Border drones are ineffective, badly managed, too expensive, official says
US Customs and Border Protection, the Guardians of the Galactic Perimeter. The Predator B drones, the unarmed versions of the MQ-9 Reaper drone that the Air Force flies in Pakistan, have a price tag of a cool $20 million each, and costs $12.255 an hour to put into the air. And they're not even effective at stopping or even slowing down illegal immigration. Awesome.
The Border Patrol has 9 of these drones. They used to have 11, but one crashed in Arizona back in 2006 and the other one had a rather wet water landing 30 miles off the San Diego coast in the Pacific. It sank like, well, like a drone.
US Customs and Border Protection has been authorized to spend an additional $433 million to buy up to 14 more drones. 14 drones is $280 million. Not sure what the remaining $153 million is for. Spare parts, I hope. 78 percent of the time when the current fleet was supposed to be in the air, they were grounded due to weather conditions, maintenance problems, and not surprisingly, cost constraints. Despite the authorization, CBP says it has no immediate plans to expand the fleet.
But the 9 drones they have spend their time in the air patrolling 100 miles of the border on either side of Tuscon, and a whole 70 miles of the border over in Texas. That's out of the 1951 miles of the US-Mexican border. We also still, today, right now, have about 700 miles of the US-Mexican border that is wide open with no fencing, no patrols, no air or drone surveillance, no nothing. That's a third of the border. Of course that pales with the number of miles of wide open border to the north.
$14 million a pop, $12,255 an hour to operate, can't keep them maintained and in the air. You can buy a quadcopter drone and a GoPro camera for $1500 that does the same job, only far more effectively.
US Customs and Border Protection, the Guardians of the Galactic Perimeter. The Predator B drones, the unarmed versions of the MQ-9 Reaper drone that the Air Force flies in Pakistan, have a price tag of a cool $20 million each, and costs $12.255 an hour to put into the air. And they're not even effective at stopping or even slowing down illegal immigration. Awesome.
The Border Patrol has 9 of these drones. They used to have 11, but one crashed in Arizona back in 2006 and the other one had a rather wet water landing 30 miles off the San Diego coast in the Pacific. It sank like, well, like a drone.
US Customs and Border Protection has been authorized to spend an additional $433 million to buy up to 14 more drones. 14 drones is $280 million. Not sure what the remaining $153 million is for. Spare parts, I hope. 78 percent of the time when the current fleet was supposed to be in the air, they were grounded due to weather conditions, maintenance problems, and not surprisingly, cost constraints. Despite the authorization, CBP says it has no immediate plans to expand the fleet.
But the 9 drones they have spend their time in the air patrolling 100 miles of the border on either side of Tuscon, and a whole 70 miles of the border over in Texas. That's out of the 1951 miles of the US-Mexican border. We also still, today, right now, have about 700 miles of the US-Mexican border that is wide open with no fencing, no patrols, no air or drone surveillance, no nothing. That's a third of the border. Of course that pales with the number of miles of wide open border to the north.
$14 million a pop, $12,255 an hour to operate, can't keep them maintained and in the air. You can buy a quadcopter drone and a GoPro camera for $1500 that does the same job, only far more effectively.
