New Embassy in London: $1 billion. Wasting taxpayer money: Priceless

[K1052]

Yes, and it's effective against small-scale explosives. How is that going to help you against a truck bomb, which seems to be the weapon of choice against embassies?

edit: Granted, a brick building isn't going to do much in such cases either, but the new embassy seems to lack an exterior security wall that would help.

which is also why the new facility will have a 30m setback, a direct result of lessons learned from the Oklahoma City bombing.

 

[werepossum]

Yes, and it's effective against small-scale explosives. How is that going to help you against a truck bomb, which seems to be the weapon of choice against embassies?

edit: Granted, a brick building isn't going to do much in such cases either, but the new embassy seems to lack an exterior security wall that would help.

It has a moat, allowing the only access to be protected with unobtrusive but very effective techniques. Unless it's a hover truck, no suicide bomber will get close to it except through human error on the part of the staff - and that's only if there are provisions to allow any vehicle traffic to it. Blast resistant windows will protect it just fine from man-portable explosives - although hopefully they will have considered the possibility of a gang of Muslim terrorists rushing in for a mass detonation.

 

[kage69]

Yes, and it's effective against small-scale explosives. How is that going to help you against a truck bomb, which seems to be the weapon of choice against embassies?

edit: Granted, a brick building isn't going to do much in such cases either, but the new embassy seems to lack an exterior security wall that would help.

Which is why the updated security guidelines for embassy construction include the use of energy dampening materials, specifically the slightly tweaked recipe for Rhino Coat which turns a normal concrete block into a nearly indestructible concrete block. Amazing stuff. You can coat a block in 2mil layer of the stuff and chuck it out a 12 story window. After a few bounces, it settles intact. They're using this stuff everywhere now.

Regardless, 'what you can't see' doesn't mean much. You can't see seismic sensors, but they do their job just the way they were designed. The guy who tries to drive a bomb laden truck in the front door, a la Beirut, won't see the the hydraulically powered steel and concrete pillars that spring up to stop and kill him...until it's too late anyway. And besides, I would expect the final product of anything to vary a bit from it's conceptual layout.

Modern security measures for threats we've seen before (truck bombs, etc.) include using distance and fast response obstacles around the building to provide security. Hard to do when you're already in the middle of one of the world's biggest cities. In this case having the building more away from the dense population of London proper makes it easier to defend against flying attacks as well. Can't have that burning wreckage falling all over Trafalgar Square, or Parliament.


This decision would have been made regardless of who occupied the White House, and it's a sound one at that.

 

[CycloWizard]

So we're good to go then, as long as terrorists don't think of any new way to attack the place. It's a great investment of all the tax dollars every follower of P&N will pay to the government over their collective lifetimes. :thumbsup;

 

[werepossum]

Which is why the updated security guidelines for embassy construction include the use of energy dampening materials, specifically the slightly tweaked recipe for Rhino Coat which turns a normal concrete block into a nearly indestructible concrete block. Amazing stuff. You can coat a block in 2mil layer of the stuff and chuck it out a 12 story window. After a few bounces, it settles intact. They're using this stuff everywhere now.

Regardless, 'what you can't see' doesn't mean much. You can't see seismic sensors, but they do their job just the way they were designed. The guy who tries to drive a bomb laden truck in the front door, a la Beirut, won't see the the hydraulically powered steel and concrete pillars that spring up to stop and kill him...until it's too late anyway. And besides, I would expect the final product of anything to vary a bit from it's conceptual layout.

Modern security measures for threats we've seen before (truck bombs, etc.) include using distance and fast response obstacles around the building to provide security. Hard to do when you're already in the middle of one of the world's biggest cities. In this case having the building more away from the dense population of London proper makes it easier to defend against flying attacks as well. Can't have that burning wreckage falling all over Trafalgar Square, or Parliament.


This decision would have been made regardless of who occupied the White House, and it's a sound one at that.

One of the things we saw demo'd was a big flower pot, like 4' diameter and 4' high. It looks like regular lightweight but it's actually cast iron, weighs a couple of tons (AND it can also be anchored into a hidden concrete base.) It'll stop the heaviest truck dead whereas an equivalent pot would be shattered without much affect. We also saw barriers that one man could move, but that because of its design would stop an eight ton truck at 50 mph in just a few feet. And those pop-up pillars you reference were pretty cool too.

 

[irishScott]

Yeah all those advanced countermeasures are cool, but am I the only one in this thread noticing the huge um... trenches, drops, and moat surrounding the thing? Pretty sure that'll stop a truck in and of itself.