Border Patrol at 19,000 Feet
UAVs Take Flight Along Texas Border - During Daylight
By WILLIAM MATTHEWS
Published: 14 June 2010
A Predator
UAV climbed into the early morning Arizona sky June 1 and
headed east to conduct the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's first
surveillance flight along the U.S.-Mexican border in Texas.
Cruising
at 19,000 feet, the Predator B's camera fed a stream of video images to
operators back at Libby Army Airfield in Sierra Vista, Ariz., and to
U.S. Border Patrol agents at posts along the flight path between El Paso
and Big Bend National Park, where the UAV had to turn around.
The
flight was months in the making as members of the Texas congressional
delegation pressed the Federal Aviation Administration to permit
pilotless aircraft flights in Texas' crowded airspace.
Texans were
demanding the Predator surveillance flights as a rising tide of
drug-fueled violence swept along the Mexican side of the border and
occasionally splashed over into Texas.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
R-Texas, said Predator flights were needed to help law enforcement
officials catch illegal immigrants "and to protect communities from the
violence associated with narco-terrorism and drug and arms trafficking."
Hutchison,
who is attempting to get $144 million budgeted for UAV operations in
Texas, said, "We must employ state-of-the-art border monitoring and
security techniques."
Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, called the UAV
flights "a critically important new means for providing homeland
security in Texas." UAVs flying along the Rio Grande "will gather
real-time intelligence on the ground to augment" the work of law
enforcement agents on the border, he said.
Predators have proven
valuable for patrolling the border in Arizona, New Mexico and
California, where they have been operating since 2005. They are credited
with contributing to the seizure of more than 25,000 pounds of
marijuana and the arrest of more than 5,000 illegal immigrants. In 2006,
a patrolling Predator crashed in the Arizona desert.
Operated by
the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, the Predators
provide persistent surveillance day and night with a combination of
optical and infrared video cameras and surface search and ground moving
target indicator radars.
Watching video as it is being shot from
more than three miles up, border patrol agents can tell the difference
between heavily laden drug smugglers and casual hikers, CBP officials
say.
The UAV is equipped with a laser illuminator that can be
locked on targets. The light is invisible to the eye, but to border
agents with night vision goggles, smugglers hiding in the dark stand out
as if illuminated by a spotlight.
The border agency flies
Predator Bs, which are 36 feet long, have a 66-foot wing span and weigh
10,500 pounds. They're powered by 900-horsepower turboprop engines
developed specifically for long-endurance flights. Each aircraft costs
more than $10 million.
Endurance is a key UAV advantage. The
Customs and Border Protection agency says its Predator Bs can stay aloft
for up to 20 hours. UAV maker General Atomics says the Predator B can
fly for more than 30 hours. It can fly up to 50,000 feet.
Manned
aircraft flights typically are much shorter. The maximum flight time for
a Black Hawk helicopter, for example, is two hours and 18 minutes.
The
CBP says Predator Bs allow border agents "to safely conduct missions in
areas that are difficult to access or otherwise too high-risk for
manned aircraft or CBP ground personnel."
But restrictions imposed by the FAA may limit the Predators' usefulness in Texas.
For
example, the unmanned planes generally won't fly at night, a
congressional aide said, even though night is when illegal activity
along the border is greatest. That restriction was ordered because the
FAA wants the UAVs to be watched carefully by air traffic monitors, but
many of the control towers in the small airports near the border do not
operate at night, the aide said.
"The goal is 24-hour operation on the border, but that will take more assets," he said.
A
key concern for the FAA is how well unmanned and manned aircraft will
mix. There is a lot more air traffic in Texas than in Arizona or New
Mexico, said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.
There are no automated crash avoidance systems for Predators or other UAVs.
"The technology does not exist. That's one of the challenges that exists" in allowing UAVs to fly in Texas.
There
are others, according to congressional staffers who met with FAA
officials to work out operating rules that led to an FAA "certificate of
authorization" to fly UAVs from El Paso to Big Bend.
Predator
operators in Arizona had to identify in advance where they would land
their UAVs should they become disabled in flight over Texas, a staffer
said. And they had to work out agreements so that the UAVs would be
watched by air traffic controllers at all times during their flights.
In
New Mexico, Arizona and California, where Predators are already
operating, there is plenty of government-owned land where disabled UAVs
could ditch if necessary. In Texas, by contrast, most of the land along
the border is privately owned and actively used, a staffer said.
Hutchison
said she hopes the FAA's approval to fly Predators between El Paso and
Big Bend will lead to flights later this summer along the entire
2,000-mile Texas-Mexico border. Texas lawmakers want to establish a
Predator operations center in Corpus Christi.
"We hope this
provides a precedent" for greater use of UAVs across the United States,
an aide said. Police agencies have already expressed interest in using
UAVs for surveillance. And oil companies want to use them to inspect
offshore drilling rigs, he said.
The U.S. Forest Service has used a
modified Predator B to map forest fires. And Brown of the FAA said they
have been used for damage surveillance after recent hurricanes, the
earthquake in Haiti and the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Predators
are used to patrol parts of the northern U.S. border with Canada, and
the Coast Guard has tested them in Florida for search and rescue
operations and to spot drug smugglers.
The Congressional Research
Service issued a word of caution in a 2008 report about increasing
UAV
use. Although UAVs are substantially less expensive to buy than manned
aircraft, they cost more to operate. That's because a single
UAV
requires up to 20 support personnel, the
CRS said. And limited tests by
the Department of Homeland Security showed UAVs were less effective than
manned aircraft at supporting the apprehension of unauthorized aliens.
