An international border requires considerable surveillance and monitoring to prevent the flow of weapons, narcotics etc. and illegal/unauthorized crossing over by people. The borders are spread over hundreds of kilometres and are characterized by varying physical terrain, water bodies and thick vegetation.
The existing fencing system which was in place in a few places was not very rigid and prone to regular replacement due to the vagaries of nature and poor quality of the fence. The area between the actual International Boundary and the Fence belonged to farmers of the Country implementing the system.
Regular movement of farmers, farm equipment and cattle moves from the Fenced area to the open land across the fence and is closely monitored and controlled daily.
The particular area that was chosen was a patch that had a riverine channel section, which flooded during the monsoon with large stones that get washed through this channel. Enemy checkpost was only 50 meters in one spot of this section of around 10 km.
Another challenge is the attempts by infiltrators to make a tunnel across the border or use the existing, undetected ring of tunnels to transfer men and material across the border. The power-on field is difficult to provide and the regular maintenance of the system cannot be carried out due to operational and logistical reasons. Therefore, there was a requirement of a system that could cover large distances, requiring almost no maintenance and which could detect any tunneling activity.
A multi-layered system was implemented, where the first layer laid on the enemy side of the fence was an OFC-based buried sensor to detect, walking, stealth crawling, running etc. Other layers deployed included mesh networked UGS, Radar, Thermal Cameras and Drones, all monitored and activated from an on-site and remote control center.
Due to the water channel, specialized aerial cables were used, while also taking care to address the issues of soil erosion along the banks, all while dealing with several incidents of firing from across the border.
The key highlights of the system are: -
This was the first such attempt to use intelligent technological solutions, in a cohesive, multi-layered manner to achieve a strategic objective, in extremely difficult operating conditions. ATHENA is proud to be an integral partner in this endeavour.
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