Their own words...
I don’t think I’m, at this moment, going to announce the final disposition, but I will say I went down and I spent a fair amount of time not only looking at it, but talking to the line agents. I think that this system is working well, as what I would call a first generation 1.0 project. I think a lot has been learned about what needs to go into 2.0, or maybe 1.5. We’re going to continue to move along the lines of what they call ‘spiral development’ to improve the system.
But I want to emphasize that from the very beginning, we have taken the position that this is not a one-size-fits-all approach to border security. The particular project, P-28, which covers 28 miles in a very sophisticated network, works well in some areas. In some areas, we may wind up using ground-based radar -- what we call ‘mobile surveillance systems’ -- and we hope to have over 40 of those by the end of this year. In other areas, we use fencing. For example, we have literally a levee wall that we’ve just agreed to build in parts of Texas.
We’ve actually had operational value come out of the system -- people being detected and apprehended. I actually saw it with my own eyes. There are some things I want to see changed in it. In some ways, we may want to simplify some things at the next generation, or we may want to expand certain capabilities in the next generation. But, I walked away heartened, and that was being a pretty skeptical consumer.
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