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The Military Security News Technology

India Installs 'Laser Walls' At Border With Pakistan (nbcnews.com) 93

Posted by BeauHD from the tear-down-this-wall dept.
schwit1 writes: After experimenting with barbed wire, surveillance cameras and even cowbells and camels, India has now reportedly introduced "laser walls" at its border with archenemy Pakistan. Both New Delhi and Islamabad deploy more than half of their 1 million and 600,000-strong armies, respectively, on the border. India is setting up the laser walls to "plug the porous riverine and treacherous terrain and keep an effective vigil against intruders and terrorists" in Punjab state, the state-run Press Trust of India reported. According to the PTI report, around 45 laser walls will be installed in Punjab state. Lasers beamed over rivers and hills will set off an alarm and alert the Indian Border Security Force if someone attempts to pass by, it added.
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India Installs 'Laser Walls' At Border With Pakistan More

India Installs 'Laser Walls' At Border With Pakistan

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  • Can't invading armies simply go over, or more likely, under the laser beam? Dig a trench and drive on through, the beam is a straight line, but the terrain isn't.

    • Re:I've seen Mission Impossible... (Score:4, Funny)

      by kwerle ( 39371 ) <kurt@CircleW.org> on Thursday April 28, 2016 @05:11PM (#52009183) Homepage Journal

      No, the trick is to ride horses because the beams are so smart they don't send false positives every 10 minutes when animals walk through.

      • Which suggests another attack mode: release windblown chaff constantly for several weeks to constantly trigger the alarm, then when you've sufficiently trained the operators to ignore the alarm, waltz on across the border.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by no1nose ( 993082 )

          Or they could use a mirror to reflect the beams back to the senors and walk through. Also, did India get Pakistan to pay for this wall?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Hylandr ( 813770 )

            I can't help but imagine crossing the border now sounds like walking into your local 7-11.

          • Re:I've seen Mission Impossible... (Score:4, Informative)

            by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Thursday April 28, 2016 @05:55PM (#52009441)
            If they use the same techniques used in laser surveying equipment, they would be able to detect a change in the length of the beam path. However, I suspect that would be really pricey. I assume the actually transmit a modulated signal instead of a constant beam, so you can't fool it just be flooding the receiver with light. I still think digging a trench and driving under the beam is the easiest way to sneak across. But then, the question is, why use laser beams at all, instead of IR cameras with motion detection? Technology to recognize movement in a video image has been around for at least 35 years, since I maintained a system used on the Alaska Pipeline to monitor pumps for failure 35 years ago.

            • If you want to make the whole system irrelevant you don't need to dig or circumvent it. You trigger it. Over and over and over again, at the most remote places you can find. Get a tennis ball thrower and a hopper that can hold a gazillion balls, park it on Pakistan's side they aim it right at a beam. Have it set to shoot a ball every random interval between 1 and 40 hours. With a dozen of those bad boys, the whole system would be useless.

            • We're talking about India here.

          • Re: I've seen Mission Impossible... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by HTH NE1 ( 675604 ) on Thursday April 28, 2016 @05:56PM (#52009447)

            You use modulated beams encoded with a non-repeating data stream so that any variance in latency resulting from deflection of the beam can be detected.

          • The countermeasure is simple, you don't need to defeat it. Create so many false alarms over the length of the 'fence' that the system is useless.

          • The sensor is obviously on the other side of the laser, there is nothing to reflect back.

            And if it was: the aiming would ne extremely tricky.

            What you perhaps could do is "blinding" the sensor with another laser and then walk through the original one.

            • The sensor could be back at the laser location if there is a corner cube reflector at the far end.
              http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/prisms/retroreflection-prisms/mounted-n-bk7-corner-cube-retroreflectors/2056/
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroreflector
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector

        • The army that cried Chaff?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mlts ( 1038732 )

      I'm not sure what "laser walls" is going to accomplish. This technology isn't useful for security applications other than a basic "tripwire" (although movies love it because it looks cool.) All the bad guys have to do is figure out the beam's path, waltz around it, call it done. Or, send some animal to break the beam a few times. Worst case, fly a drone in and out of the beams just to be an annoyance.

      • i'll bet they're effective when they're 30 kilowatt lasers. pew! pew! pew!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzhR5JSma60

      • a basic "tripwire"

        Wait, so these aren't the kind of lasers that cut through anything in their path? Man, I'm glad I didn't waste time reading beyond the headline.

        I had this image of people sneaking through the gates and getting turned into a pile of ash like in Fallout 4.

    • Forget digging a trench, that takes too long, is expensive, and easy to detect in rural areas (makes detectable noise and you put sonic detectors on the lasers as well. A portable bridge makes much more sense. But...

      Half the point of the laser wall system is that you can't tell WHERE it is. You can't dig a tunnel for miles, let alone the bridge.

    • I imagine the laser would be scattered more like a barcode scanner and less like a Mission Impossible security, but who knows...

    • to put these "walls" in place. Same thing happened when the US put up "The Fence". It's a pork project combined with a bone to throw at your countries far right. A win-win really.

      • In that case, maybe Pakistan would benefit more from a pork detection project.

        • The winner is ... Pigs!!! Nothing but enormous pissed-off hungry tuskers for miles. The likelihood of not just touching pork but being eaten and *becoming* pork would be a powerful disincentive.

          For anyone who gets past the boar zone, just have a few sows as backup, one per kilometer should be plenty.

          • Sure, and add some deer for variety. Total cost would be about ... let's see, about 2900 kilometers, pigs, deer, carry the ten ... twenty-nine hundred sows and bucks.

            Sorry, old joke, but I couldn't help myself.

    • I thought it was ST Generations.

  • Wagash (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Thursday April 28, 2016 @05:12PM (#52009193) Homepage Journal
    Can't ever discuss these two without bringing up the Wagash ceremony [youtube.com].
  • I figure someone will simply macgyver it using mirrors to bypass mirrors or just well polished steel and basically just make themselves a hole through the fence. I'd also wonder what happens if the reflective part of a potatoe chip bag went through. Would it set off false positives.

    • Hack it? Why not just break it? It's going to require a shitload of stations. The stations can be structure-hit periodically for much less than what it costs to install them. They are literally creating an opportunity for asymmetrical warfare.

  • This is NOT a wall (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's a detection system

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Indeed, I read "wall" and expected something at least as dangerous as a barbed-wire fence.

      This is not a wall, it's a laser tripwire.

  • Sharks with laser? (Score:4, Funny)

    by youn ( 1516637 ) on Thursday April 28, 2016 @05:53PM (#52009427) Homepage

    now if they manage to put those lasers on sharks... it's gonna be awesome.... but maybe they don't have the budget for sharks :p

  • You are all Indian laser walls. Beep! Beeeeeep goes the Indian laser wall every Pakistan releases sacred cows at the border. Beep!

  • If sufficiently well designed, this laser tripwire system might make just casually strolling across the border harder; but the opportunity for throwing false positives into the system just seems too easy and too vast to be dealt with.

    If you don't mind losing plausible deniability, basically any opaque object you can lob from a safe distance will do the job. Have India send out a search squad every time you toss a paper airplane their way? Sounds like an economic win to me. If you want plausible deniabili

    • You don't need an enemy to fool with it. A laser can't tell the difference between a blowing leaf, a squirrel or a soldier. Expect a LOT of false alarms. To the point that real alarms will be ignored because it's constantly false.

  • After experimenting with [...] cowbells and camels [...]

    That would have worked, except they needed... ...More cowbells! [vimeo.com]

    Thanks, I'll be here all week.

  • Nobody's made a Command & Conquer NOD laser fence reference yet?
  • A quick blow of face powder or even a vape cloud followed by a rapidly planned series of handstands and cartwheels will easily allow you safe passage. What were they thinking?
  • This will greatly help out the show Coma-Doof Warrior (the Mad Max guitar guy) puts on there. He already had trucks and flamethrowers. All he was missing was lasers.

  • this is doomed to fail. people make up a nation-state, and membership is as arbitrary as geographic borders.

  • As long as we're already descending into aburdities, here's how to beat the laser wall:

    Each vehicle crosses in less than 1/2 of each signal pulse width, so the receiver never misses a bit.

    Pakistan can reward me with bitcoins or local produce for that hint.

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