Georgia National Guard helicopters are spotting marijuana grows to help police get search warrants

Hovering over Georgia this summer, National Guard helicopter crews flew from field to field searching for marijuana being grown illegally on private property.

The Georgia Guard calls part of the mission “probable cause generation,” a role in a decades-old counterdrug partnership with civilian law enforcement where military helicopters provide police an aerial platform to search for marijuana. This summer, officials say they took a different approach in how they conduct those searches. Civilian law enforcement officers aboard Guard helicopters conducted searches over general areas in all 159 Georgia counties rather than limiting flights to previously identified properties.

Depending on aircraft availability and what police request, the Guard sends up either a UH-72 Lakota or UH-60 Black Hawk with a three-person military aircrew. The guardsmen perform the missions under Title 32 federal counterdrug authority. A civilian police officer rides aboard the helicopter as guard pilots and crew fly over general areas in every Georgia county, Guard officials told Task & Purpose. The officer scans for marijuana from the air and, when a grow is spotted and verified, uses that observation to establish probable cause for a search warrant.

In one operation this summer, a civilian law enforcement officer aboard a UH-72 spotted marijuana growing behind a private residence in Dalton. The National Guard said the observation directly enabled law enforcement to obtain a search warrant. Police ultimately seized 17 plants and two pounds of processed marijuana from the property, valued at more than $40,000 in total

Georgia National Guard crews helped state and local agencies seize 343 marijuana plants across the state this summer alone.

The military has been flying marijuana eradication missions in the state for decades. In 2013, Georgia National Guard crews patrolled north Georgia searching for marijuana grows from helicopters as part of the same Governor’s Task Force. At the time, Guard crews received suspected locations from local sheriff’s departments before searching from the air.

“We receive suspected locations from the local Sheriff’s office and talk the ground team in to eradicate the marijuana grow sites once we locate them,” a Georgia Guard aircrew member said in 2013.

The new approach, with military helicopters doing flights across the state, saves police fuel, manpower and time, the National Guard said. These flights allow ground teams to deploy only after a grow has been positively identified from the air.

The helicopter crews are only one part of the Georgia Guard’s counterdrug mission. Guard personnel also provide criminal case analysis to law enforcement, including information on drug trafficking organizations and illicit financial networks.

“The success of this ERAD season highlights that the Georgia National Guard is not an afterthought or secondary request, but an indispensable partner,” Capt. Jimmy Williams, deputy director of the Georgia National Guard Counterdrug Task Force, said in a release.

This year’s seizures are, so far, down from higher numbers more than a decade ago. In 2012, the same task force seized more than 71,000 plants across Georgia, including large grows on public land in the Chattahoochee National Forest.

This year, the Guard is reporting far fewer seizures but is searching a wider area. This summer’s operations netted 343 plants, 326 of them from a single operation in Polk County. The Dalton operation accounted for the remaining 17 plants.

Georgia’s operations are part of a much larger National Guard Counterdrug Program operating in every state and several U.S. territories. Congress appropriated approximately $1.33 billion for the program between fiscal years 2019 and 2024, according to the Government Accountability Office.