360 Million Dollar Border Drone Failure – IOTW Report

360 Million Dollar Border Drone Failure

JudicialWatch– Drones used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “guard” the U.S. border for nearly a decade are ineffective even though the agency has blown hundreds of millions of dollars on the failed program and wants Congress to keep funding it.

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It’s yet another example of what government does best; waste money. In this case the frontline DHS agency—U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP)—that operates the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAC) is actually requesting more money from Congress to keep the futile drone experiment going. Imagine a private business that for years blew huge sums on a failed enterprise asking investors to pour more cash into the same useless project.

That’s pretty much what DHS is doing and the details are offered in an audit published this month by the agency’s inspector general. The Border Patrol has used drones for around eight years, the audit reveals, at a cost of about $360 million. In fiscal year 2013 alone the agency spent $62.5 million to operate the program, or about $12,255 per hour. It gets better. DHS has lied about the cost of operating the drones, the inspector general writes in its report, by drastically downplaying the real figures. The “calculation of $2,468 per flight hour does not include operating costs, such as the costs of pilots, equipment, and overhead,” the report says. “By not including all operating costs, CBP also cannot accurately assess the program’s cost effectiveness or make informed decisions about program expansion.”  MORE

9 Comments on 360 Million Dollar Border Drone Failure

  1. “$2,468 per flight hour does not include operating costs”
    If they have that kind of money on hand, why not just build a fck’n fence? Rhetorically speaking.

    Judging by that picture, the fence won’t do much good anyway. lol

  2. I want my tax money back – with interest. Get it from every politician who sold their soul for graft, companies and their shareholders/CEOs who were given our money and then pocketed it, countries given ‘aid’ with our money that went to their greedy leaders instead of their people…

    Oh, Fu*k it, like Moe Tom says.

  3. Why should this failure be any different? We’re still funding Head Start and the Moochelle No Child’s Fat Behind lunch prorgam, certified flops both.

    Great picture. I didn’t realize the Republican Klown Car had wings.

  4. The “calculation of $2,468 per flight hour does not include operating costs, such as the costs of pilots, equipment, and overhead,”

    That “$2468” figure looks suspiciously like a “brown number” that engineers sometimes use. (They’re called “brown numbers” because somebody pulled them out of their a$$.)

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