Sophisticated spy planes are flying surveillance missions at the border in order to obtain information on Mexican drug cartels’ smuggling operations. In the past two weeks alone, the planes have flown at least 18 missions over the southwestern US and international airspace around the Baja peninsula, according to open-source data and three US officials familiar with the missions, according to CNN.
A former military official with homeland defense told CNN the Pentagon has historically flown only about one surveillance mission a month around the US-Mexico border. The flight paths span the US-Mexico border, with missions in California, Arizona and Texas; CNN also identified at least one longer mission that looped around the Baja peninsula and passed near Sinaloa on February 4. That plane, an Air Force RC-135 “Rivet,” specializes in hoovering up communications from the ground.
The flight track looping around the Baja peninsula has been in use “for a long time,” one defense official said. But it’s “getting more use now” after President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the border. The publication adds that despite flying over US airspace along the border, these aircraft are capable of collecting intelligence deep within Mexico, former officials said.
Trump has escalated military force to combat cartels. CNN adds that “at least 11 of these recent flights around the US have been by Navy P-8s, a particularly prized plane with a sophisticated radar system that specializes in identifying submarines but is also capable of collecting imagery and signals intelligence.”
One nearly six-hour flight on February 3 was conducted by a U-2 spy plane, one of the US military’s most venerated reconnaissance aircraft, designed during the Cold War for collecting high-altitude imagery of the Soviet Union.
“I think the cartels would be foolish to take on the military, but we know they’ve taken on the Mexican military before, but now we have the United States military,” border czar Tom Homan told ABC News on Thursday. “Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely, because the cartels are making record amounts of money.”
