India keen to study tech used by Israel to secure borders

JERUSALEM: India, which wants to beef up its border security to prevent recurrence of Mumbai-type attacks, has evinced interest in studying various technologies deployed by Israel to secure its frontiers.

A delegation from India is expected in Israel next month to have a firsthand assessment of the technologies used by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to secure the Jewish state's borders with Gaza Strip, West Bank and Egypt, 'The Jerusalem Post' reported today.

The experience gathered from Israel could be utilised by Indian experts while building fence with Pakistan and Bangladesh at the borders, the report said.

India is interested in beefing up its border security to prevent in future incidents like the Mumbai attacks of 2008, it said.

Israel has been pushing ahead with the construction of its fence along the Egyptian border to prevent terror attacks and also to deter illegal immigrants from infiltrating into Israel, an issue that has wreaked social havoc in some parts of the country leading to intense debate in the public domain.

Israel's defence ministry and the IDF have so far completed about 150 km of the fence and plan to complete the remainder by the end of the year.

The fence is 5 metres in height and layered with barbed wire. It is supported by dozens of radars that are deployed along the border to issue alerts about possible crossings while the potential infiltrators are still kilometres away.

US Department of Homeland Security is, meanwhile, also testing the ELM-2112 family of persistent ground Israeli surveillance radars, developed by Elta Systems, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries, and used by the IDF to detect intruders before they reach the border.

Five different versions of the system detect individuals at ranges from 300 metres up to 20 km and vehicles at up to 40 km.