$100 Million Drug-War Garrison Approved for U.S.-Mexican Border

A small county board in southern California has just ushered in the era of the paramilitarization of the U.S. border by approving plans for a private, $100 million, 1,000-acre military and law enforcement training camp spearheaded by a former Navy Seal sniper who also has done work for the U.S. intelligence community.

The Imperial County Board of Supervisors earlier this week approved the project, to be developed near the small rural border town of Ocotillo, Calif., by a company called Wind Zero Group Inc. The supervisors, at a meeting held Tuesday, Dec. 21, voted 4-1 in favor of allowing the border garrison project to proceed toward construction, despite stiff community opposition, according to news reports.

The vote came after several postponements that pushed the final decision back to just days before the Christmas holiday, almost assuring scant press coverage of what is likely to become, absent effective organized opposition, the prototype for future private paramilitary-style training “camps” along the U.S.-Mexican border.

The planned Wind Zero border camp seems particularly well suited for the operation of drones — and, in fact, will provide instruction in operating Unmanned Aerial Systems. The camp will feature a long airstrip and multiple heliports; a control tower and operations center; a vast amount of airspace, including a 25,000-foot above-ground-level (AGL) air ceiling; and a location only 87 miles from a major border population center (San Diego/Tijuana) that is ground zero on the West Coast for the drug war.

“The drone efforts that I envision will be principally military-intel led, although they do not have to fly from military reservations per se,” explains one military technology expert who provided some background insight to Narco News. “Entities such as Wind Zero do offer an interesting plausible deniability that could prove useful.”

The source adds: “If we place advanced UAVs over the Afghan theater airspace (which includes parts of Pakistan), we can put them over Mexican airspace.”

Beyond its usefulness as a drone operations and training center, the planned Wind zero camp also will offer plenty of other features necessary for training special operations soldiers and/or paramilitary forces.

The camp, which would be developed in three phases at a cost of up to $100 million (some $15 million for Phase 1), also will include numerous shooting ranges allowing for some 57,000 rounds of ammunition to be fired off daily; a mock-up of an urban neighborhood for practices assaults; a 6-mile dual-use race track for teaching defensive and offensive driving (and for private-pay recreational use); and enough housing and RV camper space (along with a 100-room hotel) to accommodate a small battalion of warriors.

Read the entire story at Narco News.