SurveillanceDHS receives three drones, lacks pilots and resources to fly them

DHS now has three UAVs it can't use // Source: urdusite.com

Congress has awarded $32 million to DHS to purchase three new aerial surveillance drones, despite the agency never requesting them and lacking a sufficient number of pilots and resources to operate them.  

“We didn’t ask for them,” said a DHS official speaking anonymously to the Los Angeles Times.

According to officials from the Customs and Border Protection Office of Air and Marine, which operates DHS’ small fleet of seven drones, the agency only has enough pilots to fly the existing drones five days a week.

With the additional $32 million, Congress did not include funding to train or hire new pilots and crews or to purchase spare parts, placing a financial strain on the agency’s limited resources.

DHS officials say they will now have to shift scarce department resources to operate the new drones.

The agency has already been forced to shift money away from other programs to purchase the satellite bandwidth required to operate its existing drone fleet.  In addition, each unmanned aircraft requires a small platoon of surveillance analysts, sensor operators, and a maintenance crew in addition to the pilot.

“That is year-by-year, hand-to-mouth living,” said a federal law enforcement official who spoke anonymously.

The additional DHS drones were authorized largely as a result of lobbying by the Congressional “Drone Caucus,” a collection of fifty representatives primarily from districts in Southern California, a major unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturing hub.

Since 2005, Customs and Border Protection has paid $240 million to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., a private drone manufacturing company in San Diego. In turn, since 2005, the company has donated $1.6 million to the campaigns of various members of Congress, including some in the drone caucus, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

“This is a symptom of how surveillance technology is spreading around the U.S.,” said Jay Stanley, a senior analyst on privacy and technology at the American Civil Liberties Union. “A lot of times it is not being pulled by people on the ground. It is being pushed from above by people who want to sell it.”

While government watchdogs maintain that these political contributions have driven policy on the Hill, lawmakers staunchly deny these claims.

“I would rather use technology to patrol the border than use a fourteenth century technology like a fence,” said Representative Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), the co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus.

Meanwhile Representative Brian P. Bilbray (R – California), who represents the district where General Atomics is headquartered, said the use of drones in the government’s counterterror operations, especially in Pakistan, has elevated them to a legendary status among Americans. 

“If you could register the Predator for president, both parties would be trying to endorse it,” he said.