Drones meant to heighten border security cost more than $12,000 an hour to fly, and have hardly put a dent in the number of illegal immigrants apprehended, according to a government watchdog.
Customs and Border Protection’s drone fleet costs far more than the agency claims and has failed to live up to expectations set at the time CBP launched the program, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general said in a report released Tuesday.
The drones are among the high-technology border security measures officials under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama said made it unnecessary to build a new security fence along the entire length of the U.S. border with Mexico.
The unmanned aircrafts spent nearly 80 percent of the time they were supposed to be flying on the ground and racked up hefty costs when they were airborne. The agency presently operates a fleet of nine drones after losing one to a crash in January 2014.
While CBP reported the cost to fly its drones each hour as $2,468, the IG calculated a cost of $12,255 per flight hour.
The agency failed to include costs such as pilot salaries, equipment and overhead in its reports. Its border drones cost $62.5 million to operate in 2013 alone, the IG estimated.
Agency officials had reported the operating cost of the CBP drone program as $12 million for the same year.
“CBP has invested significant funds in a program that has not achieved the expected results, and it cannot demonstrate how much the program has improved border security,” the IG said.
The drones were expected to fly 16 hours a day, increase the number of suspects apprehended, lower surveillance costs, improve efficiency, and identify surveillance gaps in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.
But after eight years and an estimated $360 million investment, none of those goals have been met.
The drones are used to survey small sections of the border and don’t operate over vast stretches of land.
For example, the unmanned aircraft focused on just 70 miles of the Texas border, according to the IG.
In Arizona, drones could be credited with less than 2 percent of all apprehensions; in Texas, drones were responsible for less than 1 percent.
The drones were expected to reduce surveillance costs by up to 50 percent per mile, but investigators couldn’t determine the level of savings due to insufficient data, the report said.
Despite the program’s shortcomings, CBP plans to invest $443 million to expand its drone program by adding an additional 14 drones, the report said.
CBP resisted most of the IG’s recommendations by characterizing them as a “misunderstanding” of the drone program, agreeing with the majority only “in principle.”
In response to the watchdog’s findings, “CBP said that apprehensions are not an appropriate measure of unmanned aircraft performance,” the report said.
Eugene Schied, assistant commissioner of CBP’s office of administration, said the numbers in the report “inflate the actual program cost.” He called the IG’s claim that CBP didn’t properly report costs “erroneous.”
He said CBP is “applying the general intent” and embracing the “spirit” of Office of Management and Budget guidelines but pointed to “ambiguity” in the rules as an obstacle to calculating operating costs.
The CBP official also denied the IG’s claim that the agency planned to expand the program by 14 drones.
Schied said the agency doesn’t intend to acquire any additional drones beyond a replacement for the one it ditched off the coast of California last year.
The IG highlighted CBP’s contradictory past behavior in this area.
While CBP told the IG in April 2012 it had no plans to expand the flawed program in response to a draft report, the agency had already drafted a plan for acquiring 14 new drones in February 2012 and later that year signed off on the plan despite its assertions to the IG, the report said.
