MEXICO CITY (dpa-AFX) - Drones are making more than 1,000 incursions along the U.S.-Mexico border each month, the U.S. Northern Command's top general said during testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee posture hearing.
'I don't know the actual number - I don't think anybody does - but it's in the thousands,' said Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot in response to one senator's question.
'The number of incursions was something that was alarming to me as I took command last month,' said Guillot, who took over as commander of Northcom and the North American Aerospace Defense Command on February 5.
When asked if such incursions present a defense threat to the homeland, Guillot said he hasn't seen any of the incursions 'manifest in a threat to the level of national defense.' The Pentagon quoted him as saying that he does 'see the potential only growing.'
In recent years, members of Congress have shown a growing, bipartisan concern about dangerous unmanned aircraft systems activity, including activity linked to drug and human traffickers who have used UAS technology to facilitate their illegal operations.
As a command being primarily tasked with continuously providing 'worldwide detection, validation and warning of a ballistic missile attack on North America,' NORAD is also charged with providing 'continental detection, validation, warning and aerospace control' of airborne threats to North America, including unmanned aircraft systems, according to the NORAD website.
Beyond conventional, human-operated unmanned aircraft systems, Guillot also addressed what lessons NORAD learned from the high-altitude, Chinese balloons flight over North American airspace early last year.
Guillot said that NORAD has since adjusted the sensitivity of its radars. 'And that has allowed us to have better domain awareness in that regime,' he told senators.
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