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from the what-happens-underground-stays-underground dept.
girlwhowaspluggedout writes:
"The US Border Patrol has a new tool in its battle against the tunnels that are used to smuggle in drugs from Mexico. Since the cartels' diggers operate outside the range of the agency's cameras, motions detectors, and drones, and because filling the tunnels with concrete hasn't stopped the smugglers, the US Border Patrol now regularly employs robots to search through the underground drug trafficking routes.
The Border Patrol operates four remote-controlled robots along the US-Mexico border. Three of the four are assigned to its station in Nogales, Arizona, the final destination for most of the tunnels that have been discovered so far near the southern border. The agency's robots, which include Applied Research Associates' Pointman Tactical Robot and Inuktun Services' Versatrax 300, can easily fit in closed quarters. The tunnel that the Border Patrol shut down last month, for example though it was equipped with electric lighting, ventilation fans, and wood shoring was only 3 feet and high 2 feet wide. It spanned a whopping 481 feet, the largest tunnel discovered in Nogales by the Border Patrol.
The robots' ability to travel through areas where the air is unsafe to breath for extended periods is especially valuable in Nogales, AZ, whose popularity with drug smugglers is due to its sewer system, which is easily accessible from the adjacent city of Heroica Nogales, Mexico."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:00AM
Locating the exit points may be harder than it seems, since many of the tunnels mentioned in TFA have their exit points in a residential areas -- in houses and even in back yard sheds [ice.gov].
And what do you do with the tunnels once you discover their exit points? The Egyptians and the Israelis have been playing a never ending game of cat-and-mouse with Hamas's Gaza Strip tunnels for a number of years now. They, too, use ground penetrating radar and other such devices. But if they just destroy their exit points, Hamas simply "renovates" the tunnels starting from the middle areas [wikipedia.org]. Now, you can flood them with water, or pour concrete into them, but to make sure the tunnels are done for -- and empty of contraband, since they may also be used as temporary storage -- I guess you still need to send someone or something in.
Soylent is the best disinfectant.
(Score: 4, Funny) by anyanka on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:11PM
This is precisely the sort of case where you'd hire a merry band of adventurers to clear out the dungeons.
(Score: 5, Funny) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:18PM
And that is precisely the sort of case where you'd install falling spikes, bear traps, and giant spiders to guard your cocai... your treasure.
Usted ha sido comido por un grue.
Soylent is the best disinfectant.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:13PM
Mark all enterances to the tunnel easily once you find it, just by filling it full of smoke and pumping air into it. Either that or a single stick of dynamite.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:53PM
Soylent is the best disinfectant.