Matt York/AP

Over the past two fiscal years, Customs and Border Protection – CBP – drones helped nab less than 3 percent of the drugs seized by agents in the few sectors where they were used, according to CBP’s own figures.

By comparison, since this fiscal year began on Oct. 1, manned aircraft have accounted for more than 99 percent of weapons, cash and meth seizures, 95 percent of cocaine seizures, and 89 percent of marijuana seizures in which aerial assets were involved, according to CBP data.

To CBP, drug seizures “are not an appropriate performance measure,” spokesman Carlos Lazo said, noting that the drones “detect illegal cross-border activity … on a daily basis.”

For budget reasons, the drones don’t fly every day.

In theory, CBP’s $600 million-and-counting drone program is intended to help close the gaps through which smugglers move people and drugs across the border.

“The problem,” Sutherland said, “is that we can’t usually say we apprehended or stopped a group. All we can say is we detected them.”

But the cost-effectiveness of the drones repeatedly has come under fire from by government auditors. Most recently, in January, a critique by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General said — not for the first time— that the drones cost too much and catch too little. Inspectors recommended that, rather than buy any more drones, CBP look for better alternatives…

The Predator B drone and its marine variant, the Guardian, are made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., of Poway, Calif., an affiliate of General Atomics.

General Atomics and GAAS spent nearly $2.4 million lobbying in 2005, when they won their first CBP contract, according to disclosure forms filed with the government. Since then, the two affiliates have spent more than $23 million more on lobbying, while winning sole-source, non-competitive contracts in 2007 and 2012. Officials at GAAS declined to be interviewed.

More pages of info on cost-savings alternatives in the article.

I wonder whether this body of fact will count for more in the mind of our elected Congress-critters than the size of the campaign donations offered by lobbyists from firms heavily into selling us drones, eh?