Posted on 01/14/2011 10:53:30 AM PST by TSgt
The Department of Homeland Security today officially scrapped a Bush-era program designed to use radar technology to detect illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a DHS official and a congressional source.
The project, called "Virtual Fence," was rolled out under the Bush administration in 2006 with much fanfare about how technology could help secure the border. Illegal immigrants crossing the border would be detected by a radar and picked up by remote cameras, which were monitored by border patrol agents.
But numerous internal and Congressional reviews found consistent performance problems with the project's systems, which only spanned 53 miles of the vast U.S.-Mexico border.
The cameras often provided blurry images, the radar system performed poorly in bad weather, and it often displayed false detections that were unable to distinguish between humans, cars and animals.
There were also cost overruns and the primary contractor, Boeing, repeatedly missed deadlines, officials said.
"The SBInet program has been a grave and expensive disappointment since its inception," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the House Homeland Security committee, said in a statement.
The system is estimated to cost about $1 billion. If the entire project had been accepted and rolled out, its cost would have exceeded $6 billion.
"We know that we cannot continue to put out millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer's money if we're not confident that it's really not going to work,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who ordered a review of the program upon taking office, said in October.
DHS officials say the program will not be a total loss and that Customs and Border Protection officers and Border Patrol agents will continue to use some of the systems that have been paid for.
Of course they axed it. They need the votes.
Yet, this government wants to run the health-care system. Got it.
Time for our new congress to resurrect the fence.
But we were promised...!!!!!
The fence was bravo sierra from the beginning, and only designed to claim coverage by a manner that made the average citizen unable to verify that “Coverage.” It was only a matter of time before they stopped the pretense. It is being used now to garner votes.
I really wish we had someone with stones running this country that protected the interests of the American workers in their jobs and the American taxpayers and their tax obligations made so much worse by the lack of an effective border.
It makes one wonder of the narco-trafficking has reached the highest levels of our government, because the one thing that would be effective in stopping the drugs into this country and the illegal immigration, is subjected to the worst kind of funding limitations to make it perpetually ineffective.
When I follow the money, that’s where I am lead.
Fence, hell.
I want a moat and sniper towers along a thirty foot wall.
Aren’t we supposed to even HOPE for some homeland security from the department of homeland security?
Billion dollar boondoggle. But that was the point, wasn’t it?
Bush only signed it. The project was the brainchild of the two Senators from Texas, IIRC. Certainly, K Bailey was the first, filing the bill within hours of the original fence bill being passed.
Well, here we are seven years later and we're back to square one.
Who could have predicted this? Well, just about everyone on this forum that didn't have their nose firmly implanted.
At least we got to add millions if not billions to the national debt to pay for it.
Have ink, willing to print...
I can relate nappy, I am incensed that we waste more & more tax dollars on you when we know it's all sand down a rat-hole (so to speak)...
"This is not the virtual fence that you axed for..."
Don’t forget the 100 yard wide “kill-zone” ;-)
The Texas witch laid the wood to the tax payer in the whole fence deal. Part of the damn fence was nothing more than a private lake for her big contributor. She was dancing to the music for the Texas chicken king.
Ping!
What?
No crocodiles and hippos?
So now we have to pretend that the pretend fence never was.
Just replace it with Predator Drones (armed)
Look on the bright side, it created jobs.
No crocodiles and hippos?
Not nice to talk about the first lady like that.
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