Drones patrolling the U.S. border are poorly managed and ineffective at stopping illegal immigration, and the government should abandon a $400-million plan to expand their use, according to an internal watchdog report released Tuesday.The 8-year-old drone program has cost more than expected, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, John Roth. Rather than spend more on drones, the department should "put those funds to better use," Roth recommended. He described the Predator B drones flown along the border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as "dubious achievers.""Notwithstanding the significant investment, we see no evidence that the drones contribute to a more secure border, and there is no reason to invest additional taxpayer funds at this time," Roth said in a statement. The audit concluded that Customs and Border Protection could better use the funds on manned aircraft and ground surveillance technology.The drones were designed to fly over the border to spot smugglers and illegal border crossers.

But auditors found that 78% of the time that agents had planned to use the craft, they were grounded because of bad weather, budget constraints or maintenance problems. Even when aloft, auditors found, the drones contributed little. Three drones flying around the Tucson area helped apprehend about 2,200 people illegally crossing the border in 2013, fewer than 2% of the 120,939 apprehended that year in the area.Border Patrol supervisors had planned on using drones to inspect ground-sensor alerts. But a drone was used in that scenario only six times in 2013. Auditors found that officials underestimated the cost of the drones by leaving out operating costs such as pilot salaries, equipment and overhead. Adding such items increased the flying cost nearly fivefold, to $12,255 per hour. "It really doesn't feel like [Customs and Border Protection] has a good handle on how it is using its drones, how much it costs to operate the drones, where that money is coming from or whether it is meeting any of its performance metrics," said Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based privacy and digital rights group.

The report's conclusions will make it harder for officials to justify further investment in the border surveillance drones, especially at a time when Homeland Security's budget is at the center of the battle over President Obama's program to give work permits to millions of immigrants in the country illegally. best combat drones eve onlineEach Predator B system costs about $20 million."ar drone 2 rescuePeople think these kinds of surveillance technologies will be a silver bullet," said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union. parrot ar drone 2 gps"Time after time, we see the practical realities of these systems don't live up to the hype."parrot ar drone meilleur prix

Customs and Border Protection, which is part of Homeland Security, operates the fleet of nine long-range Predator B drones from bases in Arizona, Texas and North Dakota.The agency purchased 11 drones, but one crashed in Arizona in 2006 and another fell into the Pacific Ocean off San Diego after a mechanical failure last year.ar drone battery specsAgency officials said in response to the audit that they had no plans to expand the fleet aside from replacing the Predator that crashed last year. ar drone 2 routerThe agency is authorized to spend an additional $433 million to buy up to 14 more drones.ar drone 2 tutoThe drones — unarmed versions of the MQ-9 Reaper drone flown by the Air Force to hunt targets in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere — fly the vast majority of their missions in narrowly defined sections of the Southwest border, the audit found.

They spent most of their time along 100 miles of border in Arizona near Tucson and 70 miles of border in Texas.Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) has promoted the use of drones along the border but believes the agency should improve how it measures their effectiveness.Homeland Security "can't prove the program is effective because they don't have the right measures," Cuellar said in an interview. "The technology is good, but how you implement and use it — that is another question."The audit also said that drones had been flown to help the FBI, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.Such missions have long frustrated Border Patrol agents, who complain that drones and other aircraft aren't available when they need them, said Shawn Moran, vice president of the Border Patrol agents' union."We saw the drones were being lent out to many entities for nonborder-related operations and we said, 'These drones, if they belong to [Customs and Border Protection], should be used to support [its] operations primarily,'" Moran said.

« CLIMATE CHANGE AND HONEYWELL |HONEYWELL BOSS: “WE WILL CONTINUE TO FOLLOW ALL LAWS” »This article, written by Chris Cole and Jim Wright, was originally published in January 2010 Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS), also known as drones, are aircraft either controlled by ‘pilots’ from the ground or increasingly, autonomously following a pre-programmed mission.  While there are dozens of different types of drones, they basically fall into two categories: those that are used for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes and those that are armed with missiles and bombs. The use of drones has grown quickly in recent years because unlike manned aircraft they can stay aloft for many hours (Zephyr a British drone under development has just broken the world record by flying for over 82 hours nonstop); they are much cheaper than military aircraft and they are flown remotely so there is no danger to the flight crew. While the British and US Reaper and Predator drones are physically in Afghanistan and Iraq, control is via satellite from Nellis and Creech USAF base outside Las Vegas, Nevada.

Ground crews launch drones from the conflict zone, then operation is handed over to controllers at video screens in specially designed trailers in the Nevada desert. One person ‘flies’ the drone, another operates and monitors the cameras and sensors, while a third person is in contact with the “customers”, ground troops and commanders in the war zone. While armed drones were first used in the Balkans war, their use has dramatically escalated in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the CIA’s undeclared war in Pakistan. The Only Game in Town The US has two separate ‘squadron’ of armed drones – one run by the US Air Force and one run by the CIA. Using drones, the USAF Air Force has increased the number of combat air patrols it can fly by 600 percent over the past six years; indeed at any time there are at least 36 American armed UAVS over Afghanistan and Iraq. It plans to increase this number to 50 by 2011. CIA Director Leon Panetta has recently said that drones are “the only game in town.”

The CIA have been using drones in Pakistan and other countries to assassinate “terrorist leaders.” While this programme was initiated by the Bush Administration, it has increased under Obama and there have been 41 known drone strikes in Pakistan since Obama became President. Analysis by an American think tank The Brookings Institution on drone attacks in Pakistan has shown that for every militant leader killed, 10 civilians also have died. The UK has several different types of armed and surveillance drones in Iraq and Afghanistan and others in the production or development stage. The UK began using armed drones in Afghanistan in Oct 2007 after purchasing three Reapers from General Atomics in 2007 at a cost of £6m each. The MoD confirmed in June 2008 that a British Reaper UAV had fired its weapons for the first time, but refused to give any details. In March 2009, the Daily Telegraph reported that British drones had been used ten times in armed strikes. As well as armed drones, the UK has several types of surveillance drones, most notably Watchkeeper, a drone jointly produced by Israeli company Ebit and Thales UK.

The UK is purchasing 54 Watchkeeper drones and ground stations at a cost of £860m. The first ten will be built in Israel and then production will transfer to a specially built facility in Leicester. Testing is taking place at Aberporth in Wales and Watchkeeper is due to enter service in 2010. There have recently been reports that Watchkeeper may be armed in the future. Thes UN’s Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, has said that the use of drones is not combat as much as ‘targeted killing’. He has repeatedly tried to get the US to explain how they justifies the use of drones to target and kill individuals under international law. The US has so far refused to do so. In a report to the UN he has said the US government (and by implication the UK government) “should specify the bases for decisions to kill rather than capture particular individuals …. and should make public the number of civilians killed as a result of drone attacks, and the measures in place to prevent such casualties”.