Drones Soon to Help Monitor US Border

EL PASO -- An unarmed surveillance drone will soon be monitoring the borderland for criminals and illegal activity.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday that it authorized a drone to fly back and forth between Fort Huachuca, an Army installation near Sierra Vista, Ariz., and Big Bend National Park beginning June 1, said Vincent Perez, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas.

It is the first of two drones the Department of Homeland Security wants to assign to the Texas border region. The drone is certified to fly over the area starting June 1, but its missions might not begin until after that, pending operator training, Perez said.

It will provide an extra layer of protection for the U.S., he said.

"It adds another layer of security. You have your boots on the ground. You have your ports of entry. You have cameras. You have sensors. The drone is like another tool in the toolbox to provide security along the border," he said.

Drones are best known for assisting Soldiers by scouting for insurgents in the Pakistan border area. They can identify an object the size of a milk carton from an altitude of 60,000 feet.

But instead of looking for insurgents, this drone will look for potential underground tunnels and the travel patterns of drug- trafficking organizations, Perez said.

The drone that will fly over Texas had a previous flight route of 500 miles along the Arizona and New Mexico borders. That route will be expanded to include the western part of Texas, Perez said.

"The second drone that's going through the FAA process right now will patrol the rest of the Texas border," he said.

Perez said the Department of Homeland Security and members of Congress have been frustrated with the FAA because it has been slow in approving the department's request for the drones.

According to a 2008 Department of Homeland Security report, the department has been testing the use of drones for border surveillance since June 2004.

Despite the potential benefits of using the drones for homeland security along the border, the accident rate for drones is 100 times as high as that of a manned aircraft because the drone technology is still evolving and there is less redundancy in operating a drone than a manned aircraft, according to the report.

In addition, the drone's sensory equipment has problems tracking in dense woods and mountainous terrain. This type of environment "can degrade the images produced" and "limit their effectiveness at the borders," the report said.

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general noted that based on limited tests, the drones were less effective than manned aircraft in assisting with the apprehension of undocumented immigrants. In most cases where the drones were used to help law enforcement officers, the officers had already detected the undocumented immigrants by other means, the report said.