Ultralights, not UAVs. The picture of the downed ultralight clearly has a pilot seat and instrumentation.
The only place UAV is mentioned in the article is an editorial addition to a quote from the sensor vendor "[unmanned aerial vehicles]". If you follow the link to the vendor site, you will find the vendor advertises their sensor as an adjunct to "unmanned aerial systems", i.e. the boarder patrol's UAVs, not the smuggler's UAVs.
[edit] My bad, the vendor does say it's system can track bad guy's UASes, although I still object to the sensationalizing of the HN headline vs. the Wired article that talks almost exclusively about ultralights.
I caught that as well. Still costs less to put a sacrificial mule in the driver seat than to automate them. A long time ago when Georgia Tech was flying GPS guided helicopters in the UAV contests I wondered just how much it would cost to build a drug mule like that. Should be pretty trivial, drop via GPS and you don't need human pilots. Of course if you get spotted a human can abort back over the border but a robot will lead the follower to the drop point.
so plan on the UAV getting tracked, and drop multiple payloads along the route - expect some to get taken, but it requires DEA to follow the entire path instead of looking for the point in the path where the UAV turns around to go home.
actually, that is way to complicated. drug runners come up with some really simple solutions to problems, that to more educated people seem stupid, but is a perfect example of a MVP.
MIDD - multiple independent drug drops :-) I was going for a pun on MIRV but didn't quite get there. One of the things is that payload value is linear with volume and delivery platform cost is inverse exponential with size. Seems like the ultralight as a 'platform' hits a sweet spot. The rail gun the navy is looking at should be able to lob a projectile 200 miles so perhaps we can look forward to artillery delivery of drugs into southern AZ.
A step further: you send 10 planes, only a single plane is loaded with drugs, the 9 other with stones. Now DEA has to track 10 planes doing multiple drops.
It was obviously an ultralight, but how do we know it wasn't converted an an unmanned vehicle. I can't imagine it would be hard to convert one to use radio controlled servos. Not having a pilot would free up a lot of weight for the shipment. The shipments they talk about are 250lbs, which is the same as the regulated amount ultralights are allowed to carry. The cartels wouldn't care about the regulations, obviously, but they would care about not over-stressing the engineering limits of the aircraft which would risk losing $400k to $16M in product (if the article is correct) if it crashed.
> how do we know it wasn't converted an an unmanned vehicle
We don't, but I don't think anyone would be considering that had 'UAV' not been in the HN post's title (whilst not in the link's own title or description of the vehicle).
The only place UAV is mentioned in the article is an editorial addition to a quote from the sensor vendor "[unmanned aerial vehicles]". If you follow the link to the vendor site, you will find the vendor advertises their sensor as an adjunct to "unmanned aerial systems", i.e. the boarder patrol's UAVs, not the smuggler's UAVs.
[edit] My bad, the vendor does say it's system can track bad guy's UASes, although I still object to the sensationalizing of the HN headline vs. the Wired article that talks almost exclusively about ultralights.