Candice Miller, the Republican chair of the
House Border and Marine Security Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security
Committee, is effusive in her praise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs),
referring to the drones at a March 15, 2011 hearing on Capitol Hill as
“fantastic technology” that have proved “incredibly, incredibly successful in
theater.”
As the new chair of the subcommittee that
oversees the air operations of Customs and Border Protection, Miller has become
one of the leading congressional advocates of increased domestic drone
deployment. Miller is a member of the House Unmanned Systems Caucus, which
works to increase drone use and open U.S. airspace to UAVs.
Over the past few years Texas Republicans –
most prominently Gov. Rick Perry, Senator John Cornyn,
and Cong. Michael McCaul – have been the among the leading high-profile
proponents of drones for border security. Democratic Party politicians also
generally share the mounting enthusiasm in Congress for this high-tech fix for
border security.
Neither the high price tag for the Predator
and Reaper drones –$20 million apiece – nor the inability of CBP to offer any
substantive documentation of their successful deployment deters congressional
drone boosters.
In support of the department’s use of
drones for border security DHS officials routinely assert that drones are a
“force multiplier” and that UAVs form an essential part of the “technological
pillar” of border security. Congressional drone boosters commonly echo and
amplify these DHS claims.
Yet DHS assertions about the success,
value, and worth of drones in border security operations suffer a widening
credibility gap six years after Predator drones first started patrolling the
southwest border. UAVs may, as Miller states, be fantastic technology.
The purported achievements fall more into
the realm of pure fantasy.
DHS has steadily expanded its drone fleet,
and Congress has offered more cheerleading for drones than oversight. Due diligence and accountability are nowhere
to be found.
What makes this absence of proper oversight
and good management especially shocking is that the waste, inefficiency, and
strategic blunders of the drone escalation mirror the monumental failures of
the SBInet “virtual fence” project – the other major DHS venture into high-tech
border security.
Customs and Border Protection, which has
eight drones in its UAV fleet with another two projected to be delivered by
early 2012, projects a 24-drone fleet according to its strategic plan.
Congressional members, alarmed about an array of perceived border threats, have
pressured CBP to quickly increase its drone fleet and patrol areas despite CBP
acknowledgements that it lacks the capacity and personnel to deploy the drones
it already has.
Multiplying
the Border Force
Since the inclusion in 2003 of immigration
and border security agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, CBP
has increasingly adopted a military lexicon to describe its operations. That
makes sense since CBP since for the first time CBP had an explicit security
mission – as evident in the wholesale adoption of the term “border security.”
Over the past six years CBP has spent more
than $2 billion to create a “technological pillar” for border security. The
other two border security pillars are personnel (Border Patrol and CBP agents)
and infrastructure (mainly the border fence).
The two main components of CBP’s new
technological border security are the “virtual fence” project (first known as
SBInet and now called the Alternative Technology Plan) and Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (UAVs). In both cases, one from the ground and the other from the air,
surveillance technology monitors stretches of the border and intelligence
analysts attempt to determine if the received data includes evidence of illegal
border crossings.
In both cases, CBP promotes these high-tech
surveillance programs as “force multipliers.” That’s a Department of Defense
term meaning a “capability that,
when added to and employed by a combat force, significantly increases the
combat potential of that force and thus enhances the probability of successful
mission accomplishment.”
The claim,
then, is that UAVs increase the capability of the Border Patrol by increasing
the effective scope of their patrols.
The ostensible
logic of the force-multiplying effect of UAVs is persuasive, just as the CBP assertion
that the virtual fence functions as a force-multiplier has been presented as
common sense – that technology enhances productivity.
One problem
with the “force multiplier” argument for border drone deployment is that DHS
has never provided any data to support the assertion. The other main problem is
that DHS probably cannot supply this supporting data because it is simply not
true.
UAVs might be
better described as being manpower-intensive rather than force-multipliers.
At any time,
it is more likely that CBP drones are sitting on U.S. military bases along the
border rather than serving as the Border Patrol’s “eyes in the skies.”
Why is that?
Numerous reasons.
Bad weather,
including cloudy conditions and winds, is a common explanation. Another is that
CBP and its Office of Air and Marine lacks the personnel to operate the drones.
Attempting to
explain why it is so challenging to get drones in the air, Gen. Kostelnik, who
as OAM chief directs CBP’s drone program expressed his frustration with preconceived
notions that the unmanned character of UAVs:
We're not flying to the full potential, not because of aircraft or
airspace limitations, but because we're still building the force. We're still
growing the crews….
We are all here talking about unmanned. The real issues have nothing to
do with the unmanned part. The real issues are all about the manned piece, and
this is a manpower-intensive system.
The manpower-intensive character of UAVs,
observed Kostelnik, is especially true for “the remotely piloted ones like the
Predator.” As the retired general explained, the Predators require two pilots
for any one mission, but also large teams to handle launching and grounding.
The manpower crunch obstructing more Predator patrols is also due to all the
analysts required to do the “intel kind of things” with the steady stream of
images transmitted by the drones.
Despite all the emphasis by CBP on the
force multiplying advantages of UAVs, neither Kostelnik nor anyone else at CBP
has offered any public description of exactly how much “manpower” drone
missions require.
Although UAVs have the capability of flying
as much as 20 hours, most missions apparently average about 10 hours, while the
many training missions are still shorter.
During the same subcommittee meeting,
Kostelnik was asked to give members some idea of the number of crew members
required for a drone mission. According to Kostelnik, a typical drone mission
requires three crews in addition to the two pilots – one handling navigation
and the other directing the sensors -- to handle launching, landing, and
recovery.
But what makes UAV missions so
“manpower-intensive” is the data management and analysis associated with the
stream of images flowing into the control centers. “Taking the data takes more people,”
explained Kostelnik, and the “data that comes out of our aircraft is now sent
to processing, exportation, and dissemination cells.”
This complex data input component of UAV
surveillance is what Kostelnik, using military jargon, called a “distributed infrastructure”
that complements the command control centers on military bases where the pilots
and aviation crews work. Another five full-time people are necessary, noted
Kostelnik, to “tell the sensor operator where to look and the pilot where to
fly.”
The OAM chief estimates that there could be
50 people involved in a typical drone mission.
Without even taking into account the number
of Border Patrol agents deployed in planes, helicopters, and ground vehicles,
the OAM chief estimated that UAVs depend on teams of fifty or more. Counting
those agents that hunt down suspected illegal border crossers, it’s likely that
more than a hundred Border Patrol agents and other support staff be involved in
any one UAV surveillance incident.
Although CBP officials have repeatedly
testified in Congress about the progress and success of the drone program, the
CBP has not produced any hard information about the numbers of men and women
involved in a typical UAV-driven border arrest or drug seizure.
Drones may be, as Cong. Miller says, a
“fantastic technology.” But that doesn’t mean that they are a “force
multiplier” as DHS repeatedly asserts.
Even if DHS could demonstrate that the
Predators reduce the number of Border Patrol agents needed to effectively
patrol U.S. borders, the homeland security department should still be required
to justify the $20 million it spends for a Predator and its control system. If
it were a responsible steward of government revenues, it should provide data
showing that drone surveillance is at least as effective as surveillance by
manned light aircraft or by Border Patrol officers on the ground.
Yet none of the numerous congressional DHS
oversight committees have demanded such an accounting from DHS and CBP, and DHS
has ramped up the border drone program without undertaking such a cost-benefit
evaluation.
One reason for this lack of due diligence
is the boyish enthusiasm in Congress and among border politicians for this new
technological toy in their border security playground.
Reporting
for the Washington Post, William
Booth brought attention to this this uncritical drone boosterism.
“In his trips to testify on Capitol Hill,” wrote
Booth, “Michael Kostelnik, the retired Air Force general and former test pilot
who runs the Office of Air and Marine for the CBP, said he has never been
challenged in Congress about the appropriate use of domestic drones. “Instead,
the question is: Why can’t we have more of them in my district?” Kostelnik
said.”
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