Department of Homeland Security don’t want their Predators.

Homeland Security Wire reports that the Predators being rolled out for border patrol come without training and maintenance.  The ScanEagle has always seemed a better fit for this task. A much smaller resource to handle.

Congress has awarded $32 million to DHS to purchase three new aerial surveillance drones, despite the agency never requesting them and lacking a sufficient number of pilots and resources to operate them; with the additional appropriations, Congress did not include funding to train or hire new pilots and crews or to purchase spare parts, placing a financial strain on the agency’s limited resources

Congress has awarded $32 million to DHS to purchase three new aerial surveillance drones, despite the agency never requesting them and lacking a sufficient number of pilots and resources to operate them.

“We didn’t ask for them,”said a DHS official speaking anonymously to the Los Angeles Times.

According to officials from the Customs and Border Protection Office of Air and Marine, which operates DHS’ small fleet of seven drones, the agency only has enough pilots to fly the existing drones five days a week.

With the additional $32 million, Congress did not include funding to train or hire new pilots and crews or to purchase spare parts, placing a financial strain on the agency’s limited resources.

DHS officials say they will now have to shift scarce department resources to operate the new drones.

The agency has already been forced to shift money away from other programs to purchase the satellite bandwidth required to operate its existing drone fleet.  In addition, each unmanned aircraft requires a small platoon of surveillance analysts, sensor operators, and a maintenance crew in addition to the pilot.

“That is year-by-year, hand-to-mouth living,” said a federal law enforcement official who spoke anonymously.

The additional DHS drones were authorized largely as a result of lobbying by the Congressional “Drone Caucus,” a collection of fifty representatives primarily from districts in Southern California, a major unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturing hub.