FACTBOX: Details of high-tech border project

Fri Feb 22, 2008 4:21pm EST
 
[-] Text [+]

(Reuters) - A newly completed high-tech "virtual fence" on part of the U.S. border with Mexico is intended as a test for technology that could be used in various configurations along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) frontier.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Friday declared the 28-mile (45-km) project near Nogales, Arizona ready for service, after months of delay caused by software problems.

The project was built by Boeing Co for $20 million, as the first phase of a broader secure border project estimated to cost $2.5 billion. Following are components of the project:

-- Nine mobile sensor towers intended to improve detection of illegal crossings.

-- Fifty vehicles equipped with rugged laptop computers capable of displaying a "common operating picture" that gives a shared, multimedia overview of the border area.

-- Three "rapid response" vehicles to more quickly take captured illegal immigrants to detention facilities.

-- Fifty satellite telephones, intended to improve communications in the barren border area.

-- Two command units.

(Reporting by Randall Mikkelsen, source, Boeing Co, Editing by Eric Walsh)

 

Featured Broker sponsored link

Editor's Choice

A selection of our best photos from the past 24 hours.   Slideshow 

Most Popular on Reuters

  • Articles
  • Video
Bernd Debusmann
America’s perennial Vietnam syndrome

History does not repeat itself, but the wartime struggles of President Obama in 2009 and President Johnson in 1963 are striking in their similarities. Does the ghost of Vietnam still hang over the White House?  Commentary