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Securing The Southern Border
by Chris Strohm
Although the Homeland Security Department awarded an industry team led by Boeing Integrated Defense Systems a lucrative contract for the first phase of the Secure Border Initiative last week, officials are not giving a detailed description of projects and goals for how the government will gain control of U.S. borders within two years.
"To hypothesize about an end, bottom line, is to set us up with some target which would be totally unreasonable to try to define at this stage in this process," Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson told reporters while announcing the contract.
Instead, for the next eight months, a remote, 28-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexican border in southern Arizona is going to become a huge working laboratory for the government and Boeing to examine the effect of integrating technology, infrastructure and personnel.
The Surveillance Task At Hand
Boeing's team includes Centech, DRS Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group, Kollsman, L-3 Government Services, L-3 Communication Systems West, Lucent Technologies, Perot Systems, Unisys Global Public Sector and USIS. The first phase of the program is dubbed SBInet.
Homeland Security and Boeing officials say the initial, limited scope is intentional as they determine what kind of tweaks and resources are needed for different border regions. The task order to Boeing is $67 million, but only $20 million is for doing work in the 28-mile region outside Tucson.
"As it turns out, it's a much simpler process because you're doing it in smaller chunks," said Wayne Esser, Boeing's director of strategic development. "So we can immediately get started." He said Boeing will complete the task order by May at the latest.
Esser said the remaining $47 million is for an equally important -- if not more important -- project of establishing a program management office to evaluate the use of technology, personnel and infrastructure, and to guide decision-making. That aspect of the program, officials say, is what makes SBInet so different from past efforts to try and secure the borders.
"We're going to look mile by mile, inch by inch, and try to figure out the best solution," Jackson said. "That's why the first of the two task orders is an engineering, management and oversight contract ... that will allow us to understand better what the right array of tools should be for each of these parts."
Boeing is now quickly staffing its program shop, including a systems engineering laboratory and testing and staging center in El Paso, Texas.
Esser said the third task order will be for securing the whole Tucson sector, which stretches about 260 miles from western Arizona to Douglas. He said that order should be awarded in December, and the job will be completed by the end of 2007.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Congress in July that he wants to achieve operational control of the nation's borders by the end of 2008.
All Along The High-Tech Watchtower
Boeing's plan for the Tucson sector calls for a combination of high-tech surveillance and communications towers, a plethora of cameras and sensors, and the use of satellites to channel telephone calls and data. Some of the towers will be portable.
The Skylark class of unmanned aerial vehicles also will be deployed. Developed by Israeli-based Elbit Systems, it is a small system for close-range, tactical surveillance and reconnaissance.
Border Patrol agents will have communications equipment to help them access the technology, see and characterize activity, and communicate with each other and command centers. "It's all about the agent and giving the agent better situational awareness, and that involves continuous communications, the right equipment to take advantage of that," Esser said.
Initially, Homeland Security and Boeing plan to use existing commercial or government-furnished technology and equipment. But Esser said Boeing's plan calls for more advanced and experimental technology in the future.
Jackson said other government technology systems that will be leveraged include the Coast Guard's Rescue 21 communications system, ground-based radars and cameras that have been proven to work in Defense Department applications, and a common operating picture that was developed in response to government failures during Hurricane Katrina.
But how and where the government deploys resources in succeeding months will depend on the movement of illegal immigration activity. "This is a very, very complex situation we're in," Esser said. "It's not a fixed problem that has a fixed solution. Once we seal up the [first] 28 miles, there's going to be a reaction to that. And we don't know what the reaction is."
He added: "Historically, the bad guys have been able to react faster than the good guys. We want to turn that around." He said Boeing also will need border security intelligence from Homeland Security and, most likely, the National Counterterrorism Center to make decisions.
Reacting To A Record Of Unfulfilled Promises
Congressional reaction to the Boeing contract award was reserved. Lawmakers have seen big promises go unfulfilled in the past, at a sizeable cost to taxpayers.
The government spent about $430 million from 1998 to 2004 on the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System to deploy advanced technology to the borders. But the program was scrapped after investigators found much of the equipment either did not work or was never installed. Boeing also was contracted to deploy explosive-detection systems at more than 400 airports following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But the contract ballooned in costs and the machines were criticized for having high false-alarm rates.
House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said he remains a skeptic of SBInet, adding that he was not happy with the costs and delays in deploying detection machines to the airports. He said of Boeing, however, "They're a great company, and I look forward to working with them."
House Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said the border patrol needs more support. "Technology alone is not the answer," he said. "America and our border-patrol agents should never have been forced to do more with less, and Congress and the department must work closely to ensure that Boeing delivers what it promises."
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, called the new contract "a vital element" of border security. "This initiative should greatly improve situational awareness of Border Patrol agents by giving them access to a wide range of information from ground-based radar, surveillance towers, unmanned aerial vehicles and other technology," she said. "I will be closely following implementation of SBInet."
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