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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: 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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