I believe no Wall of any type can be erected, but then abandoned and left unmanned.
A Wall of concrete or steel is a mighty deterrent and beats the whey out of an open and unmanned border.
If crickets can drive people deaf and mad in Cuba, I suspect a myriad of signals, even top secret ones, can serve as EYES for every inch of The Wall, as well as additional effective deterrents to invasion The Wall may provide.
When in doubt, mine the place. Then, we can nap until we hear a BOOM which signals the undertaker. :D
I'd love to see an experiment with AI assisted automatic water canon.
Say allow climbers to get up 12-15 feet off the ground then blast them off the wall with a water canon. I wonder how many mangled body heaps resulting it would take before folks decided climbing wasn't a good idea.
Trouble is, water in many such regions is a pretty priceless thing.
Maybe we could set the water canon to music . . . a la the loud classical music beginning that Viet Nam movie--what was it . . . 'Apocalypse Now?'
[music] . . . la la la . . . BLAST--SPLAT . . . la la la . . . BLAST--SPLAT . . . wash, repeat.
I know. I'm getting ridiculous. I should go back to bed.
I feel it won’t really end before we wind up having to shoot people. Which we really SHOULD do because despite the way the enemy has attempted to warp the language, jumping a border is something that will get you shot, most places in the world.
There must be a way to lay down an electric grid in the land within 500 yards of the border. ‘ouch! ouch’! Mexican hat dance!
From a military perspective at least, you're correct. An obstacle, whether anti-tank ditches and obstacles, a wall, minefield, etc is useless unless under observation by those who put it in place. A mobile rapid deployment force can then be activated when needed and cover a large area.