Posted on 05/01/2003 9:58:58 AM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
American Border Patrol's high-tech immigration watchdog effort took flight Wednesday with a successful testing of the group's unmanned aerial vehicle.
Within minutes the miniature plane found and followed a group of people making their way along the San Pedro River.
In this case, the targets were volunteers rather than the illegal border crossers who will be the focus of the group's future aerial efforts.
The volunteers could have easily been among the dozens of border crossers who make their northward trek across Wes and Sandy Flowers' Palominas-area ranch, said the couple who allowed the test flight on their property.
Glenn Spencer's Sierra Vista-based American Border Patrol uses equipment including video cameras, computers and a portable satellite uplink to monitor illegal entrants, reporting the groups to the U.S. Border Patrol.
The development of the radio-controlled prototype UAV - known as Border Hawk - has cost the group about $5,000 so far. It will soon be outfitted with a global positioning system, or GPS, a navigation system that uses satellite signals to locate positions anywhere in the world.
The small aircraft will fly in a preprogrammed search pattern at specific locations that will be identified by remote sensors - also being developed by American Border Patrol - that would be triggered by passing illegal entrants.
Once on target, equipment on the plane will relay the GPS coordinates to the operator, who will pass it on to the U.S. Border Patrol, said Spencer.
Live images of illegal entrants shot from the mini-spy plane will also be broadcast on the group's Internet site.
The GPS coordinates will not be posted in the Internet, Spencer said, for the safety of the illegal entrants.
"We don't want these militia types to use that information to harm any of these people," Spencer said.
U.S. Border Patrol officials in Tucson declined to comment on the American Border Patrol or its use of an unmanned aircraft.
Spencer said the U.S. Border Patrol could be using similar equipment for as little as $15,000 to $20,000 per unit.
The border group's Border Hawk 1 is an off-the-shelf model airplane about 3 feet long with a 6-foot wingspan that's been modified with a camera and other equipment. Its fuselage and wings are made of balsa wood and heat-shrink plastic. Its external fuel tanks, mounted to the fuselage, can improve its flight time to up to 90 minutes.
It flies up to 200 feet above the ground and goes as fast as 40 miles per hour.
Spencer said he hopes to have a squadron of miniature planes scouting areas along the border on routes often used by illegal entrants. Each plane would cost around $12,000, he said. That goes up to $21,000 if it is fitted with night-vision equipment.
"There's no question that this works, that the Border Hawk can do this job.," Spencer said after Wednesday's test flight.
Spencer said he hopes visitors to the group's Internet site, www.americanpatrol.com, will see the plane's images and put pressure on lawmakers. "They'll be on the telephone with their congressman demanding to know why the Border Patrol can't do what American Border Patrol is doing."
The U.S. Border Patrol uses fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters rather than unmanned drones for border enforcement.
That could change. The new Homeland Security Department's top border enforcement official, Asa Hutchinson, recently told Congress he is reconsidering the use of UAV technology.
And in a letter sent Monday to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., expressed his support for a border UAV program. He proposed Las Cruces International Airport west of El Paso "as a particularly viable location near the U.S.-Mexico border to play an integral role in the deployment of UAVs for such an effort."
"Hey Pedro! I bet you can't hit that toy plane with your AK-47!"
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