Use of unmanned air vehicles to be extended north as satcom centre is added
US Customs and Border Protection is to extend its use of unmanned air vehicles to the northern border with Canada, basing a General Atomics MQ-9 Predator B at Grand Forks, North Dakota by the end of September.
The pilot programme will be made possible by the addition of a satellite communications infrastructure at the service's air and marine operations centre (AMOC) in Riverside, California. Predators patrolling the northern and south-western borders will be controlled from the AMOC via Ku-band satellite communications.
Customs and Border Protection restarted UAV operations from Sierra Vista, Arizona along the border with Mexico in October last year after delivery of a replacement for its first UAV, which had crashed the previous April. Two more Predators will be delivered by September, allowing operations to begin on the northern border.
Customs and Border Protection also plans to establish a south-east UAV operations centre to monitor the Gulf coast region, focusing on maritime security.
This would involve command and control from a Customs Lockheed P-3 patrol aircraft as well as the AMOC.
Source: Flight International
