Douglas Quan for Postmedia reports on the status of unmanned drones along the US-Canada border. 

US Customs and Border Protection is using a General Atomics MQ-9 (commonly Predator B or Reaper) unmanned aerial drone to monitor the US-Canada border from Washington to Minnesota. Flying for up to 20 hours at a time, at about 6,000 metres, officials say it used to monitor illicit border crossings related to marijuana and drug trade.

Quan reports that the long-term plan is to have the unmanned drones, now common in Iraq, Afghanistan and along the US-Mexico border, to be flying the entire length of the US-Canada border.

Canadian officials were approached for comment:

Supt. Warren Coons, director of the RCMP Integrated Border Enforcement Team, said Wednesday he has not received information about the surveillance program's effectiveness and declined to offer a personal opinion.

Coons said there are no plans to adopt such technology in Canada, but he wouldn't discount it, either. He noted Canadian authorities use other forms of visible and covert technology — he declined to say what — at points of entry and in remote sections along the border. Improved communication between U.S. and Canadian authorities has helped to identify vulnerable areas, he said.

Progressive-Conservative Manitoba MLA Clifford Grayson said he's not aware of any arrests linked to the Predators. Grayson also added that US state legislators have told him the robots have had mechanical and performance issues, especially in bad weather.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

From AFP:

The US military plans to deploy a new intelligence drone in Afghanistan, which military experts say will allow US troops to monitor much larger operational theaters than before, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The newspaper said the airborne surveillance system is called Gorgon Stare and will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.

The system consists of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, which can can transmit up to 65 live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements, the paper said.

By contrast, current Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a narrow area the size of a building or two, The Post noted.

“Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at,and we can see everything,” the paper quoted [an Air Force spokesperson].“

The imperial sky robots see all: First in Afghanistan, with inevitable deployments for mega-events and everyday use in NATO-bloc cities.

The choice of Gorgon as a moniker is a bit disturbing, which is the intent.