Pentagon to send thousands more troops to southern border, mostly for surveillance
Source: Washington Post
Military
Pentagon to send thousands more troops to southern border, mostly for surveillance
Defense officials said the National Guard can't keep up with required border missions.
By Dan Lamothe
January 29 at 2:21 PM
The Pentagon is preparing to dispatch several thousand more U.S. troops to the southern border as the military shifts its operations there from improving security at ports of entry to the vast areas between them that are less controlled, defense officials said Tuesday.
Acting defense secretary Patrick M. Shanahan told reporters at the Pentagon that the evolving mission will focus heavily on watching the border for potential threats. It will mark the latest shift in how active-duty troops are used on the border, and nudge the number from about 2,300 active-duty service members closer to a high-water mark of about 5,900 that were involved in November. An additional 2,300 national guardsmen also are deployed to the border mission.
"It's really around this mission of monitoring, surveilling and detection," Shanahan said of the new deployments. ... A Pentagon spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, said the military is still determining which units will be involved. ... "We will provide more clarity on the numbers when we have it," he said.
On Capitol Hill, defense officials said that a Department of Homeland Security request approved this month by Shanahan will have U.S. troops operating mobile surveillance cameras across the border. U.S. troops also will install more concertina wire, an ongoing mission that will shift from ports of entry at the border to sections between them in Arizona and California. ... The camera support will continue through the end of September, said John Rood, the undersecretary of defense for policy, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee. An additional 150 miles of concertina wire will be emplaced by the end of March, he said.
....
Paul Sonne contributed to this report.
Dan Lamothe joined The Washington Post in 2014 to cover the U.S. military and the Pentagon. He has written about the Armed Forces for more than a decade, traveling extensively, embedding with each service and covering combat in Afghanistan numerous times. Follow https://twitter.com/danlamothe
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/01/29/pentagon-send-thousands-more-troops-southern-border-mostly-surveillance/
= new reply since forum marked as read
