CBP’s Office of Air and Marine’s latest tool to assist in protecting the border comes in the form of a Predator, selected for its large payload and ability to stay in the air for an extended period of time.
The Predator supports ground interdiction agents along the Southwest Border.
The remotely piloted asset allows for persistent, broad area surveillance of our borders and coastlines.
With specially mounted cameras, the UAS provides proactive responses to un-cued, cued, and intelligence based threats.
“We commonly use radio or via telephone to patrol agents on the ground and we provide a real time video feed on the ground,” said Supervisory Air Interdiction Agent Bill Gibbons at the Office of Air and Marine “In essence we can give them a view on a laptop computer to their dashboard in an enforcement act and we do all this in a night’s work.”
CBP has Unmanned Aircraft in Corpus Christi, Texas, Sierra Vista, Arizona, Cocoa Beach Florida and Grand Forks, North Dakota, where duty officers provide command and control of the UAS through satellite communications.
The UAS also has the potential to allow CBP to coordinate operations within other DHS organizations, including the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The Predator is a force multiplier for CBP and its border security mission.
The UAS is described as the next generation of border enforcement.
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