One of two new Predator B unmanned aircraft coming soon to the U.S.-Mexico border will be stationed in Sierra Vista, a Customs and Border Protection official said this week.
The first new Predator B will go to Corpus Christi, Texas, and the second to Sierra Vista, said Maj. Gen. Michael Kostelnik, assistant commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection Office of Air and Marine, during a congressional hearing this week.
When it arrives on a date that has not yet been disclosed, the new Predator B will be the fourth based out of Sierra Vista. When the other arrives in Texas, there will be six stationed along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Predator B can fly for 20 hours at a time. Its cameras can determine from as far as 10 miles away if a ground sensor was set off by armed drug smugglers or cows. And it can collect intelligence on suspicious behavior at houses without anybody below knowing because it flies so high and is quieter than other aircraft.
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The aircraft weighs 10,500 pounds, has a 66-foot wingspan and stretches 39 feet from front to back. The Predator B costs about $6 million, and the rest of the system needed to fly it - antennas, sensor, radar, satellite bandwidth, systems spares, maintenance and ground support - brings the per-unit total to $18.5 million.
Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com
