The military spends billions of dollars a year on unmanned aircraft,
which fly over war zones searching for targets and occasionally
even firing missiles. The Department of Homeland Security, however,
appears uninterested in employing Defense Department UAVs to monitor
the nation’s borders. As part of a project called the Arizona
Border Control Initiative, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Agency was employing military UAVs to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.
That program ended in January 2005, and DHS has not indicated it
wants to continue it, says Dyke Weatherington, head of a UAV task
force at the office of the secretary of defense. “In the past,
DHS has come to the Defense Department and requested support for
missions such as UAV operations,” he says. The ABCI effort
was terminated upon DHS request.
Meantime, Customs and Border Protection has replaced the UAVs with
helicopters, and will continue to evaluate options for future employment
of UAVs, says Mario Villareal, CBP spokesman. “In March, we
doubled the number of helicopters patrolling the Arizona border,”
he says. “Air operations are absolutely critical to what we
do.” CBP has the nation’s second largest aircraft fleet,
after the Defense Department.
Weatherington expects DHS to eventually seek Pentagon assistance
for UAV development and procurement. “They may have different
attributes for DHS, but it’s hard for me to believe that the
Defense Department capabilities wouldn’t meet DHS requirements.”