New non-intrusive inspection (NII) systems that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is beginning to deploy at land ports of entry to scan passenger vehicles as they are entering the U.S. at a primary inspection lane for the most part are not providing a full vehicle scan, the House Appropriations Committee says in a report accompanying their markup of the fiscal year 2024 spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security.
The report says only one-third of the low-energy portals (LEPs) the agency plans to install come equipped with an under-vehicle scanning capability despite fact that “transnational drug smuggling organizations “continue to adapt tactics and are increasingly concealing drugs lower and deeper into the vehicle, including in frame rails, false floors, exhaust systems, and spare tires.”
In 2021, CBP awarded LEP contracts worth a combined $390 million to three vendors: Astrophysics, Leidos [LDOS] and OSI Systems [OSIS] Rapiscan Systems division. However, the deployments have been slowed in part due to substantial civil works costs related to installing the scanners.
The LEP systems allow passengers to remain inside a vehicle as it moves through the scanner.
Only Leidos is currently offering an under-carriage inspection capability via its partnership with Viken Detection, which supplies its Osprey UVX X-Ray imager.
“Systems being deployed with a top-down only X-Ray system may have difficulty identifying dangerous narcotics concealed under the vehicle,” the report says.
Jim Ryan, Viken’s president and CEO, told Defense Daily this week that based on the company’s deployment of its handheld imaging systems deployed worldwide, Viken has “unique insights” into how smugglers hide drugs in a vehicle to avoid detection, adding that “concealment locations are predominantly moving to the under-vehicle for passenger traffic.”
Once the FY ’24 homeland security appropriations bill becomes law, the House appropriators want a briefing from CBP within 60 days on the drug detection capabilities of each LEP system, potential X-ray exposure to passengers, impacts on port of entry (POE) without an under-vehicle inspection system, a cost estimate for adding this capability where it is lacking, and current or future opportunities to use artificial intelligence. Appropriators last year dinged CBP for moving too slowly adding AI capabilities to its NII systems to reduce operator workload.
CBP is seeking $305.4 million for its NII program at land and sea ports of entry in FY ’24. The House appropriators fully funded the request, which includes $201 million for civil works, $65.3 million for new NII systems, $14 million for computed tomography scanners for installation at mail and express consignment courier facilities and automation and machine learning (ML) capabilities to support targeting efforts, $12.6 million for AI and ML capabilities, and $12.1 million for system integration and metadata.
“As the Committee has previously noted, delays in the integration of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomy into the program require CBP Officers to manually review thousands of images to hunt for anomalies,” the report says. “Automation decreases the chance that narcotics and other contraband will be missed and increased the interdiction of narcotics that move through the nation’s POEs.”