Predators coming to Texas border

San Antonio Express-News:

An unarmed reconnaissance drone soon will fly over Texas as drug violence continues to escalate on the U.S.-Mexico border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate hearing Tuesday.

Texas is the last border state to receive a Predator drone, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said that has hurt the intelligence capabilities of federal, state and local law enforcement.

“I'm concerned that some of the assets that could be deployed to help not only quell the violence but also keep our borders secure, are not being deployed because of unnecessary foot-dragging,” Cornyn said.

Napolitano said Texas was the last Southwest border state to receive a drone because its “airspace is more crowded.”

She said the timeline for placing a drone in Texas, which tentatively would be stored in Corpus Christi, remains a decision for the Federal Aviation Administration.

“The FAA now has to go in and carve out, as I understand it, space for the Predator,” she said.

...

Texas has the longest border with Mexico so it needs the view provided by the Predator and probably needs more than one. I am surprised that Texas air space is more crowded than California especially along the border.

Comments

  1. Rorschach12:27 PM

    Unfortunately the first sentence undermines the whole deal. the predators will be unarmed. So in other words we have an even more expensive version of the "virtual fence". You can watch them cross the border all day, but unless you are willing to actually commit resources to stop it, the effort is a wast of time and money.

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