Contract Runs Out On Highly Effective Border Guardian

The US Border Patrol, now part of the Bureau of Customs And Border Protection with the US Department of Homeland Security, has come to rely on a little unmanned plane called the RQ-5 Hunter. At the end of the month, however, it plans to park the drones, or "unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)" as they are now called. The contract runs out on January 30, and nobody seems to be in any rush to renew it.

The Border Patrol people who use the UAVs like them -- partly because they have helped catch hundreds of illegal aliens and a ton of contraband, mostly marijuana. "It would be a good thing if we could continue on with it. It's definitely done a lot of good things," Border Patrol spokeswoman Andrea Zortman told the East Valley (Arizona) Tribune. Congress appropriated money to keep the drones flying through the end of the federal fiscal year, which expires on September 30. Nevertheless, higher-ups want to cogitate a while before actually spending the money -- so the Border Patrol's eyes on the border now have about as much elevation as a man can get when he sits up straight on horseback.

The Arizona paper points out that this is "the height of the season for illegal border crossings." Recent events in Texas and Boston prove that we cannot assume that all the people who cross the border are harmless gardeners and job seekers, even though that's what many of them are.

The RQ-5 Hunter's actual tally, as reported by USA Today, is 287 illegal immigrants and 1,900 pounds of marijuana. The Hunter was developed by TRW with help from UAV pioneer Israeli Aircraft Industries, and was adapted for the Border Patrol by Northrop Grumman, which currently makes and updates Hunters for the Army. Before the RQ-5 went online in October 2004, a fleet of another Israeli UAV, the Hermes, was used. It accounted for 965 illegal immigrants and 843 pounds of marijuana, during a test which lasted slightly over three months.

FMI: www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/