Reacting to concerns from some in Congress this week regarding proposed reductions to flight hours for air domain awareness operations by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) aircraft, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Thursday that improvements in technology are enabling more efficient operations.
CBP’s FY ’15 budget request shows a planned decrease to 73,474 flight hours versus 90,735 in FY ’14, which would bring air operations back to FY ’13 levels. In dollar terms, the cut in FY ’15 is $29.2 million.
Johnson told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the decrease “reflects a judgment that because of improved technology we can do the job more efficiently with fewer flight hours.”
He also said that aerial surveillance is a “very important” component to border security, noting that privacy protections also need to be in place. Johnson added that he is working to improve the department’s privacy guidelines related to aerial surveillance.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the committee chairman, said he thinks the reduction in flight hours as well as no increase in funding for aerial surveillance sensor technology such as the Vehicle Dismount and Exploitation Radar “seems foolish.” The aerial surveillance radar is made by Northrop Grumman [NOC].
The largest cut in the flight hour reduction, just over 10,000 hours, would come from operations in CBP’s Office of Air and Marine’s Southwest Region with about 4,000 cut from Northern Region activities. Operations with General Atomics-built Predator unmanned aerial vehicles would be trimmed by 600 hours to 5,400.
In DHS budget documents sent to Capitol Hill last week, CBP says that it is also being more efficient in its aerial surveillance operations by placing a lower priority on missions based on uncertain intelligence while maximizing “investments in sensor technologies, other border surveillance equipment, and applications of geospatial data to prioritize deployment decisions.”
Overall, DHS is requesting $708.7 million for CBP’s Office of Air and Marine in FY ’15, $96.4 million less than was funded in FY ’14. The office is asking Congress for $53 million in procurement funding, most of that for two King Air Multi-Role Enforcement aircraft being modified by Sierra Nevada Corp. The request compares with $117.1 million funded in FY ’14.
Carper’s concerns about reduced CBP aerial surveillance hours were also expressed by other senators and House members in separate budget hearings with Johnson on Wednesday. In addition to worries about the proposal to reduce CBP’s flight hours, they are also concerned with proposed cuts to the Coast Guard’s procurement and overall budget, saying this, combined with resource constraints limiting assistance by the United States military on counter-drug missions in the transit zones, is impairing the country’s ability to halt the flow of illegal drugs into the United States, particularly heroin.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said at the outset of a budget hearing with Johnson on Thursday that the proposed DHS budget cannot “sustain” the nation’s homeland security missions either at sea or in the air.
Johnson told the House panel that the overall budget request reflects “tough choices” in a difficult fiscal environment that still reflects his vision for homeland security.
In Thursday’s Senate hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) questioned a proposed cut of 18 full-time acquisition employees from the DHS chief procurement office. Given the size and complexity of many contracts, she said the proposed workforce cuts are a “recipe for disaster.”
Johnson agreed that based on his previous experience working for the Defense Department that it is a problem for shrinking acquisition workforce to manage large complex contracts and that he would work with the committee to get “that balance exactly right.”