Posted on 10/11/2020 5:50:22 PM PDT by BeauBo
The border wall is well underway in southern New Mexico. And James Johnson couldn’t be happier.
The third-generation farmer, wearing sunglasses, blue jeans and dusty work boots, beamed as he talked about the wall that winds alongside the southern edge of his farm, about 12 miles west of Columbus.
“It’s beautiful. I mean, we’re ecstatic,” Johnson, the owner of Carzalia farms, told the Journal...
Just over a year ago, Johnson told the Journal he was “eager” to see the wall built and even granted the federal government an easement to get the ball rolling.
Johnson said that construction began on Aug. 5 and that he was told the portion along his farm would be finished by January...
“It was a shock to us because it’s been tied up in politics for so long that we were afraid that it wasn’t going to happen,” Johnson said, adding that he’s been frustrated by the political back-and-forth on the wall.
“I’m dismayed by our representation in Washington that, in the past, supported this, and now they act like it’s such a bad thing,” Johnson said...
For Johnson, the wall will take a “massive weight” off his shoulders after years of dealing with theft, abandoned immigrants and wayward cattle. The farmer estimates that in the past 40 years the farm has lost alfalfa, cattle and thousands of bags of onions to thieves from across the border who sell the stolen goods in Mexico.
Johnson said the wall will also serve a “humanitarian” purpose by dissuading human smuggling.
“I can’t tell you how many people I’ve found wandering in the desert because their coyote left them, abandoned them, dehydrated, hungry,” he said. “Now that the wall is built, we can focus our efforts on a good guest worker program and a good immigration program.”
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
CWII cometh no matter who wins, I believe.
“to prevent cutting through with sawsall...fill the bollards with concrete.”
Yes, they are - and high strength concrete is specified.
Additionally, two very thick steel reinforcing rods (rebar) are inside each bollard, along with the concrete - also specified to be of a higher than average strength type. It is mixed challenge to any one type of saw blade, that takes a long time to cut through, and produces a fireworks show of sparks.
When the prototypes were built out near San Diego (Otay Mesa), the ones we saw were used for climbing testing. Another whole set (of lesser height) was built elsewhere for testing against breaching (like sawing) and tunneling attacks. Contract specifications for the materials were among the lessons learned, that have been incorporated into the wall system that has been built.
Additionally, the vibrations caused by sawing or tunneling are detected by seismic sensors, which are part of the “Wall System”. The whole “Wall System” was engineered as a complementary package, to deter or defeat the identified threats - or to detect and delay long enough for responding officers to interdict.
That is what they call “Full Operational Control”, and that is what the President formally directed on his sixth day in office (EO 13767, 25 Jan, 2017).
This Trump-style super “Wall System”, is whole different breed of beast from what went in before President Trump, even if the bollards look familiar.
Yep Ann has been radio silent. From one of the first call Trump a winner to hater.
NM Ping.
It is great to hear first hand “ground truth” reports like yours from along the border.
Those thirty foot bollards are going to stop the average Jose Six-Pack from coming across the border for petty theft - but the layers of new technology that are also deploying, are going to dramatically challenge even well funded/organized/equipped cartel operations.
Just as we we really just got into full scale deployment of new barrier this year (under 100 miles on January first, but likely over 360 miles on tomorrow’s report, 450 by year’s end), several major Technology Programs entered full scale deployment at the same time. They are already flooding to border hot spots, covering more miles, quicker than the new barrier.
I don’t know if the schedule has slipped (which has been common), but the entirety of the Arizona border with Mexico (~370 miles) was to covered by persistent surveillance from Integrated Fixed Towers (IFT) Program, by the end of this year (in addition to to 212 miles of new Trump-style Super Wall System that Arizona is getting).
Major purchases of Mobile Surveillance Systems (MSS) have already begun delivery/deployment, as has Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) and other other types of drones - up to the high altitude, long duration Predator drones, flown by both CBP and the US Military in support of CBP. Unmanned Ground Systems (UGS) are proliferating in type and number, and on, and on.
The line of the border barrier itself is being instrumented and monitored like a tripwire with Linear Detection System (LDS) and fixed surveillance assets, but many of these Programs enable a deep band of detection and tracking - from way into Mexico for early warning, and way into the USA for pursuit.
Not everything goes in on the same day, but layer upon layer of capability follow each other, over the weeks and months after the bollards are erected. Roads are finished, alarm systems are activated, concertina is strung, and additional capabilities, like lights, cameras, additional alarms and sensors; are deployed according to local need.
You will really see a change. This “Wall System was not thrown together as a haphazard general upgrade - if has been engineered as a complementary package, to achieve “Full Operational Control” where it goes in.
According to the President, so far, it has been been performing better than projected.
I met her at an event at the Nixon Library a number of years ago. I am a Connecticut guy so I have a soft spot for her. She was gracious to me when I had a short talk with her. I pray for her.
*smile*
The wall still allows for a nice view of the landscape.
“Paging Ann Coulter. Love you”
How Sweet!
Anyone have a forwarding address for Romeo?
My office, labs and pilot plant control rooms were in several concrete cinder block buildings in a chemical plant. The plant complex was on the gulf coast a mile off the beach and protected by a massive seawall.
The cinder lock building was about 10 or so years old and constructed per government provided specifications required by the research program’s federal funding. So along I come years later and need to bore a hole in an exterior wall to get a new utility pipeline into a lab space. The maintenance crew shows up with concrete hole saw gear and bores away. A little later the crew chief comes in and tells me they wore out their drill bits and are running to the shop for new ones. So, they get back to work again and a little while later come back in tell me they hit steel inside the cinder block and tore up the new drill bits. They got more drilling bits delivered from the main warehouse and now have an acetylene cutting rig for the the steel.
In the end, the job took the crew about 5 or 6 hours instead of the expected 30 minutes on site. What they discovered is that the hollow core of the cinder blocks was filled with a coil of wire plus rebar rods dropped in as well. The core was then filled with high strength concrete. Later, I was talking with an older guy that had worked there when the buildings were built. The government had specified some milspec standard that was way tougher than our own internal corporate specs that were simply for hurricane resistance. I am very confident that the border wall will be functionally impenetrable to about anything short of substantial shaped charges on bollards. Mere tampering will be shrugged off with a rapid BP response triggered by sensors.
Yes, haven’t heard much from Ann Coulter lately
Thanks for recounting your first hand experience.
A lot of deliberate thought went into the design and specs for the new Border Wall.
President Trump gave them over $20 million (and Military support) to bring in 8 of the biggest and best construction firms in the country, to propose their best ideas (with billions in possible future contracts at stake). This was after collecting hundreds of ideas/proposals from an open solicitation.
The whole first year of 2017 was mainly analysis and planning.
I’d bet a months pay, that they have a bunch of much more sophisticated features incorporated, out of all those good ideas - beyond just the kind of obvious idea to spec the harder concrete and steel.
The bottom line is that President Trump has funded top of the line Wall System - everything that Border Patrol wanted.
"The bottom line is that President Trump has funded top of the line Wall System - everything that Border Patrol wanted needed."
All the wall has sensors to stop it from being cut through. The Border Patrol would be there long before a battery operated sawzall could make a dent.
And then the deportations, in earnest.
They already are filled with concrete.
It is part of the process.
Come on, I was a downtown kinda Norwalk guy and she was an uptown New Canaan gal. I was trying to be funny but the lead balloon was out on this one I guess. :)
Not sure what has happened to Ann.
Seems like she wants it all but that is not reality. Trump has done what he could. Maybe in a second term Trump will go scorched earth and make Ann happy.
I am not meaning to throw her under the bus..she is too good of a warrior to loose.
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