Agence France-Presse March 10, 2011

The United States government will set up radar along the border with Canada to thwart low-flying aircraft used to smuggle illegal drugs into the U.S., senators said Wednesday. The lawmakers, all Democrats from states that border Canada, had asked for the beefed-up surveillance in a February letter to U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said Napolitano had indicated during a Senate Judiciary Committee that she was working to deploy the radar and called it “a critical step in the right direction.”

“We have a long way to go when it comes to securing our northern border and keeping drugs out of bordering states,” Schumer said.

During earlier Senate hearings, Napolitano stopped short of explicitly announcing such a step, though she did agree with Schumer that such a deployment would be a good idea. But Wednesday, she assured Schumer that her department was “working with” the Pentagon and the military’s Northern Command “on radar and other related issues and technologies in efforts on the northern border.”

Asked whether that meant the deployment would go forward, Napolitano replied “this is moving very rapidly.”
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