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A new report prepared by the United States Department of Justice’s internal watchdog has revealed that two major federal law enforcement agencies have spent millions of dollars on 23 drones that for some reason, are not operational. The report, which was published on Wednesday by the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General, also concludes that the FBI is the “only DOJ component that operationally deploys its own UAS,” using the government acronym for Unmanned Aerial System, or drone. The DOJ OIG report comes less than three months after the Department of Homeland Security OIG concluded that after eight years, the drone program run by Customs and Border Protection was ineffective. The DOJ report also includes a few other new details, including confirmation of the 2013 assertion by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller that the agency uses drones “very seldom.” The DOJ OIG found that the FBI has only used its drones for 13 cases between 2004 and 2013. When it did fly those missions, however, the agency also determined that it apparently did not need a warrant to conduct aerial surveillance. As was first noted by Emptywheel, a government and national security blog, the DOJ OIG report also states that the FBI spent $3 million on 34 drones “and associated control stations.” But for some reason, only half of those drones are considered operational, suggesting that half of the money has effectively been wasted. Another problem is that the FBI apparently only has two drone pilots at the moment, who have to be physically shuttled around the country when a drone operation is in use. Worse still, it has been hard to train more, as the report states: Drones join the Navy? The second largest agency within the DOJ to use drones was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which spent a total of $600,000 on six drones and related equipment, but they too were “unsuitable" for unspecified reasons. As the DOJ OIG notes: Apparently just a week after the ATF gave up its six drones, it then went out and bought five more for $15,000. Then after realizing it needed a Certificate of Authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration in order to fly them, they were grounded. Source