Interior planning to halt use of drones over concerns about Chinese tech: report

The Interior Department is planning to halt the use of almost 1,000 drones over concerns that some of the parts were developed in China, the Financial Times reported Sunday. The administration would be stopping its biggest civilian drone programs in fear that China could use the drones for spying, two people briefed on the plans told the Times. The department announced the grounding of the 810 drones amid security investigations in October. Several in the department’s staff have condemned the grounding saying it will cost the department large amounts of time and money. Documents obtained by the Times showed staff from various agencies objected to the proposed grounding. “Unmanned aircraft systems are a unique tool that fit into this mission and allow us to make high-quality surface observations at a fraction of the price of manned aircraft operations,” a staff member wrote in an email obtained by the Times. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has not officially signed on the grounding, but people briefed with his thinking told the Times he is expected to take the civilian drones out of circulation, except for emergencies like managing wildfires and for training. The department utilizes drones to monitor wildfires, map terrain and track natural resources...MORE 

In late December of last year I posted:

Interior Grounds All Drones With Ties to Chinese Companies

The Interior Department on Wednesday announced it will ground all drones that were manufactured in China or contain Chinese-made parts, pending a review of the agency’s growing unmanned aircraft program. The decision comes months after agency officials approved purchases of aircraft built by DJI, a Chinese firm that many national security experts see as a potential conduit for government espionage. When authorizing the procurements, the agency took multiple technical precautions to ensure DJI couldn’t access the data collected through the aircraft. The order to ground Chinese drones wouldn’t apply to aircraft the agency is currently using “for emergency purposes, such as fighting wildfires, search and rescue, and dealing with natural disasters that may threaten life or property,” Interior spokesperson Melissa Brown said in a statement to Nextgov. In May, the Homeland Security Department warned companies their data could be at risk if they use Chinese drones, and the Army previously banned soldiers from using any unmanned aircraft manufactured by DJI. Over the past three years, Interior has increasingly turned to unmanned aircraft to survey federal lands, monitor wildlife, respond to natural disasters and conduct other critical operations. The tech offers the agency an inexpensive, efficient way to manage the 500 million acres of land under its purview, and by 2025, officials expect to more than triple their annual drone missions. At the end of 2018, only 13% of the nearly 600 drones in Interior’s fleet were manufactured by DJI. But as the agency looked to significantly scale up its operations in the years ahead...MORE
The Department of Interior has 600 drones? Fox news reports the number as 800. Whether it is 600 or 800, what is Interior doing with that huge number of drones? Is your flock being watched by Interior pilots? We will explore this in another post. 

Today's post pretty well confirms Interior has 800+ drones. And if we look at their FY2017 DOI report, we find that Interior undertook 4,976 flights. And guess who took 56 percent of all Interior flights? The BLM, which undertook 2,774 of those flights. Well, that must be because of fires, right? Wrong, only 22 percent of BLM flights were for monitoring wildfires. Well then, search and rescue? Nope, BLM had zero flights for search and rescue. The largest number of flights were for training, followed in order by mapping, wildfire, landscape monitoring, and "recon". All the other categories had less than 100 flights.
I might add for all of Interior, the law enforcement category had 75 flights, with 56 percent of those undertaken by the Park Service.
If I come across more recent figures I will share them.