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| Homeland Security's High Tech Vision of Border Security |
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 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 – more
than $15 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.
(Next: Drones Down on Border -- More Time on Ground and Accident Rates)
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