FAA Permits UAV Operations Along Parts Of Texas Border With Mexico
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last Friday gave approval to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to begin on June 1 flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) along a portion of Texas’ border with Mexico.
The Big Bend area of Texas is several hundred miles southeast of Deming. Along the way lies El Paso, just over the border from Juarez, Mexico, a city beset by drug-related violence.
“The unspeakable brutality that is occurring at the hands of the drug cartels in Mexico is alarming,” Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) wrote FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt in late April, urging the agency to quickly allow CBP to expand UAV flights over a portion of the Texas and Mexico border. “Ciudad Juarez is not the only flash point in this crisis. The State of Texas shares 1,254 miles of border with Mexico, which is roughly 65 percent of the entire U.S.-Mexico border. The violence and bloodshed of recent gun battles between rival drug cartels in Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo made national headlines in recent weeks.”
The approval means that CBP will be allowed to… Want the rest of the story? Subscribe to Defense Daily today and receive all the detailed news and information you need each day.