The Jerusalem Post – by YAAKOV LAPPIN
Israeli defense firm Elbit has been awarded a $145 million contract by the US Department of Homeland Security to construct a series of surveillance towers on Arizona’s border with Mexico, the company announced on Sunday.
The project, called Integrated Fixed Tower Project (IFT), plans to see security posts equipped with radars and cameras that can detect human movement spring up along the American state’s southern frontier. The work is to be carried out by Elbit’s US subsidiary, Elbit Systems of America, which is based at Fort Worth, Texas.
Construction of the towers will take around a year, the company said. It declined to provide further details.
Last week, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, released a statement welcoming the contract.
“Arizonans have been waiting more than a decade for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to place the needed technology along our border to support the Border Patrol and fully secure our southern border,” he said.
“After many months of delay, the awarding of this contract to Elbit Systems of America is an important development toward fully securing the border in Arizona. If this technology is developed, integrated and fielded correctly, these Integrated Fixed Towers in southern Arizona, coupled with the tremendous work of the Border Patrol, will give our agents the ability to detect, evaluate and respond to all illegal entries crossing our border,” McCain stated. “The American people have long expected us to secure our borders.
The awarding of this contract is a step in the right direction.”
In May, the US-based Defense News website reported that “the IFT program is an ambitious attempt to install a series of surveillance towers along the US/Mexico border. The idea is to deploy a series of networked, integrated fixed towers equipped with radar and cameras that will ‘be able to detect a single, walking, average- sized adult’ at a range of 5 miles [8 km.] to 7.5 miles [12 km.] during day or night, while sending close to real-time video footage back to agents manning a command post.”
Defense News added that the IFT program comes after a previous border security program, called the Secure Border initiative (SBI), was canceled in 2011 despite the government spending $1 billion over the course of six years. That effort that saw just 85 km. of the 626-km.
border covered by the program, the report said.
In his statement last week, McCain vowed to “make certain we do not have another mistake like the SBInet project that set back for years the deployment of needed technology.”
You can build a lot of fence with all those millions. What we need is a 2,000 mile secure fence from San Diego to Brownsville TX. A fence you can’t cut open with a pair of bolt cutters. The Israeli’s know how to build a secure fence. Just look at the one in there country. It works perfect! Ah, but that’s not the point is it. Not something that really works and is cheap. Instead we have goofy idea’s about high tech sensors that American tax payers not only have to buy outright, but then have to pay rent to use it. The whole system is a sham and was meant to fail. The solution is this….build a darn fence…period.
welcome to palistine/amerika!
Perhaps Joe, but I think that it would be much more efficient if we just had our own military training down there on the boarders for their training – kill two birds with one stone, military get training and also it would probobly put a dent in all of those wet backs sneaking over across the boarder and in their tunnels they are useing to smuggle their drugs and other stuff over
Seems like a better idea to me than to be building these fences.
making sure it all goes according to plan.