>> Assistant Commissioner Alles,
thank you for taking the time to talk about
CBP's unmanned aircraft program.
As you know, a recent Inspector General's report
concluded that the program has not achieved expected results
and I quote from the report:
"CBP cannot demonstrate how much the program has improved border security."
Is that a reasonable conclusion?
>> No, I don't think it's a reasonable conclusion.
The report, in our estimation,
fundamentally misses what we use the platforms for.
So the platform provides us domain awareness.
And from that standpoint it's part of
a larger CBP system of technology to help secure our borders.
So it's not a stand-alone system by itself.
The report also, as we looked at it,
did not consider key parts of what the system actually did.
So a for instance is, in the year that the report was actually written,
they omitted the fact, at least in their stats,
that the report actually, the platform actually
was responsible for seizures in the amount of 341 million dollars.
That's a pretty substantial amount for any particular platform.
We had a very high return on the investment.
So I think they miss key parts of what the platform does,
particularly in the area of domain awareness.
>> What is the return on investment?
How much have taxpayers invested in this
and how do you determine what return on investment is?
>> So the way, the way we have done that,
is we looked at the numbers that the OIG came up to $12,000 per hour flight,
cost per hour that they estimated.
And we calculated that against return of the platform itself.
So for instance, in the life of the program,
its returned 1.2 billion dollars of contraband,
which is a return on investment of $41,000,
almost $42,000 per flight hour
and that is a 242 percent return on investment.
So that's across the life of the program.
In the year the IG did the report,
it had a 444 percent return on investment, so pretty substantial, I'd say.
Better than, you know, better than,
you know, most other platforms, I think.
>> Speaking of statistics then,
the IG report claims the program isn't meeting its flight hour goals,
specifically claims that CBP anticipated four 16-hour flights a day,
for a total of 23,296 flight hours.
It reported that instead the aircraft has logged 5,102 flight hours,
80 percent less than anticipated.
First, are these numbers accurate?
And if so, how do you explain the difference?
>> So the 23,000 hours is the calculation they performed,
which assumed the airplane would be airborne almost all the time,
which was never our intent.
The 5100 hour figure is correct; that's the amount we flew it
in fiscal year '13, roughly I think, 5,112, something like that.
So what they assumed from looking at our con ops
is that we were going to fly the airplane 16 hours a day,
you know, seven days a week
and they multiplied that times my platforms to get the 22,000, 23,000 hours.
That's not our intent.
What we want is to have the capability
to operate the platform in those time windows.
We operate the platform when it needs to fly.
To use it more than we need it is simply a waste of taxpayers' dollars.
So in this case, we had money to operate it 5100 hours, which is what we did.
To operate it, I would say, at 23,000 hours per year would be irresponsible.
That would be almost 2500 hours per platform
and the aircraft would literally wear out in four or five years.
It wouldn't have any more UASs.
I'd be completely out of them.
And that would be, in the end, not serve the taxpayer well,
because I would have a critical element of our border security apparatus
that was no longer available.
>> Now one of the things the report says is that
the unmanned aircraft don't operate along the entire southwest border.
Is that true?
And if so, how can the aircraft achieve its mission
if it's not operating along the entire border?
>> So a couple of things there.
First off, the aircraft can operate along our entire border.
It has permission to do that.
It has done that in some capacity.
However, we employ the aircraft in the majority of its time
in the areas it needs to be utilized.
In the year that this report was written,
most of our activity was in the Tucson area of sector of operations
where our joint field command is
and that's where we put a lot of our effort in those years.
After that, it's in the Rio Grande Valley area.
We know through using technology such as coherent change detection,
areas of the border that have very low activity levels.
And there's no reason to put technology or agents or aircraft
over those areas with any degree of frequency,
because there's not anything occurring.
So in those areas, we just need to validate occasionally
that we have low activity levels
and you need to devote your resources to those areas
that have your high activity levels.
And this year it was the Tucson area
and then after that the Rio Grande Valley areas.
And that's where the bulk of the hours went in those years.
And in fact, even this year, fiscal year '15,
the bulk of our hours will go in those two particular areas
in terms of border security.
That doesn't mean the rest of the border is not patrolled; it certainly is.
But we devote again the majority of our hours to the high-risk areas
and we monitor the low-risk areas by other means.
>> Since we're on the topic of operations,
the Inspector General reported that CBP could attribute only quote, unquote,
"relatively few number of apprehensions,
2,272, in Arizona and Texas in fiscal 2013
to the unmanned aircraft program."
Is that an accurate appraisal of how this system operates?
>> So the apprehension numbers are roughly correct,
mine are slightly higher, but not, you know, they're in the noise level.
So we'll accept that level as the apprehension numbers.
But again, it misses what the platform does overall.
It doesn't just participate in apprehensions.
In fact, it's used for domain awareness.
The VADER radar system is a system
that sees people walking across the border.
We fly the aircraft down the border to strip the border with that system
and see what kind of movement we have
and pass that information to border patrol agents
so that can actually affect an apprehension.
We don't stay on site until the apprehension occurs,
because again it's a broad area of surveillance device.
It's providing domain awareness.
It's directing a multitude of agents, not just a couple,
a multitude of agents onto immigrants that are crossing our U.S. border.
>> Now you do agree in some parts of the report
with Inspector General's findings.
For example, on the need to create performance measures.
What's the status of that?
>> So I would, I would agree that we need to have
better metrics on the employment of the system.
And some of these are actually very difficult to develop.
I mean, how do you rate the value of a platform that,
for instance, provides presence for an officer
that's in a dangerous situation and helps protect the safety of an officer?
Well, you can't actually establish a monetary value on that.
So those are some of our difficulties.
But I think overall, I think the IG has a valid criticism
that we need to develop better metrics for the system
and we're working on that currently.
So we're going to go out to private industry and see what they have,
potentially is best practices and use those,
basically engage a private contractor
to develop those best practices into metrics
that we can use on the platform and evaluate its utility more effectively.
I think we see its utility in other areas.
I've described that in terms of contraband seizures,
in terms of domain awareness.
I think those are all valid measures of performance.
But there are other things that I think we can do
to assess the utility of the platform,
overall to the border security structure that we have in the United States.
>> Now one thing that you disagreed with the Inspector General,
was there contention that CBP has plans to spend 443 million dollars
to expand the fleet by 14 more aircraft?
What are CBP's plans for the fleet?
>> So a couple of things on that.
Currently our plan for the fleet is to keep the nine aircraft that we have.
We'd like to replace the tenth aircraft that we ditched last year
in the Pacific Ocean due to a, due to a generator failure.
We'd like to do that.
Beyond that, I want to get higher levels of operation utility
out of the aircraft before I think about any kind of expansion.
Now we sent a letter to the Assistant General,
Assistant Inspector General for audits in October,
before the report was issued and told them we had no plans,
no immediate plans to buy any more platforms.
And for some reason the IG did not,
was not willing to accept that as our position.
We currently have no money in the budget to purchase additional platforms
and I currently am committed to not buying any more platforms
until we fully operationalize what we,
fully operationalize the platforms that we have.
And just as an example,
last year when the Senate wanted to up our numbers of UAVs to 24.
And we basically told the Senate and the House
we would prefer that you not do that,
that you not give us more platforms in your border bills,
that we work on operationalizing and getting better utility
out of the platforms that we currently have.
So we're not interested in purchasing more at the current time.
>> How do these aircraft differ from unmanned military aircraft?
>> So a couple of significant differences.
First off, our aircraft are not armed.
In the military, a variance of these aircraft are armed
and these are aircraft that can't be armed.
Secondly, these aircraft are operated by trained law enforcement officers.
So these law enforcement officers are trained on the U.S. Constitution,
what they are allowed to and not allowed to do as a law enforcement officer.
They are trained to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens.
That means against unreasonable search and seizure.
They are trained to know where they can
and can't utilize this platform to collect information.
So there are substantial protections given by the fact
it's run by a trained law enforcement officer.
>> You mentioned the U.S. Constitution.
Does CBP have any rules or policies in addition to
that designed to protect the privacy of American citizens?
>> So a couple of things that we do have in place.
There is a privacy impact assessment on the UAS program
that was produced by CBP last year.
There is a UAS unmanned air systems best practices
put out by the Department of Homeland Security
and there is also a policy put out by my office, Air and Marine,
that dictates how we'll use the aircraft and how we'll protect privacy.
Now a couple of things about our platform.
It flies very high.
It's typically flying at 20,000 feet.
So it actually does not collect, it can't recognize a face.
It can't recognize, identify a person at those kinds of altitudes.
The best we are doing is to determine if the person is carrying a backpack
or maybe they have a long arm that they're carrying.
But beyond that we can't really identify any features about
the person that we would call personally identifiable information.
So that's one aspect of it.
So the second aspect is the drones operate predominantly on the borders.
That's where the vast majority of our flight hours go.
It's supporting the border patrol and their border patrol mission
or potentially doing operations in the transit zone,
interdicting drug runners outside of the United States.
So it's not like we're,
we're doing a lot of interior operations in the United States.
Predominantly again we go on the borders and again,
due to the altitude of the aircraft,
we're not seeing a lot of this information.
We don't retain the information.
We have a limited amount of storage for the video that we collect.
And about every 30 days that information is over written on those tapes.
So it's not something we're keeping long-term,
unless it's evidence for a case that's underway.
So if we collect criminal evidence,
then we are going to secure that through our evidentiary chain,
our chain of custody and take it as evidence into court.
And that we'd retain, you know,
as long as the case is active, you know, however long that takes.
>> Assistant Commissioner Alles, thank you so much for taking the time.
>> You're welcome.
>> For more information about CBP's response to the IG report,
visit our webpage at www.cbp.gov.
And click on the tab "Speeches and Statements".
To view UAS achievements,
please click on the tab "Milestones and Achievements".