In the late 80’s, having made trips back and forth between home and San Diego, I happened to notice these Aerostat balloon ops from the main highway on those leave periods...
I thought, “Gee, what a cool job to move into once I decided to hang up the uniform...”
Being a radar and communications specialist you’d think that might be a shoe-in for a kozy job within your baliwick...
Never in my wildest hallucinations would I ever run into such a click-ish operation in my lifetime...Here was a job after a job that was right up someone’s alley after being on the line in the military at that time...
Since I did my research on this effort, I was not deterred until those running the show said that I was not qualified for ANY position available to support those operations...
So hearing about their demise upsets me even more because it reinforced my belief that ALL of this was BS from the get go, never intended to accomplish anything,but being a pit to suck in as much tax dollars as possible for as long as it could...
Understandibly, I do see a lot of peoples point here, in that what will replace this system??? What will protect us from low-flyers, and other low altitude threats to our southern border???
Probably something that we are not privy too, because of security, that is not public knowledge...
We can only hope...But it is suffice to say that it will not be fool-proof, it will have gaps in coverage that can and will be exploited by the very people we are trying to keep from vying their trade, or threats to this country...
Again, we can only hope... And I am not going to hold my breath to its potential success or failure to accomplish what it may be tasked to do...
I would have loved to have transitioned into a position at one or more of these sites, and been doing that for the last 25 years knowing these were operating out there in some remote, but beautiful places along our southern border...But running up against such a government backed operation and its entitled employees kinda turned me off...It even tempted me in my discussions with those running this show to threaten to offer my services to others to help bust the system, exploit those gaps and help them ply their trade...
But rest assured, I knew it to be better to keep the faith and hope it works in the long run...I could have made a lot of money doing so...
So now they are going away...Well, I wish I could say I was one of those employees looking for work now...Now they can reap the benefits of a chief executive that has created their new found unemployment...
I have very little compassion for them...And that is as brutally honest as I can be, knowing that there will be some system in place to take over their neck of the woods on our border...
I just have sneeky feeling that there is such a system, and it will not be something readily discernable from a public point of view...I do not give credit to this administration for being so prudent, it is probably been something in work for many years, but it just happened to be something to fall into the adminstrations lap to be the ones in charge at its implementation...
Not apologizing for my opinion, just stating that on those wonderful driving trips home for holidays to be with family while on active duty, I got to travel some pretty country, and that seeing these in work, knowing what they were doing, it would have been nice to have been a part of it while it was in work...
Just my opinion...
And that the defensive systems are being turned into guard towers for a gulag?