Israeli's automatic kill zone border towers could be future for US border

Special thanks to Mohawk 'Splitting the Sky' for contributing to this report.

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

TUCSON -- Border towers and automatic killzones are already a reality in Israel and could be the next step for the US/Mexico border. Meanwhile, an unmanned and malfunctioning Predator drone is headed for the US/Canadian border from the US/Mexico border to endanger lives there.

The drones, unmanned spy planes, were discontinued for a while after one crashed near Nogales, Ariz., in 2006. Congress, however, brought back the drones, equipped with lasers, to endanger lives on the ground again. The Predators are also used by the US to kill people in Iraq and Afghanistan, computer operated by US soldiers in Arizona and Nevada.

Now, Noah Shachtman writes in WIRED that the US government has been trying with limited success to install a string of sensor-laden sentry towers at the US/Mexico border. In Israel, these towers have automatic weapons to spray death.

"On the U.S.-Mexico border, the American government has been trying, with limited success, to set up a string of sensor-laden sentry towers, which would watch out for illicit incursions. In Israel, they've got their own set of border towers. But the Sabras' model comes with automatic guns, operated from afar," Shachtman writes.

The Sentry Tech towers are basically remote weapons stations, stuck on top of silos. "As suspected hostile targets are detected and within range of Sentry-Tech positions, the weapons are slewing toward the designated target," David Eshel describes over at Ares. "As multiple stations can be operated by a single operator, one or more units can be used to engage the target, following identification and verification by the commander."

Wired said it flagged the towers last year, as the Israeli Defense Forces were setting up the systems, designed to create 1500-meter deep "automated kill zones" along the Gaza border.

Meanwhile, the US now has a Predator drone on the way to patrol the northern US border. It comes as no surprise that the first Predator drones for the US/Mexico border were purchased from Israel defense contractor Elbit Systems, the Apartheid maker who also worked on spy systems for Boeing at the US/Mexico border.

The southern drones have been stationed at Fort Huachuca in southern, Arizona, the site of recent protests over US Army training that resulted in torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Fort Huachuca was also the site of production of the School of the Americas torture manual, made public in 1996, which resulted in tens of thousands of murders, rapes and tortures in the Americas in the 70s and 80s.

With so many US soldiers arrested and sentenced for smuggling drugs recently, from the border at Nogales to Phoenix, it would be good to know if anyone has checked to see if the unmanned drones are being used by the US military to smuggle drugs.

The FBI had to shut down the sting Operation Lively Green, because so many Army, Marine, Airforce and National Guard soldiers in Tucson, along with police and prison guards, wanted to smuggle cocaine from the Arizona border north. A similar sting resulted in the arrests of soldiers in Oklahoma, smuggling drugs north from the Texas border.

Drone headed to US northern border:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/drone-to-keep-w.html