'Now, That's What We Call Border Security'

["Paul Ferguson" <fergdawgster () gmail com>]

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Via In From the Cold.

[snip]

As Noah Shactman at the Danger Room notes, the U.S. government has been
trying (with marginal success) to implement "high-tech" surveillance
systems along our southern border. Current plans call for a series of
"sensor towers," which will monitor the border and feed data to monitoring
stations.

However, the so-called "virtual fence" has been affected by technical
problems and staggering costs [1]. Last May, Boeing announced plans to
revamp the prototype, and it's still unclear how much we'll pay for the
system. By one (inflated) estimate, the fence will cost between $300
million and $1.7 billion per mile; but even at a lower price, there are
legitimate questions about how much security it will provide, and the
long-term expenditures required to keep the sensors --and the technicians
who monitor them--on the job.

Meanwhile, the Israelis have taken the concept of high-tech border security
to another level. Aviation Week's Ares defense blog reports that the IDF is
now operating remote-controlled weapons stations along the "hot" border
with Gaza.

Developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the network consists of
weapons towers, mounting a remotely-controlled 7.62 mm or 50-caliber
weapon, linked to an observation station. The observation post, manned
mostly by female soldiers, monitors border activity around the clock. When
an attempted border penetration (or other suspicious activity) is detected,
operators can direct one or more towers to engage the targets. In addition
to the tower-mounted guns, observers can also employ precision-guided
missiles.

Obviously, we'll never have anything like the Israeli system in our
country--that is, until terrorists detonate a nuke in an American city, and
the plot is traced through our porous borders. There's nothing like mass
casualties and a verified threat to change your way of thinking.

[snip]

Link:
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2008/12/now-thats-what-we-call-border-secur
ity.html

Enjoy. ;-)

- - ferg

[1] http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/border-fence.html
[2] http://tinyurl.com/5bmmz9

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-- 
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawgster(at)gmail.com
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
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