Deconvolution of Plant Type(s) for Homeland Security Enforcement Using Remote Sensing on a UAV Collection Platform

IntroductionThe primary reason terrorists have become involved in smuggling drugs is to finance their operations. 1 During the past few years an estimated 500 metric tons of cocaine entered the U.S. each year from countries in Latin America, specifically Bolivia, Columbia, Guyana, and Peru. 2 Marijuana also enters in large quantities and is also grown across the U.S. in hidden fields, mixed with other plants, which makes it difficult to detect. Drug enforcement costs have become overwhelming. To make matters more complex, a new combination of drug and weapons smuggling and links to terrorist groups on both the southern border with Mexico and the northern border with Canada have become serious issues. Towns such as Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, along the Texas border, have erupted in violence, spilling that violence into the U.S. and creating a homeland and national security issue.News reports are beginning to highlight incidents of terrorists who are reportedly being smuggled into the U.S. accompanied by drugs and explosives. Recently, Mokhtar Haouari, a 31-year-old Algerian, was arrested in Canada and indicted in the U.S. as the central figure in a group of Algerians suspected of planning terrorist attacks in the U.S. He was linked to Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested in Port Angeles, Washington, in December 2005 while trying to smuggle explosives and bomb components from Canada, and to Abdel Ghani Meskini of Brooklyn, who was identified as Ressam's accomplice. 3 Officials are pointing to records in a South Texas drug case with alleged terrorist ties they say underscores the lack of preparedness here. The attorney for a jailed Gulf Cartel member cited in the incident says his client was falsely accused of trying to smuggle Iraqi terrorists into this country and maintains charges were brought to increase the punishment for a drug offense against the accused. 4 More recently, an enormous cache of weapons was seized in Laredo, Texas. U.S. authorities grabbed two completed Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), materials for making thirty-three more, military-style grenades, twenty-six grenade triggers, large quantities of AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, as well as other weapons and components. The Val Verde County chief deputy warned that drug traffickers are aiding terrorists with possible al Qaeda ties to cross the Texas-Mexico border into the United States. A government spokesman in Houston said "at this point there is no connection with anything in Iraq." 5The link between drug smuggling, the financing of terrorist groups from those smuggled drugs, as well as increasing reports of weapons and terrorists being smuggled across U.S. borders, has become obvious. This situation illustrates the need to develop new technologies capable of detecting drugs being grown in the countries of our southern neighbors. Coupled with cooperative agreements between the DEA and other U.S. law enforcement groups and our southern neighbors, this ability would greatly decrease the financing capabilities of the terrorists and cartels (since the plants, even before processing, are the foundation of their capital enterprise) by preventing the processing of those drugs by detecting and destroying them.The combination of drug trafficking and weapons smuggling by illegal immigrants and potential terrorists causes both a law enforcement (LE) and a national security issue, placing an increased financial burden on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), LE agencies along the southern border, and other groups comprised of local and federal agencies. The technological ability to distinguish drug plants, especially before processing, from other plant types has important implications, not only for LE, but also wildfire recovery, reservoir protection, environmental aspects, agricultural issues, and military concerns. Thus, plant identification via un-mixing, termed "deconvolution," can be a valuable technological tool in the war on terror. …