Unmanned National Guard surveillance drones to fly over New York state following vehicles

A maintenance airman inspects an MQ-9 Reaper in Afghanistan, where many of the Reapers, used for air support, surveillance and targeting enemies, are controlled by New York Air National Guard’s 174th Fighter Wing in Syracuse. Those to fly over the Adirondacks will not carry weapons. Photo: U.S. Air Force

Unmanned drones, controlled by Air National Guard from Hancock Airfield, will fly over the Adirondacks

As of Dec. 1, the FAA had issued 273 authorizations to fly at least 72 different types of unmanned aircraft. Some are the size of birds and launched by hand. The Miami Dade police department recently bought a RQ-16 T-hawk drone, which takes off vertically, looks like a small robot and can fly as high as 10,000 feet for more than 40 minutes.

Hints at the looming issues of civil liberties and air safety that come with government surveillance by unmanned aircraft over American soil.

Post-Standard | Feb 6, 2011

By Dave Tobin

If you feel like you’re being watched while floating in a canoe or driving along some lonely road in the Adirondacks this summer, you might be right.

In June, the New York Air National Guard’s 174th Fighter Wing in Syracuse plans to begin regular unmanned surveillance flights from Fort Drum over the Adirondacks.

The training mission of the drones, called Reapers, will mark the first ongoing flights east of the Mississippi with aircraft that don’t have people in them.

The 174th’s New York flights will train pilots (who remotely fly the planes) and sensor operators (who monitor video shot from the plane). The Reapers, or MQ-9s, will be controlled from a station at Hancock Airfield, the same place from which the 174th is flying Reapers over Afghanistan.

The New York flights will not be armed and should be undetectable by those on the ground.

The new training mission shows the Syracuse air guard unit’s prominence in the growing role of unmanned military aircraft. It also hints at the looming issues of civil liberties and air safety that come with government surveillance by unmanned aircraft over American soil.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection flew an unarmed MQ-9 over northern New York for 30 days of testing during the summer of 2009. That craft launched from Fort Drum and was operated from North Dakota and Arizona.

The agency’s seven MQ-9s regularly fly along the southern U.S. border and the northern U.S. border west of Minnesota. With its highly sensitive cameras and radar, the drone can “see” people crossing a border 20 miles away, said John Priddy, the agency’s director of air operations in Grand Forks, N.D.

The border patrol hopes to regularly fly MQ-9s over northern New York by 2016. When that happens, the agency plans to operate them from North Dakota, Priddy said.

The FAA, which has created an Unmanned Aircraft Program Office, has been cautious about allowing unmanned aircraft flights in unrestricted airspace. There is no reliable technology to help unmanned aircrafts “sense and avoid” other aircraft.

The MQ-9’s accident rate is seven times the general aviation rate, and 353 times the commercial aviation rate, based on a few thousand hours of drone flights by the border patrol.

At a Jan. 13 presentation to the Adirondack Park Agency, Col. Charles “Spider” Dorsey, the 174th Fighter Wing’s vice commander, touted the safety of Air Force MQ-9s. His data, based on about 70,000 flight hours, comes from the military’s experience flying mostly in war zones where there is almost no commercial or civilian traffic.

The Air Force Reaper’s accident rate is similar to the F-16 fighter jet for the same number of hours flown, Dorsey said. The Air Force and Air National Guard have had 10 major accidents with the Reaper (causing death, permanent disability or the plane’s destruction). Seven were caused by human error, three by aircraft malfunction, he said. Most came during landings.

Once the “sense and avoid” issue is resolved, domestic use of drones is expected to rise rapidly, according to the FAA.

As of Dec. 1, the FAA had issued 273 authorizations to fly at least 72 different types of unmanned aircraft. Some are the size of birds and launched by hand. The Miami Dade police department recently bought a RQ-16 T-hawk drone, which takes off vertically, looks like a small robot and can fly as high as 10,000 feet for more than 40 minutes.

The 174th Fighter Wing has been flying the heavily armed Reaper in Afghanistan since December 2009. The 174th’s Hancock base is one of six sites in the nation from which Reapers in Afghanistan are flown.

For the northern New York training missions, the 174th Fighter Wing has requested permission initially for Reapers to fly above 18,000 feet, over general aviation planes. When “sense and avoid” gear develops, the 174th plans to fly at lower altitude.

Practice following cars

The Reapers’ high altitude and relative quiet make them hard to detect, which has contributed to their heavy use for surveillance in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, where the CIA flies them.

An unarmed Reaper can fly up to 20 hours, cruise at roughly 180 mph as high as 40,000 feet, loitering over targets.

For training maneuvers over New York, the Reapers will randomly follow vehicles or circle over buildings, giving pilots and operators experience watching something on the ground, Dorsey said.

A possible exercise might be to sight “the next car driving north across the Black River out of Castorland, and track that vehicle as it makes turns, goes under trees and behind barns,” Dorsey said.

Would someone know they were being watched? asked Leilani Crafts Ulrich, an APA commissioner.

“No,” Dorsey said. “They’d have no way of knowing they were targeted.”

During training, Reapers will not monitor specific people or places, Dorsey said. Department of Defense regulations prohibit targeted surveillance of U.S. citizens in training missions.

However, DOD does allow exceptions with approval from the secretary of defense. In such cases, surveillance data is turned over to agencies such as border patrol, FBI, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Coast Guard, the regulation states.

Use by police agencies

At Fort Drum, a new $2.7 million Reaper hangar and control station is planned to be built at Wheeler Sack Army Airfield by 2012, said Lt. Col. Fred Tomaselli, military airspace manager for the N.Y. Air National Guard.

For live missile training, the 174th is seeking permission to fly Reapers within a small restricted flight zone over Fort Drum and eventually over part of Lake Ontario.

Similar training observations over the Adirondacks were made by pilots of F-16s, which the 174th flew for more than 20 years, Dorsey said. The 158th Fighter Wing of the Vermont Air National Guard still flies F-16s over the Adirondacks.

By 2014, the 174th plans to fly Reapers inside the same flight zones that F-16 fighter jets flew, a broad expanse over the Adirondacks and Lake Ontario, as well as between Syracuse and Fort Drum.

The guard doesn’t have FAA approval to fly drones between Syracuse and Fort Drum. When Reapers need to be moved, they are taken apart and trucked.

The 174th Fighter Wing has a school to teach Reaper maintenance in Syracuse. It is seeking approval for a flight school to teach pilots and operators. Students could include military personnel from Italy, Spain, Germany, Canada and Turkey, according to Air Force documents.

Months ago, the 174th wing commander, Col. Kevin Bradley said his unit plans to have three cockpits (or control stations) at Hancock, each responsible for up to four Reapers overseas. Maj. Jeff Brown, spokesman for the Fighter Wing, would not say whether the 174th had met its goals.

Police agencies in Texas, Maryland, Florida and Colorado are already flying some version of unmanned air vehicles, the Washington Post recently reported. At this point the FAA grants authorization to police agencies on a case-by-case basis.

In New York state, the 174th could be called upon by state or civil authorities to fly Reapers during emergencies, Dorsey said.

“Let’s say Nine Mile Point (nuclear reactor) suffered a major radiation leak, he said. “You wouldn’t want a manned aircraft up there monitoring it.”

Animals freeze to death at Mexican zoo as coldest weather in six decades grips region

35 animals freeze to death at zoo in northern Mexico as frigid weather grips region

Associated Press | Feb 5, 2011

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Thirty-five animals at a zoo in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua have frozen to death during the region’s coldest weather in six decades.

Serengeti Zoo owner Alberto Hernandez says 14 parrots, 13 serpents, five iguanas, two crocodiles and a capuchin monkey died. He said Saturday that power failures cut off electrical heating at the zoo in the town of Aldama.

Temperatures have dropped to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 13 Celsius) in the area, the coldest weather in 60 years.

Power outages have affected much of northern Mexico, forcing factories and businesses to close. Dozens of people are in shelters. Schools have been closed in Chihuahua state but are expected to open Tuesday as the weather warms.

Surge of immigrants from India “baffles” border officials in Texas

In Harlingen, Texas, Indian citizens released from an immigration center often are taken to the Greyhound bus station. Many struggle with poor English as they try to call family or friends, or buy travel tickets. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times / February 6, 2011)

Thousands from India have entered Texas illegally from Mexico in the last year. Most are Sikhs who claim religious persecution at home.

LA Times | Feb 6, 2011

By Richard Marosi and Andrew Becker

Reporting from Harlingen, Texas — Thousands of immigrants from India have crossed into the United States illegally at the southern tip of Texas in the last year, part of a mysterious and rapidly growing human-smuggling pipeline that is backing up court dockets, filling detention centers and triggering investigations.

The immigrants, mostly young men from poor villages, say they are fleeing religious and political persecution. More than 1,600 Indians have been caught since the influx began here early last year, while an undetermined number, perhaps thousands, are believed to have sneaked through undetected, according to U.S. border authorities.

Hundreds have been released on their own recognizance or after posting bond. They catch buses or go to local Indian-run motels before flying north for the final leg of their months-long journeys.

“It was long … dangerous, very dangerous,” said one young man wearing a turban outside the bus station in the Rio Grande Valley town of Harlingen.

The Indian migration in some ways mirrors the journeys of previous waves of immigrants from far-flung places, such as China and Brazil, who have illegally crossed the U.S. border here. But the suddenness and still-undetermined cause of the Indian migration baffles many border authorities and judges.

The trend has caught the attention of anti-terrorism officials because of the pipeline’s efficiency in delivering to America’s doorstep large numbers of people from a troubled region. Authorities interview the immigrants, most of whom arrive with no documents, to ensure that people from neighboring Pakistan or Middle Eastern countries are not slipping through.

There is no evidence that terrorists are using the smuggling pipeline, FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials said.

The influx shows signs of accelerating: About 650 Indians were arrested in southern Texas in the last three months of 2010 alone. Indians are now the largest group of immigrants other than Latin Americans being caught at the Southwest border.

The migration is the “most significant” human-smuggling trend being tracked by U.S. authorities, said Kumar Kibble, deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. In 2009, the Border Patrol arrested only 99 Indians along the entire Southwest border.

“It’s a dramatic increase,” Kibble said. “We do want to monitor these pipelines and shut them down because it is a vulnerability. They could either knowingly or unknowingly smuggle people into the U.S. that pose a national security threat.”

Most of the immigrants say they are from the Punjab or Gujarat states. They are largely Sikhs who say they face religious persecution, or members of the Bharatiya Janata Party who say they are targeted for beatings by members of the National Congress Party.

But analysts and human rights monitors say political conditions in India don’t explain the migration. There is no evidence of the kind of persecution that would prompt a mass exodus, they say, and Sikhs haven’t been targets since the 1980s. The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, is a Sikh.

“There is no reason to believe these claims have any truth to them,” said Sumit Ganguly, a political science professor and director of the India Studies Program at Indiana University.

Some authorities think the immigrants are simply seeking economic opportunities and are willing to pay $12,000 to $20,000 to groups that smuggle them to staging grounds in northern Mexico. Kibble said smugglers may have shifted to the Southwest after ICE dismantled visa fraud rings that brought Indians to the Northeast.

Many Indians begin their journey by flying from Mumbai to Dubai, then to South American countries such as Ecuador or Venezuela, according to authorities and immigration attorneys. Guatemala has emerged as the key transit hub into Mexico, they said. The roundabout journeys are necessary because Mexico requires visas for Indians.

They sneak across the dangerous Guatemala-Mexico border and take buses or private vehicles to the closest U.S.-Mexico border. Mexican organized crime groups are suspected of being involved either in running the operations or in charging groups tolls to pass through their territory.

The Indians usually wade across the Rio Grande, and then are shuttled from stash houses to transportation rings that take them north. David Aguilar, deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, said he believed a high percentage were caught as soon as they crossed the river.

“We very intensely interview, look at their backgrounds, check them against any watch list,” Aguilar said, adding that although India is not considered a “special interest” source country for terrorists, the undocumented immigrants are scrutinized as if it were.

The detainees eventually claim asylum. In January, immigration court calendars at the area’s two main detention facilities were full of the common Indian surnames Patel and Singh, and attorneys and judges struggled to keep up. Some attorneys had failed to file the necessary forms; interpreters were not always available. Judge Keith Hunsucker said more immigration judges would soon be assigned to handle the increased workload.

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