DRONES START BORDER DUTY

La policia is now the least of their worries. People trying to hop the U.S. border in Arizona are going to have to watch out for robot spy planes, too.
All summer, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is going to use a couple of single-engine, Israeli-built Hermes 450 drones to keep tabs on the U.S/Mexico line. Flesh-and-blood border patrol agents are spread thin across the rugged, desolate area. By acting as eyes in the sky, "these aerial vehicles permit greater border coverage and quicker response times," DHS claims.
DHS has been talking about the move for more than a year. And for a few weeks last fall, the Depatment even tested out unmanned border watching. Vigilante groups have gone robotic, too, with their own, wildcat patrols.
But these Hermes drones -- which cruise at about 9500 feet, and stay in the air for 20 hours at a clip -- are the first sustained effort that Homeland Security has undertaken.