PRIVATISE BORDER? Raytheon Completes Successful Border Control Effort

Raytheon Completes Successful Border Control Effort


April 18, 2006 | 11:52 AM email | print | feedback


Raytheon Company's Project Athena successfully completed an operational demonstration along the southwest border of Texas to provide persistent multi-domain surveillance and "actionable intelligence" to a joint interagency task force in support of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) law enforcement agencies.

The Athena integrated C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and sensor system was rapidly fielded to support the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Rio Grande Sector and 14 other interagency partners. During the six-week mission, Athena and CBP successfully detected, intercepted and deterred transnational threats, drugs, and alien smuggling across the U.S.-Mexican border over a large joint operations area including 160 miles of coastline, 120 miles of land border, and nine ports of entry.

"We're pleased to deliver demonstrated capability to secure our nation's borders today," said Mary Petryszyn, Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) Joint Battlespace Integration vice president. "Project Athena continues to successfully provide our Homeland Security agencies the power of knowledge to help defend our freedom and to act with assurance within the Joint Battlespace environment — sea, air and land."

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I would think they could use something other than military weapons systems to accomplish the task, though.

Ultimately, the problem is international in scope. As long as there is great inequality between the haves and the have-nots, there will always be a problem of desperate people searching and wandering to try and make a living.