On The Mexican Border, Dumb Sensors Equal Deadly Consequences
The circumstances of U.S. Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez’s death this week remain murkier than the Rio Grande River...
This much is clear: Dumb sensors + depleted forces = deadly border disorder...
Here’s the scandal: Our federal government has been squandering billions of dollars on inferior border technology for years. It’s a monumental waste of taxpayer funds and a dangerous redistribution of wealth to crony contractors, whose ineffective pet projects are putting our men and women on the front lines at risk.
Nearly 14,000 ground sensors have been littered along the southern border over the past several decades—some dating back to the Vietnam War era... [PDF]...
A $1 billion integrated fixed tower project, fronted by Boeing, was supposed to remedy the flaws of the ground sensor system. A surveillance program along the southwest border in Arizona, the IFT systems “are fixed surveillance assets that provide long-range persistent surveillance” using radars that send pictures back to a central hub to monitor illegal crossings and criminal activity...
“We have $50 million of infrastructure on this ranch now,” fourth-generation Arizona rancher John Ladd told me during a tour of his property, “and none of it has worked. Camera towers, radar, fence, roads, street lights.” All the technology in the world is useless, he has long pointed out to politicians and bureaucrats, without boots on the ground...
Longtime illegal immigration activist and systems engineer Glenn Spencer, who I first met in California in the 1990s, has lived and worked on the Arizona border for more than decade. He patented and tested a pilot system of seismic detection and ranging on 1.5 miles of his friend John Ladd’s property called Seidarm and paired it with a drone, dubbed Hermes, which automatically launches when border activity is detected within 500 feet of the smart sensors...
“They don’t want to measure it; they don’t want to secure the border; they want to make it LOOK like they are.”
Beltway business as usual. Another agent’s life sacrificed. President Trump, the clock is ticking.
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Video: Hermes the drone tours America's southern border
Border security and porous United States - Mexico border wall / fence