Posted on 05/09/2019 1:04:18 PM PDT by BeauBo
The Pentagon said Wednesday that it has enough funding to build 256 more miles of border wall in the near future, and will start construction at a rate of about a half mile a day over the next six months. Acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan said in testimony to the Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee. “How you will see this materialize in the next six months is that about 63 additional new miles of wall will come online, so about a half a mile a day will be produced.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
It sounds like this 256 miles will be in addition to those 57, but it is not definite in this story.
Tell Fisher Sand and Gravel to pound sand... get out of the way, you twerps!
Savings from not having to perform gender transformation surgery?
Do you know something about this particular bidding process that we don’t know?
In before the build the wall or not voting again Freepers.
Just start it. ASAP.
How the he’ll do we go from laying TEN miles of railroad track every day in the 1860s to a half mile of fence per day in the 2010s?
15 miles a month? 180 miles a year? I thought Trump was talking about 400 new miles by the election. (And that’s too slow for me.) It at least sounds like our defense arteries have completely hardened with a bad case of bureaucratic sclerosis. (I mean, we actually won a war a mere 75 years ago!)
I’d like to see exactly what sort of (wall|fence|barrier|whatever) they’re building before I pass judgment on the pace.
“15 miles a month? 180 miles a year? I thought Trump was talking about 400 new miles by the election.”
The 400 miles before the election will be funded and awarded on contract (it may well be closer to 500). It sounds like Secretary Shanahan is talking about actually built, rather than just on contract.
Also, he is likely just talking about the projects that his Department (DoD) is funding. DHS has there own funding, with 80 miles on contract (underway or starting soon) and $1.375 billion for 55 miles in the Rio Grande Valley, that is still in the contracting process.
So far we have averaged about a half mile per week, rather than a half mile per day. But average rates can be misleading, Because the first year was basically planning and preparation, and this year got the big money bomb.
The bottom line is that we now seem to be off to the races in building border barrier. This Summer and Fall should see activity ramping up sharply, and continuing through next year.
If nothing gets in the way, I could see 300 miles standing before the election, with about 200 more miles funded and underway on contract - plus whatever money the President gets for 2020. He is expected to request $8.6 billion - roughly enough to complete the planned 1,100 miles.
“I’d like to see exactly what sort of (wall|fence|barrier|whatever) they’re building”
They call it “wall system” - a combination of 18 to 30 foot steel bollards, with good patrol road, cleared observation areas, sensors/alarms, and in some cases fixed cameras and stadium lighting.
In the Rio Grande Valley, much of the new barrier will do double duty as FEMA hurricane-certified flood control levee, requiring pretty massive concrete foundations (which drives up costs there to about $25 million per mile).
It is basically the top of the line of the Border Patrol’s wish list - solid, effective stuff that will stand for many decades - likely a century or more in the desert.
If only we could identify an almost unlimited source of cheap and/or free labor ...
Trump was claiming his 400 miles of new wall would be built by then too.
So maybe that’s what Trump meant—about 260 miles built by the DoD and and 135 or so miles by the DHS.
Still unfortunately slow — and not nearly enough miles!
At 1100 miles are you counting both new and replaced or repaired “wall”/fence? And is this pretty much all just single fencing, no or little double fencing with a road in between?
“are you counting both new and replaced or repaired “wall”/fence?”
Most places that need barrier, already have something, of some sort - even if it is just triple strand barbed wire for cattle. The new stuff is really no comparison to the old, So repair or replacement are not really significant considerations, to actually controlling traffic. They will put effective barrier where traffic is highest first, and those places will mostly be “replacement” (something that works, for something that doesn’t).
The big exception is about 150 miles in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, that does not have existing barrier. The hydrology of the shifting river, the hurricanes they get, and the water treaty with Mexico made engineering approval hard, and extensive private property claims also made it especially difficult - so it missed out on previous efforts.
I don’t really know how much will be double or single layer (double layer is mainly in the cities), but the barrier itself is a big upgrade, as is the dramatically improved surveillance built in with the new stuff.
Here's one: Build The Wall: Construction Progress January 2019
You sound like you’re really living it, but what is there, something like 500 miles of, yes, often negligible fencing as it is?
Barrier and wall are both bad euphemisms in my mind: I haven’t seen anything along the border that is other than a fence.
I’m just not buying it that we don’t need the vast majority of the border seriously fenced—30-feet high and double is roughly the dimension I think we are looking at too. Otherwise, they will just alter their paths to a somewhat more arduous, but still far too rewarding route.
Last I knew Trump had got funding to increase the border patrol staffing, but again, Kelly and his successor appeared to be slow-walking that as well. Do you know if they have filled the additionally funded openings?
Liberals, government incompetence, payoffs, waste, no work ethic, bureaucracy for starters.
If only there were pallets of cash around like the kind that wun gave to Iran.
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