This could be a lower-cost way to do the border wall with Mexico in isolated areas. Use this to detect activity of interest, then dispatch a fast drone.
Buried seismic sensors have been used by CBP for years now, there’s an entire program dedicated to using them specifically for detecting tunnels as well.
For detecting persons, it’s just an evolution of the existing process with the massive camera setups.
Sensed/taped footfalls -> closest CBP station -> agent response
I worked on a project where a fence based fiber optic intrusion detection system was interfaced with a drone-in-a-box type solution. I think Airobotics had a few of these kinds of deployments in Australia.
Why bother when, aside from the Posse Comitatus Act[0], there are already extremely advanced optical and synthetic aperture satellites that can discern a license plate on the Earth's surface flying around the globe?
Or solar powered, regular-assed Ring doorbells (once they get that heat problem fixed). As a side effect, then CBP will be subsequently able to find their lost car keys out there.
I believe that the synthetic aperture satellites can pierce cloudcover, probably with reduced minimum features. I'm not privy to any special information about this though, so don't really know wtf I'm on about.
I did not know these ranges. Thank you, that is very interesting.
It looks like some do and some don't, proving my assumptions rather uninformed. The southern US border area looks to range from about 60-25%, distributed more towards the high end of the range.
I'm aware of coastal deserts like the Atacama which have exceptionally low precipitation but lots of foggy conditions, but I don't know of any like that in the US areas described.
Regardless, I still imagine that satellite, drone, and observation posts are the smart way to create the absurd Iron Curtain down there. Not that we should...