By Calvin Biesecker
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) effort to develop and deploy a virtual fence to aid in deterring and preventing illegal immigration has little to show so far and deployment goals may still be out of reach, Democrats and Republicans on a House panel that oversees border security said yesterday.
Despite receiving assurances that the initial deployments of the technology portion of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) were supposed to be operating in two areas of Arizona by the end of 2008, that deadline wasn’t met, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counter Counterterrorism, said at the opening of a hearing yesterday on the SBInet program.
SBInet refers to the electronic fence and related command and control portion of SBI. The SBI program also features the deployment of hundreds of miles of physical fencing to deter and delay vehicles and illegal immigrants traveling on foot from entering the United States.
“I am extremely disappointed that the new deadlines estimate that Tucson-1 will be ready for a December 2009 acceptance and Ajo-1 will be ready for a June 2010,” Sanchez said. “Based on past experience, I am hesitant to believe that these new deadlines will be met.”
Referring to the start of SBI in the Bush administration, Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), ranking member of the subcommittee, said “the Republican administration over promised the ability of technology to do this. And we’d appreciate that the new administration doesn’t overstate it. Come in with realistic goals, realistic budgets and we’ll try to address it from there.”
The revised dates referred to by Sanchez, including system acceptance this December for a 23-mile stretch of border in Tucson, Ariz., called Tucson-1, is a month or two later than Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had projected in the spring. The slight push to the right on the deployment schedule is due to persistent issues related to the radar and computer display systems that have nagged at SBI program officials throughout the test phases associated with Tucson-1.
The radar issue deals with rapid accelerations as the system scans nearly full circle as well as missed stops during its turns, Mark Borkowski, CBP’s SBInet executive director, told Defense Daily earlier this month.
Borkowski has been willing to sacrifice some schedule to make sure the various systems that make up SBInet work and provide the integrated solution needed by the Border Patrol to improve situational awareness along the country’s southwest border. This deliberate approach to managing the program is evidenced in how he has gone about solving the radar and display issues.
Both problems could be fixed with “band aids,” he said, mentioning software improvements to the radar system and just rebooting the computer workstations. However, these fixes don’t explain why the problems occur in the first place, which Borkowski said must be understood before proceeding into System Acceptance Testing.
The question may be whether this deliberate and cautious approach to testing and deployment will result in enough short-term program successes.
“2010 will be a crucial year for the program or it can lose the support of Congress,” Sanchez told Defense Daily in a brief phone interview following the hearing. Not only do Tuscon-1 and Ajo-1 need to be up and operating, Congress wants to know that these deployments are a “force multiplier” for the Border Patrol, she said. Right now Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar “doesn’t know that yet,” she added.
SBInet consists of an integrated set of towers, sensors, communications systems, and situational awareness tools. Radars detect and hand off a target to day/night cameras, which can be controlled remotely by Border Patrol agents at a command and control center. Unattended ground sensors in a particular area of operations such at Tucson-1 are also part of the surveillance mix, providing another way to pick up targets for agents to view through the cameras. The sensor data is passed to the local command and control center where it is viewed on display terminals through advanced situational awareness software that produces a Common Operating Picture (COP).
Boeing [BA] is the prime contractor for SBInet.
Tim Peters, Boeing’s vice president for Global Security Systems, testified that the radar and computer issues have been fixed and the problems have not recurred in the past several weeks of testing. However, Borkowski told Defense Daily yesterday that the company still has to show him in detail that they’ve run these issues to ground. A meeting to discuss these and other program aspects is slated for later this month.
Once Borkowski is satisfied that the radar and computer display issues have been resolved, the next phase for Tucson-1 is Systems Acceptance Testing. If that goes well, then he will take acceptance of that portion of SBInet and turn it over to the Border Patrol, which will begin its own Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) phase in January.
Under the original program plans, SBInet was to be deployed across the entire southwest border of the U.S. by 2009. However, just months after contract award, that end date slipped to 2011. Now it’s 2016.
A myriad of reasons are behind the schedule slips, including a lack of testing in the very first installment of SBInet, called Project-28, which led to integration and performance issues of the sensors, network integration and use of the COP. In addition, the program draws heavily on commercial-off-the-shelf technology, some of which has proven to be unsuitable for the environmental demands. And, on top of all that, the Border Patrol, the end users of the system, often were not used in the early testing and never had an opportunity to provide feedback as to their needs.
Now the SBI program and the Border Patrol are working more closely together.
“The structured OT&E we described, which is a normal process in the Department of Defense but relatively new to us, is one example,” Aguilar and Borkowski said in their joint prepared statement. “Beyond that, operational end users participate in overseeing program activities, setting priorities, and deciding on acquisition courses of action. End users also now have a more structured process and conduit to request consideration of program changes, and to participate in trade-offs between capabilities and costs.”
Tucson-1 will cover a 23-mile stretch of border with Mexico and Ajo-1 a 30-mile segment. Once Ajo-1 is operational, the DHS leadership will assess SBInet and decide whether to proceed to fully deploy the system across the rest of Arizona’s border with Mexico.
In the Tucson-1 area, the communications and sensor systems are already hanging on towers, ready for the next phase of testing. CBP had hoped to be underway in the Ajo-1 area with tower construction and installation of the sensors and communications by now but has been delayed due to having to obtain the necessary permits by the Department of Interior. That approval could come by mid-October. Construction of the Ajo-1 command and control center is underway.
Boeing won the original contract three years ago and yesterday received notice that CBP is exercising the first of three potential option years for the program. The option year is potentially worth between $100 million and $300 million depending on the task orders Boeing receives.
Sanchez said she’s not thrilled with the contract extension given the lack of progress on the program. However, Borkowski said the extension is necesseary to continue moving SBInet forward.
So far, CBP has obligated about $1.1 billion under SBI, although Boeing has only been paid around $900 million due to government accounting rules. About $500 million of the payments are for SBInet and the rest is for the physical fencing.