It seems unmanned aerial vehicles, A.K.A. drones, are thronging the skies over parts of our southern border.
More than 1,000 drones per month are crossing into US airspace near the border with Mexico, a top general told lawmakers Thursday.
The number of unmanned drone incursions is “alarming” and presents a “growing” potential threat to national security, Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of North American Defense Command and US Northern Command, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
. . .
Mexican cartels have been using drones to track the location of authorities along the US-Mexico border in order to more easily smuggle humans and drugs, according to US Customs and Border Protection officials.
Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez told the House Oversight Committee in February of 2023 that in her Texas sector alone, more than 10,000 drone incursions and 25,000 drone sightings had been reported in the last year.
“The adversaries have 17 times the number of drones, twice the amount of flight hours and unlimited funding to grow their operations,” Chavez told lawmakers.
There's more at the link.
It makes very good business sense for the Mexican cartels, which control almost all drug and people smuggling across the southern US border, to use drones for surveillance. If they know where Border Patrol vehicles and roadblocks are at any given time, they can route their "shipments" around them; and their drones warn them if a roadblock is moved, so that they can adjust their operations in real time. It would be called sophisticated if a legitimate business used drones to avoid traffic slowdowns like that. To do so for criminal purposes shows an unwelcome degree of sophistication.
It's not surprising, of course. With a combined monthly cash flow measured in multiple billions of dollars, the cartels probably have more money available for their needs than most government departments. To invest a hundred million dollars in drones, operator training and deployment is chump change to them - and the money they save by avoiding interception and confiscation of their drug shipments more than repays their expenditure.
As for cargo shipments by drone, I'm not sure that's economical on the scale at which the cartels operate. Sure, commercial drones can be bought "off the shelf" to carry packages weighing several pounds, and a few larger models can handle hundreds of pounds: but a human smuggler can carry up to a hundred pounds on his back, and thousands of pounds can be smuggled in a single truck. It would make more sense to use the drones to make sure ground smugglers have a clear path to cross the border, rather than try to replace the latter with the former. That may change, of course.
I've speculated in the past about the development of "anti-drone drones", interceptors whose sole task is to bring down "enemy" drones. We're already seeing that in Ukraine. Will the Border Patrol have to deploy such technology on our border with Mexico, too?
Peter
9 comments:
One can not mention the border without mentioning the thousands of politicians (both Dems and RINOs) and members of law enforcement that found a percentage of those billions in their pockets. Probably some for the "Big Guy" too.
And with the Great Replacement ongoing, it's just going to get worse until/if CW II happens.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770030227390914624
I have one of those screwy suggestions. The Governor of Texas can issue Letters of Marque for privately owned drones to intercept and bring down intruding drones. Perhaps offer a $5 or $10 bounty for each foreign drone turned into authorities. There would have to be some sort of IFF scheme. I’m thinking a coded LED flash would work. This could be as much fun as feral hog hunting.
Sounds like a great place to practice ones skeet shooting skills.
How about a DEW? Say, in microwave frequency?
The War Zone has reported that Langley AFB has had frequent drone incursions.
Considering the Armenian war in 2020 and the Ukraine war the us military needs to get its head out if its ass regarding drones or the next conflict is going to be a s-show for the US
Sounds like an excellent location and opportunity for the military to perfect directed energy weapons for routine use. Something that really needs to happen.
Dan, They're too busy messing with Lahina!
Wait... I've seen this one before.
https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/The_Other_Side
1) CBP isn't stopping anything at the border, for some decades, with rare cursory exceptions, and even then, like TSA, it's strictly for show-and-tell disinfo.
2) Probably 1/3rd of CBP is on the cartel take, already. (Which is skewed towards senior leadership, BTW.)
Another 1/3rd is just putting in the time for a pension, and not trying very hard to do the job, because they figured out after a couple of years that the game is rigged from the top.
Which leaves, at best, 1/3rd naive enough to actually do the job, when TPTB even permit that. Which is seldom, and currently almost never.
And those numbers are gleaned from conversations with serving field agents, confirmed multiple times.
3) If this is news to anyone, they haven't been paying close attention since the 1980s.
If anyone is bored, go to recent Google Earth photography of the border region, and play a little game, called "Spot the cartel lookouts on high ground in the border region."
I.e., look for photos showing people camped out along the travel routes, and along the nearest interstate (like I-8). Those will be cartel minions, with radios, cell phones, binoculars, and increasingly, night vision and thermal observation devices.
You don't need drones when you have a guy or three sitting on a desert hilltop 24/7 and calling in conditions to the coyotes in real time. Think "Desert Coastwatcher", and you've got the concept down pat.
We regularly bumped them, and that was 20 years ago. They send out a guy or three to camp out on a peak in the middle of nowhere, and along the interstates and just rotate them a couple/three times a week, and they have real-time intel on everything that moves for miles around, from San Diego to Brownsville. The cartels figured this out 30 years ago. And they can see people coming at them from miles away by air or land, whether it's LE, or a group coming up from the south, with people, dope, or both.
And unlike drones, you can't shoot those guys down.
More's the pity.
The only way to stop it is to build that paltry cheap $4B wall, and put people on the border to catch anyone climbing over before they can get up and down, and you stop 99.99999% of attempts that way.
But currently, a 10% Wall is the equivalent of no wall.
But express design and intent of your government, at every level. Including Texas.
Otherwise, they would have slammed the door shut decades ago, in about 15 minutes, with ridiculous ease, forcing the cartels to rely on million-dollar air delivery, which can be spotted and interdicted with little effort; or $1M subs, which drastically limits their routes and landing options, and pushes most effort right at the Coast Guard, who - unlike CBP - aren't lazy, incompetent, and/or on-the-cartel-take.
Now see if you can figure out why .Gov has been outrageously against a border wall, since ever, and always will be.
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