Tinker gets security improvement

TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- The gate keepers at Tinker Air Force Base are the

ones who make sure that anyone who enters has a valid reason to be there and the

proper credentials to prove it.

Of all the gates on base, Tinker Gate handles the largest workload.

About 30,000 pass through it daily.

Ten months and $6.7 million later, it reopened after a major renovation.

Troy Roberts, 72nd Security Forces Squadron Commander at Tinker, said, "One of the

things that happened after 9-11 is people did studies and thought we could do

security a lot better than in the past."

So they designed buildings to make them resistant to blasts, created weaves in lanes

to slow any high-speed threat and added pop-up barriers to stop cars that made it

past the guards.

Roberts said, "And this net would pop up. The vehicle would run into it, net would

wrap around it and these sockets would help disperse the impact of the vehicle."

The new visitor center where you check in to get a pass is Tinker's first building to

go green.

It's not only energy efficient, but bomb proof and could be used as a shelter.