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from the if-you-build-it-they-will-come...and-cut-through-it dept.
Smugglers have found an easy way to get through the vertical steel tube Mexican border wall. From https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/smugglers-are-sawing-through-new-sections-of-trumps-border-wall/2019/11/01/25bf8ce0-fa72-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html
The breaches have been made using a popular cordless household tool known as a reciprocating saw that retails at hardware stores for as little as $100. When fitted with specialized blades, the saws can slice through one of the barrier's steel-and-concrete bollards in minutes, according to the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the barrier-defeating techniques.
After cutting through the base of a single bollard, smugglers can push the steel out of the way, creating an adult-size gap. Because the bollards are so tall — and are attached only to a panel at the top — their length makes them easier to push aside once they have been cut and are left dangling, according to engineers consulted by The Washington Post.
The taxpayer-funded barrier — so far coming with a $10 billion price tag — was a central theme of Trump's 2016 campaign, and he has made the project a physical symbol of his presidency, touting its construction progress in speeches, ads and tweets. Trump has increasingly boasted to crowds in recent weeks about the superlative properties of the barrier, calling it "virtually impenetrable" and likening the structure to a "Rolls-Royce" that border crossers cannot get over, under or through.
In other words, no one did any serious pen testing on the wall design, or it would have been obvious that with all that leverage, the top tie-in was easy to flex.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:02AM (1 child)
The flak towers had walls up to 3.5m thick, used something like quarter of a million tons of concrete for the larger ones, and 10,000 tons of steel. For one tower. And that was relatively crappy late-war construction.
They also couldn't be blown up because they were built in the middle of cities, and the amount of explosive required would have flattened half the city, or at least the bits the RAF/USAF hadn't already flattened. So it's not that they're indestructible, it's that the collateral damage would have been too great.
You can't really build a wall on that basis...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 06 2019, @12:21PM
Why not? If a person posits that a wall is necessary (I'm not necessarily one, but some sort of interdiction seems in order when the Cartels are murdering American families with impunity and essentially bringing down the Mexican government), then why couldn't it be built to the same standards as those structures in WWII?
The smugglers are not going to blow up such a wall by strapping a stick of dynamite to it, and I'm pretty sure CBP would notice an army of trained sappers crawling all over the thing with millions of tons of explosives. Neither would the smugglers be able to pierce such a wall with a sawzall.
Washington DC delenda est.