Feature: Border Hawk drone flies

United Press International ^ | 6/23/03 | Steve Sailer

[judgeandjury]

He (Spencer) went on, "They are accidents waiting to happen. This is no longer John Wayne Country. It's Litigation Nation. The Mexican government wants to hit them with a law suit."

Hey, now there's an idea. Let's hit the racist, corrupt, elitist Mexican government with hundreds of lawsuits charging it with being involved with drug smuggling into the United States, illegal alien smuggling into the United States, meddling in a sovereign country's domestic affairs (United States), harboring fugitives from crimes that they've committed in the United States, etc.

[F16Fighter]

Their plan is to deliver live over the Internet aerial coverage of illegal aliens slipping into the United States, and their purpose is to both assist and prod the federal U.S. Border Patrol in sealing the southern border against illegal aliens.

Great. We'll now have videotape of 50,000 Mexicans a day flipping the bird at the camera as they stroll across the border unimpeded.

[DannyTN]

nothing matches the up-close "deer-in-the-headlights' look when a bunch of illegals find themselves staring into a video camera from ten feet away. Especially if the camera man is flanked by several ugly loco gringos and Border Patrol agents."

That's great. I'm glad you're keeping the ugly loco gringos employed.

[Paul Ross]

Great. We'll now have videotape of 50,000 Mexicans a day flipping the bird at the camera as they stroll across the border unimpeded.

A Classic! ROTFLMAO! Unfortunately, too true. This administration sold out long ago. The fix is in. All for the chimera of Hispanic GOP votes.

[_Jim]

Daylight imaging is cheap but night imaging of any useful resolution is ...

What?

Add an IR imager and thermal cooler for imager, the correct optics for use in the IR range and BINGO - thermal night vision ...

[_Jim]

reporting the position of the target in realtime is economically numbing

What are you planning on using - a ReFLEX 50 network?

[Amerigomag]

What are you planning on using - a ReFLEX 50 network?

No.

A commercially available thermal camera. A commericially avaliable lasing rangefinder. A proprietary, 3 axis, gimbal mount for the imaging and ranging systems. A commerically available GPS receiver. A proprietary board containing local, 3 dimensional, terrain maps, a small number crunching chip and a 3-6 watt transmitter. A proprietary board for propulsion mangement, navigation and flight control. The rest is straight forward materials and equipment found in RC soaring supply catalogs. About the only other item that's expensive is the refractive, absorbing paint if you'd like to remain beyond the eyes of big brother.

The resultant system weighs less than 15 pounds, is silent beyond 100 meters, has an extremly small radar cross section and an endurance of about 45 minutes. Images acquired at a silent range are suitable for recognition software analysis and target position is real time to about 1 meter.

If the trekkers are less than 15 miles from the launch point the system can produce useable still images and video clips of the coyote(s) and the age and gender of the clients so the BP can take a head count after the round up.

The point of this expalnation is that the systems are readily available to the private sector, for a price, but the system raises a whole host of other issues, the least of which is privacy litigation.