Congress has approved a fiscal year 2022 spending bill that on the whole shows solid backing for border security technology, particularly for imaging equipment to scan trucks and cars entering the U.S.
Funding for non-intrusive inspection (NII) systems used by Customs and Border Protection at ports of entry to scan vehicles and cargo for illegal items is $100 million, more than double FY ’21 funding and significantly more than requested by the Biden administration for FY ’22.
The administration last year had requested $32 million for NII procurement but Congress added $55 million to this, an amount overall that should help CBP move further toward its mandate of achieving 100 percent screening of inbound cargo and vehicles in the coming years.
Senate Republicans in release showcasing the highlights of the spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security said the FY ’22 bill includes $100 million for NII. If so, some of this funding may be in the operations and support account.
In the past few years, Congress has appropriated nearly $900 million for NII systems. Last year, CBP began to spend that money with new contracts worth up to $870 million to provide NII systems to scan trucks and passenger vehicles for threats, drugs and contraband as they enter the U.S.
Contracts were awarded to Astrophysics, Leidos [LDOS], OSI Systems [OSIS] and Smiths Detection. In 2020, CBP awarded contracts worth up to $379 million combined to Leidos, OSI and Smiths for high-energy NII systems to scan rail cars entering the U.S. along the northern and southern borders.
The FY ’22 federal spending bill, which was scheduled to be signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 15, also directs DHS to provide an updated five-year plan to Congress “for achieving the capability to assess 100 percent of commercial and passenger vehicles and freight rail traffic entering the United States at land- and seaports of entry using high-throughput scanning technologies or threat-based alternatives.”
In addition to the NII spending, the new appropriations bill includes $201.9 million more than requested for the procurement of border security technology. However, the bill doesn’t outline all the programs that are part of this funding account.
Some program specifics within CBP’s procurement account include $26 million for situational awareness kits, $20 million for innovative technology, $8.8 million for small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), $5 million for a common operating picture pilot evaluation, and $4.2 million for counter UAS systems.
CBP’s Border Patrol has previously acquired small drones from Lockheed Martin [LMT], Teledyne [TDY] and AeroVironment [AVAV]. The agency has also acquired a C-UAS solution from Citadel Defense, which is now part of BlueHalo.
“The remaining funds shall only be available for cross border tunnel threats, aerostats, autonomous surveillance, geospatial capabilities, mobile surveillance, search and rescue capabilities, and mesh networks,” the bill language says.
Also included in the procurement funding is $21.6 million for an additional multi-role enforcement aircraft.
Within CPB’s operations and support account, Congress provided $21 million for autonomous surveillance towers (ASTs), which are supplied by Anduril Industries and have become a key ingredient in CBP’s technology deployments between ports of entry. The ASTs, coupled with Anduril’s Lattice artificial intelligence-enabled command and control software, are able to learn over time what are items of interest that CBP agents need to monitor.
The Washington Post this month reported that CBP has deployed 175 ASTs along the southern U.S. border. The systems feature camera and radar.
Checkpoint CT Steady
While CBP’s funding for security technology fared well in the FY ’22 spending bill, the Transportation Security Administration was essentially unchanged. That means TSA is getting nearly $105 million for one of its top priorities, checkpoint computed tomography (CT) systems to scan carry-on bags. That funding will also go toward acquiring automated screening lanes, which are more advanced carry-on baggage handling systems that are integrated with the front and back ends of the checkpoint CT systems.
TSA has purchased more than 600 checkpoint CT systems towards its goal of about 2,400 systems. David Pekoske, the outgoing TSA administrator, told Congress last fall that his agency needs about $350 million annually to complete checkpoint CT procurements and installations within five years.
So far, TSA has awarded contracts to Smiths Detection—300 systems—and Analogic—314 systems, for checkpoint CT. The Smiths systems have been installed and about 30 Analogic systems have been deployed.
TSA also received $22.3 million to acquire additional credential authentication technology (CAT) devices, which agency officers use at airport security checkpoints to verify the authenticity of travelers’ credentials and to verify their flight status. IDEMIA provides the CAT systems.
TSA is planning to expand the capabilities of the CAT devices to integrate camera systems to compare a live photo of a passenger against the photo on his or her identity credential. For trusted travelers in PreCheck lanes, the agency plans to use the live photo capture in place of a person having to use their physical identity credential.