from the a-president's-home-is-his-castle dept.
The NYT reports that the Secret Service is recruiting some of its best athletes to serve as pretend fence jumpers at a rural training ground outside Washington in a program to develop a new fence around the White House that will keep intruders out without looking like a prison. Secret Service officials acknowledge that they cannot make the fence foolproof; that would require an aesthetically unacceptable and politically incorrect barrier. Prison or Soviet-style design is out, and so is anything that could hurt visitors, like sharp edges or protuberances. Instead, the goal is to deter climbers or at least delay them so that officers and attack dogs have a few more seconds to apprehend them. In addition, there might be alterations to the White House grounds but no moat, as recently suggested by Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee. “When I hear moat, I think medieval times,” says William Callahan, assistant director for the office of protective operation at the Secret Service.
The Times also reports that the Secret Service wants to spend $8 million to build a detailed replica of the White House in Beltsville, Maryland to aid in training officers and agents to protect the real thing. “Right now, we train on a parking lot, basically,” says Joseph P. Clancy, the director of the Secret Service. “We put up a makeshift fence and walk off the distance between the fence at the White House and the actual house itself. We don’t have the bushes, we don’t have the fountains, we don’t get a realistic look at the White House.” The proposed replica would provide what Clancy describes as a “more realistic environment, conducive to scenario-based training exercises,” for instructing those who must protect the president’s home. It would mimic the facade of the White House residence, the East and West Wings, guard booths, and the surrounding grounds and roads. The request comes six months after an intruder scaled a wrought-iron fence around the White House and ran through an unlocked front door of the residence and into the East Room before officers tackled him.
(Score: 4, Funny) by VortexCortex on Tuesday March 31 2015, @08:26AM
Simple. Straight bars that go up and then curve outwards into a wide semi circle -- wide enough that you can't reach out to grip it, tall enough that you can't grab onto them. You can even make them look like vines with an S curve and leafs at the end.
However, nothing short of shark moats and laser turrets will help if ever they come under attack from Circ du Soleil.
(Score: 1) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 31 2015, @08:40AM
When clowns attack!
http://rt.com/news/199723-clowns-scary-armed-france/ [rt.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Kell on Tuesday March 31 2015, @11:29AM
+1 Terrifying Reality
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday March 31 2015, @05:26PM
Juggalos ruin everything.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday March 31 2015, @09:16AM
EVERYBODY knows you have to mount the lasers on the sharks for either to be particularly effective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @09:09AM
every day, 8 hours a day for 10 years.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 31 2015, @09:51AM
Does it plan for a full scale president replica as well?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @10:36AM
There's a long-standing tradition of using full-scale replicas instead of actual politicians. Some say, entire parties consist of nothing but them.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday March 31 2015, @11:07AM
One could make the argument that we've had mannequins for presidents since November of 1963.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 31 2015, @12:05PM
Yes! And he will see WMD on the White House lawn and they will do a full scale invasion of the area.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @11:45AM
Real Presidents beat up their own attempted assassins. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 31 2015, @12:10PM
Set up multiple barriers: 2 or 3 fences, nicely done with flowers and
attack dogs and clownsmaybe vegetablesGeorge Bush (just pick one)in between...If the officers can't subdue him after he climbs over all that, then you need to put some red shirts on them and send them on some 'away missions'.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:55PM
Multiple barriers? I heard East Germany DDR has some extensive experience in this. Perhaps double concrete walls with raked areas in between, mines, watch towers, searchlights, patrol 4-wheelers with guns for that true feeling of the feature! ;)
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:26PM
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:28PM
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:33PM
Soviet wire is great at this kind of thing. It entangles and doesn't harm. American C-Wire (Concertina) would give it the prison look. I have no idea what the soviet version is called but i lived with some Polish who had it everywhere. It was like an interconnected grid 2 meters deep by 0.5 meter tall by however long you wanted. It certainly didn't look threatening. But it totally invalidates the US Military strategy of telling Pvt Jones to lay on the wire while his squad runs over his back. You can't just snip it in one spot and move it aside like C-Wire either.
8 mil for a training prop! How about they go for 100k worth of plywood and 2x4s that are painted white. Training props are supposed to be shitty because you are knocking out windows, kicking down doors, and throwing flashbangs everywhere. If their training prop is centered around the fence and booths then that should be their focus. Leave the whitehouse as a white line painted on the ground. I'll bet they have internal mockups of the whitehouse somewhere anyways.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Tuesday March 31 2015, @04:23PM
I have no idea what Soviet wire is. Do you have any pictures?
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 31 2015, @06:18PM
I looked and couldn't find a picture. It was basically a 3d mesh of wire. Approximately 5x5x5 cells per cubic meter. It wasn't barbed or had any dangerous edges. It just ensnared. It was nothing like C-Wire and i thought it was a warsaw counter to typical US Army wire breaching.
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(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday April 01 2015, @01:56AM
The luxuries of unlimited budget.
Anytime they run low, they just have Congress "vote to extend the debt ceiling"
If we could hold Congress to the same accountability as the rest of the nation is held to, this kinda largess would disappear.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday April 01 2015, @01:19PM
It also doesn't even sound practical. At best you'd want a very bare concrete structure with plexiglass windows and cheap wooden doors. This way you can break(pop) windows out, smash down doors, throw flashbangs around, safely land vehicles on the roof, and repel from fixed points. You do not want it to be worth anything at all. Because you are going to jack it up every day and all day long. It sounds like the SS are focused on the exterior of the building too. Which means the prop could just be plywood painted white to present a silhouette.
8 mil is stupid money for a prop.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 31 2015, @08:15PM
Why use a wall when you can use a trench that doesn't obstruct the scenery? You could even cover it with a light decorative cover that wouldn't support any weight. This takes much less maintenance than a moat. So on the outside you have a decorative fence, rather like the current one, and on the inside you have a disguised trench. Perhaps you could even replace all the grass with astroturf, or something similar that was a bit more esthetic, and which would blend in to the cover over the trench so it would not be easy to tell where it was. And lots of reduction in maintenance.
(If you want to go really for security, have a light but tall inner fence on top of the trench, so that even if they know just where the trench is they can't avoid toppling into it unless they bring siege engines. (Here I'm not thinking of catapults, but of the portable devices they used to enable troops to cross trenches and moats.)
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