Eye-o-Sauron™ border beam barrier tech too crap to keep
Print storyMigrant scan towers to be rebuilt from ground up
Posted in Government, 24th April 2008 18:44 GMT
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Functionaries at the US Department of Homeland security (DHS) have officially confirmed that the troubled first-generation Eye-o-Sauron™ huddled-mass tracking border protection system - aka Project 28 - is too useless even to use as a basis for future equipment. A just-accepted $20m pilot barrier in the Arizona desert will be binned completely, and future kit will start from a clean sheet.
"It didn't meet expectations," said Kelly Good of the Secure Borders Initiative (SBI), speaking to AP.
Under the SBInet initiative, the DHS plans to use various forms of crafty technology to stave off the continually-arriving foreign hordes determined to become Americans.
In the case of Project 28, the idea was to use military-style moving target indicator radars mounted on tall towers. These would continually monitor large stretches of terrain. In the event of a moving object being picked up, all-seeing thermal vision eyes atop the towers would swivel round and stare in order to identify it.
Should the radar blip turn out to be a group of migrating miscreants, a huddled-mass icon would pop up on a network map in every Border Patrol vehicle. Agents would then be able to make an intercept, if necessary puke-raying the invaders into compliance, and snap on the cuffs without wasting time.
However, the Project 28 technology was no more effective at keeping out unwelcome intruders than the Eye in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It will now be ditched in its entirety. SBInet will still develop such so-called "virtual fence" tech, but it will be entirely new - rather than being effectively Eye-o-Sauron™ 2.0.
The costs of the new generation of kit to prevent the illegal generation of first-generation Americans have yet to be revealed.®
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