THE United States government is poised to begin flying unmanned surveillance aircraft along the Canadian border, using Grand Forks as the takeoff point for the robot-controlled flights.
Before September, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an arm of the federal Department of Homeland Security, will start sending propeller-driven drones called Predators into American airspace. At first one drone, with more to follow, will span much of the 8,900-kilometre frontier Canada and the U.S. share between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Predator drones, such as this one seen at a U.S. base near Iraq, will patrol the Canada-U.S. border keeping an eye out for terrorists and other illegal activity.
Never before has the U.S. kept such a close watch over its northern boundary. The move is a response to growing American fears that the entry of even one potential terrorist through Canada could have serious consequences, said Scott Baker. He took over last Friday as Chief Patrol Agent of Customs and Border Protection in Grand Forks, N.D., responsible for guarding the 1,400-kilometre stretch of border between Lake Superior and Montana.
"Just one of the wrong people getting through, driving through our border area, could spell catastrophe," Baker said. "So, it is a concern."
Predators, known by the military as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, have flown missions along the U.S.-Mexico border for several years, Baker said. Illegal immigrants from Central and South America have long posed challenges to border officials watching over the southern fringes of the U.S.
The drones flying day and night out of North Dakota will cover some of the most remote -- and therefore permeable -- territory in the northern American states, Baker said.
The fear terrorists will exploit that remoteness to penetrate the U.S. concerns American politicians, said Doug Marshall, director of Project Development at the University of North Dakota's Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences.
It also makes monitoring the border by drone more efficient than any effort involving humans.
"We don't have hordes of Canadians sneaking across the border to come shopping in Grand Forks," Marshall said.
Illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border pose less of a concern to border officials than potential terrorists "finding a way to get into Canada and then finding it relatively easy to get across the (U.S) border," Marshall said.
"And it is easier," he added. "That's just a fact."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection in North Dakota will also get 22 pilots to fly manned missions in airplanes and helicopters, a deployment similar to others in Bellingham, Wash., Great Falls, Mont. and Plattsburgh, N.Y.
The American government chose a base in Grand Forks as its Predator hub in part because of its location at the heart of the continent, Baker said.
"We're dead centre on the northern border," he added. "So, they can go either way and they're equidistant pretty much."
Washington is working on the UAV project with the North Dakota Air National Guard, based in Fargo, and UND in Grand Forks. Ground controllers in Fargo will conduct Predator missions, but military officials in other places could also guide the remote-controlled drones.
"It's possible that they could fly this thing out of the Air Marine Operations Centre in Riverside, California," Baker said. "And they could monitor it from there."
The U.S. military has used Predators since 1995, most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. The drones have been used in combat and are capable of carrying up to 14 armour-piercing missiles, according to the U.S. Air Force, and are fitted with electro-optical and infrared cameras and radar.
In a five-hour mission, a Predator can cover about 1,400 kilometres. It can remain airborne for up to 36 hours. Depending on lighting conditions and weather, its cameras can detect a person on the ground and identify movements, but the drone is not accurate enough to show facial features.
Ordinary Canadians might be taken aback by the use of the Predators to track cross-border traffic, one Canadian defence analyst believes.
"Didn't we have the longest undefended border for a very, very long time?" said Ian Glenn, chairman of ING Engineering, an Ottawa consulting firm.
A former member of the Canadian military, Glenn was the project manager for Canada's own UAV training and has worked with NATO to help create international operating standards for the aircraft.
"It (the Predator) is just a robot that flies," Glenn said. "And they're going to drive it up and down the border and look for things. Will that be a deterrent to criminal activity? Yes. Will it be a deterrent to terrorist activity? Yes, I guess."
In 2004, Canada tested a variant of the Predator in Labrador, New Brunswick and over the Grand Banks, Glenn said.
The surveillance flights emanating from Grand Forks signal a time, perhaps only five years away, he said, when both Canada and the U.S. will deploy drones into each other's airspace and at heights where commercial aircraft fly. To reach that point, Glenn added, the two countries will have to harmonize many aspects of UAV use, such as operator training, frequency of flights and aircraft reliability.
joe.paraskevas@freepress.mb.ca
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