Ft. Huachuca, Arizona – Inside a window-free and dark shipping container turned into a high-tech surveillance control center, two analysts looked at their own set of six screens that showed data from an MQ-9 Predator B drone.
The two were looking for two adults and a child who had crossed the American-mexic border and had fled when a border patrol agent approached a truck.
Inside the Drone’s hangar on the other side of the FT. The Huachuca base was seated another former shipping container, he occupied by a drone pilot and a camera operator, who swivel the drone’s camera to scan 9 square miles of shrubs and saguaros for migrants. Like the command center, the online shipping container was on the light of computer screens.
Hunting for three migrants embodied the way in which advanced technologies have become an essential element of the Trump administration efforts to guarantee the border.
The Ministry of Internal Security allocated 12,000 hours of Drone MQ-9 flight this year at the FT. Huachuca Base, and says the flights cost $ 3,800 an hour, although an inspector general report in 2015 said the amount was closer to $ 13,000 when taking the wages of staff and operating costs into account. Maintenance problems and bad weather often mean that drones fly around half of the hours allocated, officials said.
With the precipitous drop in passages through migrants to the southern United States border, drones are now responsible for less missions. This means that they have time to follow small groups or even individual border horsemen who tremble north through the desert.
This type of drone, used for the first time in the war, was operated by the National Division of Air Security Operations for Customs and Borders Protection at the base of the army at around 70 miles south of Tucson. A journalist was authorized to observe the operation in April provided that the staff is not appointed and that no photography is taken.
An aerial prohibition agent, on the left, is programming an unmanned predatory plane from a flight operations center near the Mexican border in Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Arizona, in March 2013.
(John Moore / Getty Images)
The flying drone that day was mounted with a radar, called a vehicle and dismantle an operating radar, or Vader, which could identify any object in motion at the sight of the drone, and locate them with coded color points for the two analysts of the first container. The program had already located three agents of the border patrol, one on foot and two on motorcycles, in search of migrants. Analysts also identified three cows and two horses, directed towards Mexico.
Then one of the analysts spotted something.
“We got them,” he said to his colleague, who had scanned the ground. “Well done.”
The analyst dropped a pin on migrants and the Vader program began to follow their movement in a blue path. Now he had to guide agents on the ground.
“We have an adult man and a child, I think, nestled in this bush”, the analyst has struck his team by radio, while he was working between live video towards an infrared camera view which showed the thermal signature of each living being within range. The analyst saw his colleagues from border patrol to approach motorcycles.
The roar of the machines coming in the opposite direction has frightened a bird, according to the follow -up program. Migrants started running.
“Okay, it seems that they are starting,” the camera operator told radio agents on the border patrol agents. “They hear bikes. They hear you guys. ” The camera operator and the other staff have taken the floor in the professional tone and the fact of the operators of the 911.
An adult and the child began to blur a hill. “They move to the north and west, mainly,” said the camera operator. “Start accelerating the rhythm uphill.”
The agents rushed to the pair and held them. She was a mother and her child. The drone team turned their attention to the third person, which stumbled through the brush and was driving for the Mexican border.
“If you cut to south of your current location,” the drone pilot told the camera operator. “You should take a sign.”
The camera operator, as indicated, crossed the desert, scanning further and further south.
“I have them,” he said when he spotted someone running. He has struck down the contact details of the border patrol team.
To date, man, wearing a backpack, had set a hill to the scale.
“He is on the ridge right now, making his way because of the south, slowly,” said the camera operator.
Then the man dropped something.
“Hey, mark this place,” said the camera operator. “He just launched a pack, here where my reticle is.”
The agents would return later and see if the backpack contained drugs, said an analyst. “Usually, if it’s food or water, they won’t,” he said.
This spring morning, the drone was not the only airborne asset deployed. A helicopter had joined the pursuit to catch the man in southern direction, who fell, got up and continued to run.
“He made a fairly good spill there,” said an analyst on the radio.
“We have a Helo Inbound, three points for five minutes,” said the camera operator.
A helicopter has entered the point of view of the drone. He plunged, surrounding the location of the man, who was now hiding under a bush.
“You have just passed over him,” said the camera operator by radio the helicopter pilot. “It is between you and this saguaro.”
With a touch, he went to an infrared vision to find the warmth profile of man through the brush to make sure he always had it.
Guided by the camera operator, the pilot won the helicopter in a cloud of dust near the target target. The video flow has shown that agents are jumping from the plane, hold the man and charge him in the helicopter. The helicopter detached and bowed north to a nearby border patrol post. “Thank you, sir, appreciates all the help,” the analyst told the helicopter pilot.
Mission accomplished, the drone pilot returned the MQ-9 along the American-Mexican border, scanning the vast desert in search of more migrants. The army plans to deliver a third MQ-9 drone at the base this fall after spending a year modernizing it for the use of civil authority.
Fisher is a special correspondent. This article was co-published with Collaborative pure newsA editorial room, a manager and a bilingual non-profit fund dedicated to news and information based on high-quality facts from the American-Mexican border.
