How long before DHS & the police use armed drones in America?

A county north of Houston made news in Europe at the end of October by taking delivery of a new “weaponizable” drone, a squat remote-controlled helicopter called a ShadowHawk that can fire Tasers or beanbags at people on the ground. Police in Montgomery County say the drone would chase drug smugglers or escaping criminals. Alarmed Europeans wondered if some aspect of drone warfare — so far a problem only for terrorists and other strangers in poor and distant countries — had come home to the First World.

“In the end the police have the same consideration as the military,” writes a columnist at Telepolis, a tech website in Germany, “namely that using drones in risky situations can keep personnel out of danger.”

Surveillance drones tend to be popular with border-patrol agencies in the U.S. and Europe. Dutch police use them to spy on pot growers. The British — who have soaked their own country in surveillance video — hope to use drones over the London Olympics in 2012.

But an armed police drone would be new. Montgomery County Sheriff Tommy Gage says his ShadowHawk won’t carry weapons, but the drone’s manufacturer, Vanguard Defense Industries, boasts that it’s strong enough to carry a shotgun or even a grenade launcher. The most relevant weapon for chasing fugitives might be the beanbag launcher. Its ammunition, though, isn’t called a beanbag; it’s a “stun baton.”

“You have a stun baton where you can actually engage somebody at altitude with the aircraft,” said Michael Buscher, chief of Vanguard Defense, told Homeland Security News Wire. “A stun baton would essentially disable a suspect.”

Gage, of course, tried to reassure journalists when he unveiled the Texas drone two weeks ago: “We’re not going to use it to be invading somebody’s privacy. It’ll be used for situations we have with criminals.”

But mission creep is common with drones.
The Pentagon said something similar two years ago about fighter-plane-sized Reaper drones deployed over the Indian Ocean: We’re only going to use these for spying on pirates, officials essentially said. Yes, they’re weaponizable, but they won’t be weaponized. By the end of this summer they were weaponized, and armed Reapers started to fire on Islamists in Somalia.

Around the same time, a Predator drone killed an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, in Yemen. Even if all the people killed in those distant parts of the world were terrorists plotting hell for Americans, drone pilots do make mistakes.

In April, an Air Force drone surveying a nighttime skirmish between U.S. Marines and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan fired Hellfire missiles by accident at two Marines. Both died. The Los Angeles Times reports that when the remote pilot in Nevada realized what had happened, he asked to be relieved. He watched a playback of the drone video but couldn’t figure out how he’d misinterpreted the infrared images on his screen.

“He asked for the video to be stopped and left the building,” according to the Times. “An Air Force chaplain was waiting outside.”
 http://www.psmag.com/legal-affairs/america-edges-to-brink-of-armed-police-drones-37837/

 Border agency overextended on drone program.
The Homeland Security Department ordered so many drones it can’t keep them all flying and doesn’t have a good plan for how to use them, according to a new audit the department’s inspector general released Monday.
In a blunt assessment, investigators said Customs and Border Protection's Office of Air and Marine has a fleet of nine “unmanned aircraft systems” and is awaiting a 10th — though it doesn’t have enough ground support and doesn’t have a good plan for prioritizing missions.
“CBP procured unmanned aircraft before implementing adequate plans,” the investigators said.

The Defense Department uses armed drones overseas in its war on terror, and a U.S. Navy drone crashed on Maryland’s Eastern Shore on Monday afternoon, according to the Associated Press.
American law enforcement agencies at all levels are also increasingly turning to drones for use in detecting or preventing crimes in the U.S. But they find themselves butting heads with civil libertarians who worry about intrusion into innocent citizens’ private lives.
The inspector general said given the number of aircraft, CBP should have been able to fly more than 10,000 hours of missions per year, but in the year under review the agency flew less than 4,000 hours.
Underscoring the ad hoc approach, the agency doesn’t have a dedicated budget for running drones, and has had to siphon money from other areas to keep the program afloat. Investigators said the budget woes mean future missions may have to be scrapped — yet the underfunded fleet continues to grow.
“Despite the current underutilization of unmanned aircraft, CBP received two additional aircraft in late 2011 and was awaiting delivery of a tenth aircraft in 2012,” the inspector general said.  In a statement, CBP officials said they accepted the auditor’s recommendations and will work to improve the program.
“CBP’s Unmanned Aircraft System program provides command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability to support personnel and capabilities on the ground,” the agency said. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/11/border-agency-overextended-drone-program/