DHS: Drug Traffickers Are Spoofing Border Drones
Defense One
DECEMBER 17, 2015
BY PATRICK TUCKER
The homeland security agency, and local law enforcement as well, are looking to harden its drones against attack, but that comes at a price.
The drug cartels aren’t just buying golden Uzis anymore. As the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, or CBP, has upped its drone patrols along America’s Mexican border, narcotics traffickers have responded with expensive technology of their own.
“The bad guys on the border have lots of money and what they are putting money into is into spoofing and jamming GPS systems. We’re funding some advances so we can counter this,” said Timothy Bennett, a science-and-technology program manager at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP. Those bad guys aren’t ISIS, just traffickers, Bennett said on Dec. 16 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies “It’s more about trafficking drugs and people,” he told Defense One. “We know who’s over there. We can guess who’s doing it.”
Note: The Deputy Secretaries of Defense and Transportation have announced the US is planning an eLoran navigation system that would help with such issues. Not only would criminals have to spoof two completely different systems at once, but the eLoran signal is about 1.3 million times stronger than GPS and is VERY difficult to disrupt.
