Border Patrol to unveil new strategy, doctrine.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Homeland Security News

* The Border Patrol will release a revamped strategy by the end of the year that will reflect new realities on the ground as well as the influx of technologies it has received during the past decade.

Mike Fisher, chief of the Border Patrol, said the agency is doing away with the "personnel, technology and infrastructure" slogan introduced in 2004. It will be changed to "information, integration and rapid response."

"That's not to say that the Border Patrol won't need people, infrastructure and technology. What I am saying is that we are transitioning from a resource-based strategy to a risk-based strategy," he said at the National Defense Industrial Association homeland security conference.

Integration refers to more cooperation not only with agencies within the Department of Homeland Security such as the Customs and Border Protection, but those outside the department.

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Rapid response is not only to the ability to swoop in and make apprehensions quickly, but also the need to react to new smuggling tactics being used along the border.

Drug cartels have employed a series of new methods to move contraband across the border over the past few years including tunnels, ultralight aircraft and semi-submersible boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.

'The threat we face is very dynamic and it shifts," he said.

Part of the strategy will include taking stock of all the new technologies that have been introduced during the past decade. They include mobile and fixed sensor towers, unattended ground sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles, which are operated by CBP.

"We were infused with...