Virtual Border Fence to be Scrapped

[Kanastrous]

TUCSON, Ariz. - A $20 million prototype of the government's highly touted "virtual fence" on the Arizona-Mexico border is being scrapped because the system is failing to adequately alert Border Patrol agents to illegal crossings, officials said.

The move comes just two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced his approval of the fence built by The Boeing Co. The fence consists of nine electronic surveillance towers along a 28-mile section of border southwest of Tucson.

Boeing is to replace the so-called Project 28 prototype with a series of towers equipped with communications systems, new cameras and new radar capability, officials said.

Less than a week after Chertoff accepted Project 28 on Feb. 22, the Government Accountability Office told Congress it "did not fully meet user needs and the project's design will not be used as the basis for future" developments.

Shortcomings

A glaring shortcoming of the project was the time lag between the electronic detection of movement along the border and the transmission of a camera image to agents patrolling the area, the GAO reported.

Although the fence continues to operate, it hasn't come close to meeting the Border Patrol's goals, said Kelly Good, deputy director of the Secure Border Initiative program office in Washington.

"Probably not to the level that Border Patrol agents on the ground thought that they were going to get. So it didn't meet their expectations."

The Border Patrol had little input in designing the prototype but will have more say in the final version, officials said.

Agents began using the virtual fence last December, and the towers have resulted in more than 3,000 apprehensions since, said Greg Giddens, executive director of the SBI program office in Washington.

But that's just a fraction of the several hundred illegal immigrants believed to cross the border daily near southwest of Tucson.

The virtual fence is part of a national plan to use physical barriers and high-tech detection capabilities to secure the Mexican border — and eventually the Canadian boundary.

$860 million contract

Boeing was awarded an $860 million contract to provide the technology, physical fences and vehicle barriers.

"Boeing has delivered a system that the Border Patrol currently is operating 24 hours a day," Boeing spokeswoman Deborah Bosick said. She declined further comment.

Project 28 was not intended to be the final, state-of-the-art system for catching illegal immigrants, Giddens said. "I think some people understood that and some didn't. We didn't communicate that well."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24268411/

[Sea Skimmer]

The entire concept of an virtual fence is and always has been retarded, and it will remain so until said virtual fence concept also incorporates auto aiming Tesla Coils. In the absence of that we need real fences, which both delay and reveal the passage of illegal’s, and above all else more boarder patrol agents. I suppose I should be happy though, that they’ve only wasted 20 million dollars so far.

[Kanastrous]

Any time they waste less the US$50 million on something stoopid, you gotta call it a net win.

[Murazor]

Didn't these fellows claim something about "not leaving stones upturned" or something like that when they put a ton of money in an study about the military uses of quantum teleportation or something like that?

[The Yosemite Bear]

but can we get some Steve McQueen fans to jump it?

[Kanastrous]

Real Steve McQueen fans would bust through it on a motorcycle.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I was thinking the great escape scene. Which actually along with the Bullit chase scene was actually done by his stunt driver.

[Kanastrous]

In The Great Escape McQueen rides a stolen BMW bike through the fence, at the end.

I heard McQueen did his own motorcycle stunts, but maybe he didn't.

[The Yosemite Bear]

he did most of his own stunts, but he had a regular guy who did stunts for him when the studios thought it was "Too Dangerous". Consequently McQueen would correct people in interviews about which stunts he did and didn't do.

[Kanastrous]

Reminds me of that scene in The Rocketeer...

"Where's your stuntman now, Sinclair?"

POW! left hook

"I do my own stunts."