Jordan’s JBSP Border Security Program
Jun 02, 2016 00:59 UTCIn May 2008, the U.S. Army’s Communications and Electronics Command (CECOM) chose DRS Technologies, Inc. in Gaithersburg, MD (since acquired by Italy’s Finmeccanica) for the initial phase of the Jordan Border Security Program. The overall system will include Distant Sentry(TM) mobile and fixed surveillance towers that utilize a variety of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) sensors, communications between the towers and mobile and fixed Command and Control (C2) Centers, and electronic infrastructure, software, and computing systems for the centers themselves. The Iraqi border is reportedly the focus of the JBSP program, but that country’s borders with Syria are also a concern.
A number of other countries are building or have built similar virtual and/or physical systems, from Saudi Arabia along the Iraq border, to India in Kashmir, to Israel along its hostile borders with Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Note, however, that these systems are not a panacea. Israel’s high-tech systems did not detect or prevent the cross-border Hezbollah kidnappings that led to the 2006 war in Lebanon, however, and the US GAO has been less than complimentary concerning Team Boeing’s SBInet system along the USA’s southern border.