.S border – operated in a...

Israeli experts: the drones along the U.S border – operated in a wrong way

A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol UAV Ft. Huachuca in Sierra Vista Arizona. Source: AP

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol UAV Ft. Huachuca in Sierra Vista Arizona. Source: AP
A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol UAV over Ft. Huachuca in Sierra Vista Arizona. Source: AP

The Department of Homeland Security’s drone program has been a waste of money so far. This, according to the department’s inspector general, who last week told the department to cancel plans to spend nearly half a billion dollars on more of the aircraft.

According to the Washington Times, the department paid more than $12,000 an hour to fly its drones, kept them in the air far less than it had promised and primarily – used them over just 170 miles of the 1,993-mile border.

Drones were judged to have helped in less than 2 percent of apprehensions of illegal immigrants.

The drone program is eight years old and is run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency that handles the border. As of late last year, it had nine drones operating — three in Arizona, three in Texas and three in North Dakota, as well an operating center in Jacksonville, Florida.

Register to iHLS Israel Homeland Security

CBP, in a response to the inspector general, rejected the conclusions and disputed the cost figure. The agency also denied it planned to buy 14 more drones, saying its plan is only to enhance the existing program and replace one drone that “ditched” off the coast of California last year.

The inspector general has long been critical of the operation, questioning the agency’s ability to keep the drones maintained and flying. It also questioned the agency’s arrangements for lending the drones out to other federal agencies.

CBP, though, vehemently defends the technology as an important addition to its toolbox, and said there are other measures that show flying drones is effective in helping secure the border. The agency said the drones do a good job of spotting incursions and shouldn’t be judged based on how many of those illegal crossers are eventually caught.

Israeli experts told i-HLS that the problem is not with the drones but with the way they are operated. “There is a certain methodology that drones are operated along a border and that one is lacking or totally wrong,” one of them explained.