Israel's Elbit Systems Wins £87m Contract on US-Mexico Border Fence
Israeli soldiers patrol the border with the northern Gaza Strip during a drill near Netiv HaasaraReuters
Israeli company Elbit Systems, the largest supplier to the Israeli military, has been awarded a $87m contract from the US Department of Homeland Security to produce and install surveillance systems for the US-Mexico border fence.
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The contract is for an unspecified number of observation posts to be built along the US-Mexico border fence in the area of Nogales, south of Tuscon.
Elbit Systems was involved in the West Bank wall separating the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. The company provides "intrusion detection systems" and infrastructure support for the barrier.
Arizona's Republican senator John McCain said: "Arizonans have been waiting more than a decade for the Department of Homeland Security to place the needed technology along our border to support the Border Patrol and fully secure our southern border.
"After many months of delay, the awarding of this contract to Elbit Systems is an important development toward fully securing the border in Arizona. These Integrated Fixed Towers in southern Arizona will give our agents the ability to detect, evaluate and respond to all illegal entries crossing our border."
Elbit Systems is the Israeli military's largest supplier of drones, military technology and surveillance. Its drones are described on its website as "the backbone of the Israel Defence Force's UAS [unmanned aerial system] force". They have been used on Palestinian civilians in strikes on Gaza.
As part of its US tender, Elbit said that Homeland Security needed to "adopt a more complete border security system, which combines radar and electro-optical sensors, unattended ground sensors, unmanned air systems, and manned or unmanned ground vehicles to enhances agents' flexibility and responsiveness".
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/israels-elbit-systems-wins-87m-contract-us-mexico-border-fence-1439378
Better Than a Wall: A New Detection System Can Help Monitor the U.S.-Mexico Border
The Integrated Towers System promises to give border-control agents more insight into the threats they face before they face them. And it's only the beginning.
Steve Craft
By Mitch Moxley
Jan 28, 2016
Agent Jose Verdugo's workplace is vast: 1,100 square miles of hilly, sandy terrain surrounding Nogales, Arizona, the second-largest border-patrol station in the country. Depending on the day's assignment, he'll hike trails or drive along the boundary between the United States and Mexico. Some days he investigates human trafficking or drug smuggling. (Half of the marijuana that crosses the southwest border is captured in the Tucson sector, where Nogales is situated.) Other days Verdugo investigates a suspicious blip on a radar system that often turns out to be foul weather, or a rancher tending his land, or a stray cow.
Over the years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has used a series of strategies, some more effective than others, to monitor huge swaths of rugged terrain along the border. It needed a solution that would prevent agents like Verdugo from being deployed for false alarms, so they could chase and investigate narcos rather than livestock and be prepared for what they encountered when they caught up. This would require permanent sensors that could provide a clear picture to agents back at the station of what was happening in the field. The Integrated Fixed Towers (IFT) system, which includes radar and day and night cameras mounted on a series of towers along the border, promises to solve the problem. The radar and cameras transmit data over microwave link to the Nogales station, where agents determine an appropriate course of action. The system, which enables agents to accurately monitor areas previously unobserved, is, Verdugo says, like "turning on a light switch" along the dark, mysterious border.
The IFT is only the latest of the government's attempts to cover the southwestern border with sensors capable of detecting unlawful crossings. The previous setup, known as SBInet, was a network of newly designed radar, cameras, and heat and motion detectors, which was supposed to allow border-patrol agents to work from a common operational picture. Boeing won the contract in 2006, and the system was initiated across 53 miles of Arizona's Mexico border.
Steve Craft
It quickly became a boondoggle. Total acquisition costs rose to a projected $1.6 billion, a staggering $1.4 billion more than initial estimated costs, according to the Government Accountability Office. It also didn't really work. The main problem was communication—the information transmitted to the command center was unreliable. It didn't operate well in the varied terrain of the Tucson sector, and was often triggered by bad weather, leading to false positives. In 2010, as costs rose, then Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano halted the program and asked border patrol to start over. "One of the lessons of SBInet was you're better off going small than big, and you're better off going off-the-shelf than innovative," says Christopher Wilson, a border-security expert and deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Border-patrol officials came to the same conclusion and sought out preexisting, tested technology. The new approach, announced in 2011, would combine proven mobile surveillance, thermal imaging, and tower-mounted video technology. The request for IFT proposals called for sensors able to detect "a single, walking, average-sized adult" and provide sufficiently high-resolution video of that adult at a range of up to 7.5 miles in daylight and darkness.
The biggest defense contractors—including General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon—all competed for the $145 million contract, which was awarded to Elbit Systems of America, the Fort Worth, Texas–based subsidiary of Israel's Elbit Systems. Elbit has deployed hundreds of miles of border-monitoring systems between Israel and Palestine and also provided multisensor surveillance systems along Israel's border with Gaza and Egypt. As of July, Elbit had completed construction in Nogales, and in September it crossed a major hurdle when the IFT system, tested by border-security agents, demonstrated the capacity to detect, track, and classify movement on the border. In other words, it works. Elbit's system is so specific that it can determine whether an individual is carrying a backpack or a long-arm weapon.
WITH RADAR, DAY AND NIGHT CAMERAS, AND THERMAL IMAGING, THE NEW SYSTEM IS LIKE "TURNING ON A LIGHT SWITCH" ALONG THE DARK, MYSTERIOUS BORDER.
It's also designed to operate in the rugged Arizona desert. "Border control can break anything," says John Lawson, CBP acting section chief. "It's very difficult terrain to deploy technology in, and that's one of the benefits that we're anticipating. This system is going to be a lot more rugged than a lot of the previous things we've deployed." Now that the IFT has proved itself worthy, a second installation on the Arizona border is underway, with the ultimate plan of safeguarding the entire Mexico-facing stretch of Arizona's perimeter, pending congressional approval.
The IFT is only one part of the border patrol's effort to use technology to enhance security. The Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan, which includes the IFT, also uses remote video surveillance—day and night cameras for cluttered urban environments where radar is not as effective—and truck-mounted mobile sensors that can be moved when needed. Drones have been used to provide a bird's-eye view of vast stretches of border, and in 2012, the agency deployed a military wide-area camera attached to an aerostat, an airship tethered up to 5,000 feet off the ground. Originally used in Afghanistan, these cameras are capable of capturing miles of terrain in a single hi-res image. But officials say that all of the technology, including the IFT system, serves only to support the most valuable assets border patrol has: the agents. "Back in the early days, it was people looking for footprints on the ground," Lawson says. "We still do that." Only now, the agents stand a better chance of finding them.
With radar, day and night cameras, and thermal imaging, the new system is like "turning on a light switch" along the dark, mysterious border.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tec...trol-integrated-towers-system-invisible-wall/
