Last Friday, the Port Authority suffered a serious embarrassment when a $100 million perimeter fence around JFK airport was breached by a soaking wet swimmer who had just suffered a jet ski breakdown in Jamaica bay.
The 31-year-old swam toward the airport, climbed an eight foot fence — part of Raytheon's Perimeter Intrusion Detection System — then made his way two miles across two active runways before being spotted in a bright yellow life preserver by a terminal employee.
The Perimeter Intrusion Detection System is made up of video motion detectors, "smart fencing," radars and ground surveillance.
The Port Authority scaled back police patrols after the installation of the system, even though they knew portions of the fence were not fully operational.
It's the flagship product of Raytheon's Integrated Security System for Airports, or ISSA and supposed to be the most comprehensive Airport defense system in the world, enclosing an airport in an impregnable bubble of safety.
It also flopped on Friday night when an exhausted jet skier stumbled through it, which could be considered an embarrassment for the company.
One thing that piqued our interest was the fact that the PDF brochure on the Raytheon site promoting the program was no longer available this morning, leading to a 404 page.
The thing is, we managed to find it on their server through creative use of google.
If it was taken down after Friday's incident, you can't blame them.
Here is the PDF promoting the system's expansive features, thwarted by an exhausted swimmer who managed to run through two active runways.
Click the link below to pull up the brochure in Scribd and zoom in to read.
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