Drones, those lovable little snoops, either you love’em or you hate’em. Since March 2013 there have been ten thousand flights over the Mexican/American Border. That’s at $12,255 bucks a flight.  And there’s no first class seating.

A lot of people are unconvinced that drones really work. Turns out only 1% of border crossing arrests were the result of drone surveillance.

The Border Patrol loves them. All that hi-tech stuff gets them warm and fuzzy. The new tech package is called VADER. Cool acronym, wonder who comes up with those? Vader stands for Vehicle And Dismount Exploration Radar. At twenty thousand feet the system can see a windshield wiper. One evening a drone using VADER followed a pickup truck on a border road until it reached a house. At twenty thousand feet altitude  the agents saw dogs wagging their tails and knew it was okay.

This all sounds good but one drone arrest costs $28,000. Be happy drones only account for 1% of apprehensions.