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(July 13) -- The House Homeland Security Committee will meet Thursday to discuss the use of unmanned aircraft to patrol America's borders. The number of drones deployed on such missions has been growing in recent years, and lawmakers have begun to demand that the Pentagon provide even more along the U.S.-Mexican border.
But it's not just drones that are being drafted into border patrol duty. Increasingly, unmanned ground vehicles and unmanned sensors are also being used -- and not just in the United States. Countries around the world are turning to unmanned armies to help protect their borders. Here's what some governments are doing:
United States: The U.S. uses some of the most high-tech arrays of sensors and devices to guard its border, including tethered blimps, unmanned Predator aircraft and cameras -- though whether all that technology has been effective at stemming the flow of illegal movement is unclear. The most ambitious unmanned effort by far is the SBInet, a high-tech border fence that was supposed to keep watch on more than 600 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border via a network of linked cameras and sensors. The government has since backtracked, at least in part, on that plan after cost overruns and delays.
European Union: Europe's answer to the United States' high-tech border fence is TALOS, which combines unmanned ground vehicles and sensors. TALOS is intended to "help in detecting, tracking and intercepting persons trying to cross the land border illegally between the border crossing points," according to an official description. The system would theoretically include guard robots that would spot people illegally crossing a border and even have special "interceptor" robots to confront intruders. There are no plans, however, for armed robots.
South Korea: Armed robotic sentries may soon be deployed along one of the most politically charged borders in the world: the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. According to news reports, the South Korean government is considering use of the SGR-1, produced by Samsung Techwin, which the military newspaper Stars and Stripes described as looking like a "cross between a traffic signal and a tourist-trap telescope." The SGR-1 would be used to help guard the DMZ. "The robots are not being deployed to replace or free up human soldiers," Huh Kwang-hak, a spokesman for the company that makes the robot, told Stars and Stripes. "Rather, they will become part of the defense team with our human soldiers."
Israel: Home to one of the world's most tech-laden -- and controversial -- borders, Israel is also one of the leading producers of military unmanned systems. It has made robots that can patrol borders and unmanned patrol boats for coastal waters, and has reportedly looked at automated systems that would shoot at potential intruders with no human intervention.
Iran: The government in Tehran, which is known for hyping its military technology, now says it has plans to employ unmanned aircraft to patrol its borders. "These drones are to carry only reconnaissance missions for the time being," said Deputy Operations Commander Majid Pirhadi, according to Iran's PressTV.
Countries Look to Robot Armies for Border Defense
Jul 13, 2010 – 9:21 PM
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