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DHS's Ongoing Drone Boondoggle (defenseone.com)
schwit1 writes: Spoofing is far from the only problem facing Department of Homeland Security and the way it gets drones to the border. In addition to giving grants to law enforcement agencies to purchase UAVs, DHS also has many of its own. Last year, the department's own inspector general declared that DHS drone purchasing program, which had spent $360 million since 2005 — $62 million in 2013 alone — was largely a failure. DHS had taken delivery of 11 MQ-9 Reaper drones, unarmed but otherwise similar to the ones used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. DHS anticipated that the cost per flight hour would be $2,468, far lower than the actual $12,225. The agency was using accounting tricks to move the costs of pilots, equipment, and overhead off the books. Even the actual flights hours — 5,102 — were a fraction of the promised 23,296.
Why do you need highly expensive drones, when you can have a C172 every 100 miles along the lines you need them for 10% of the cost?
Bavaria is doing that to do fire surveys during high-risk times. The government is paying for the operation hours of C172s, P28A, and similar. Pilots are volunteers.
Congress is controlled by the republicans. They make the laws and they control all the money. The president is mostly a figurehead and the scam called "DHS" was erected under a republican administration.