A second section of the US government’s heavily criticized “virtual fence” is planned on the Arizona-Mexico border and a third could be tested near Detroit by the end of this year, a Boeing Co official said.
A prototype consisting of nine movable towers across a 45km-area southwest of Tucson would be torn down and replaced this summer because it failed to perform as expected.
But Jack Chenevey, program manager for Boeing’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI) project, said on Thursday that the company viewed the results of its US$20 million prototype as a steppingstone success.
“Border Patrol agents use it absolutely 24-7. The reliability and availability of the system has exceeded our expectations for a prototype system,” Chenevey said in a telephone interview.
The project also met all contractual requirements, he said.
The SBI envisions using virtual fencing along portions of both borders. The towers are intended to clamp down on illegal immigration by giving Border Patrol agents video and pinpoint locations of intruders.
Problems in the computer software tying together detections from its series of sensors, radars and cameras into a common picture delayed the prototype fence’s operation for several months. Delays in satellite transmission of data added to its problems.
Boeing was paid US$20 million by the Department of Homeland Security to build the fence last summer. It is north of the border near the port of entry at Sasabe.
Customs and Border Protection officials acknowledged last month that the towers, called Project 28, didn’t work well enough to continue their refinement and said they would be replaced with improved ones.
Boeing expects to start building an additional 48km of new virtual fencing in southern Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument later this year, Chenevey said. The project is also expected to be tested along the Canadian border this year, near Detroit.
Boeing has a US$45 million contract to create new software for the Border Patrol’s needs. The company has been awarded about US$860 million for the entire nationwide SBI effort.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
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