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.

Comments

Lighter than air craft?

[TWX]

Wouldn't something like a relatively peaceful border between two nations that are nominally at-peace, be a lot more cost-effectively administered by slow moving airships, with only a handful of rapid-response aircraft used solely for interdiction purposes?

Obviously no single technology is going to work to secure a border as long as the US-Mexico frontier, but it seems like the concept of using powered flight is somewhat misapplied here, especially if the costs are somehow as high as the article implies.

$12k / Hour?

[bbsguru]

I would be happy to save Uncle Sam 10% of that, and get plenty of seat time in my log book.
I'm sure a lot of other private pilots would be glad to do the same.

Which airstrip shall we report to?

You're right, but that's not how the govt works

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Wouldn't something like a relatively peaceful border between two nations that are nominally at-peace, be a lot more cost-effectively administered by slow moving airships, with only a handful of rapid-response aircraft used solely for interdiction purposes?

My first job after graduating college was working as a programmer for a branch of the US military that I don't want to name. I'm not forbidden to name it and I have a lot of respect for the men and women who are in it, but man, I saw a lot of dumb technology moves while I was there, which is why I'm being charitable in not naming them. Basically what happens is that some branch of the government, in this case DHS, gets some money and says "Wow! Drones are cool! Let's buy a bunch!" because some manager type (in the US military, this may be a high ranking officer not a civilian) gets a hard on for some new technology. Nobody ever stops to think if it's actually practical or makes sense or is economically reasonable. We saw a lot of wasted money thrown in the trash when I worked on that government job and we weren't really happy about it, but the whole system is setup in such a way that there's no real way to stop this kind of purchase. It's not just another "DHS is the suxor!" kind of thing as Slashdotters want to think. Any part of the US government could have done the same dumb pointless thing.

This isn't quite so dramatic as TFA makes it sound

[Solandri]

Last year, the departmentâ(TM)s own inspector general declared that DHS drone purchasing program, which had spent $360 million since 2005 â" $62 million in 2013 alone â" was largely a failure.
[...]
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 â" 5,102 â" were a fraction of the promised 23,296.

$12,225/hr * 5,102 hrs = $62.4 million, which is exactly the 2013 budget for this program. 23,296 hours over 11 drones over one year is 24% flight time per drone which sounds like a pretty reasonable expectation. Over 8 years ramped up (constant rate of drone purchases throughout the period), it would be only 6% flight time, which seems highly unlikely. If they bought the drones all at once at the start of the program, it would be 3% expected flight time, which if true you'd be questioning why the program was even approved in the first place. So most likely those hour figures are for 2013 only.

If you take $12,225/hr of fixed costs, and distribute them over 23,296 hrs instead of 5,102 hrs, you get $12225*5102/23296 = $2,677/hr. Only 8% more than the anticipated $2,468/hr.

So basically, the program has cost only 8% more than what they estimated it would cost. They've just been able to keep the drones aloft for a lot fewer hours than expected (cost of pilots being traded off for cost of maintenance crew). The reporter, trying to exaggerate things to make his story sound bigger than it really is, then converted that overall cost into cost per flight hour and compared on that basis since it showed the biggest cost overrun.

Quick rule of thumb. Cost (dollars) is an amount. $/hr is a rate (first derivative of the amount). If you see an article claiming something about an amount (cost overrun), but then shows comparisons of a rate, that's a big red flag. Something deceptive may be going on, and you should do some number checking to figure out what the real story is.

Re:Amazing

[gstoddart]

In fairness to the GP, the CIA and some of these agencies have completely ignored their orders and done as they've pleased. Many of us aren't convinced that who holds the oval office has a damned thing to do with what the TLAs are actually doing.

The CIA has spied on Congress, and blatantly broken domestic spying laws.

You think they give a fuck about what they're told to do? Or do you think they just go ahead and do it anyway?

The DHS and every other one of these agencies isn't above lying and breaking the law if it suits their needs. And that has nothing to do with who runs the executive branch any more.

What they have now is a bunch of agencies who don't really much care what the law is, or what the people overseeing them tell them to do. They're protecting their own interests and their own budgets and their own asses as much as anything.