When Customs and Border Protection (CBP) begins accepting bids next year for its planned network of multi-sensor fixed towers, it will put a higher value on proposals that have open interfaces that would enable the agency to eventually plug in better cameras and radars without having to go back to the original prime contractor to do it for them, says the head of CBP’s acquisition office.
The draft Request for Proposals (RFP) for Integrated Fixed Towers (IFT) portion of the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Program is expected to be released this week, Mark Borkowski, assistant commissioner of CBP’s Office of Technology Innovation and Acquisition, tells TR2. The draft RFP is expected to be followed early next year with the release of the RFP (TR2, Nov. 23).
“What we’re saying to industry is, ‘If you have that ability then we will value it and your proposal will be worth more to us if you have it,’” Borkowski says. “I’m going to be willing to pay a little more for it. I don’t know how much more yet but I’m willing to pay a little more for it.”
It appears that the standard sensor interface won’t necessarily be required but is rather something CBP would like to have.
“It doesn’t mean I have to have it, it means it’s on my dream list and it’s worth more to me than one that doesn’t have it,” Borkowski says. “That’s the way we’re handling this.”
If he can’t get open interfaces this time around, Borkowski says he at least wants “to eventually get to…a definition of an interface standard so that I can tell another vendor, ‘If you meet this interface standard, I can plug you into my system.’” And when a better camera or radar is available, “I do not need the original equipment manufacturer of the IFT to come in and help me make that fit. I want a USB port,” he says.
The IFTs will consist of an interconnected set of fixed towers, each equipped with a radar, electro-optic/infrared camera and related communications equipment, that link to a common operating picture at a Border Patrol station to give agents greater situational awareness along a particular stretch of Arizona’s border with Mexico. The radar on one tower can cue any camera on the other towers that are part of an IFT system. The data from an IFT system will be displayed on a single screen.
The Arizona technology plan was created in the wake of the cancelled Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet), which relied more heavily on the multi-sensor fixed-towers. Like the IFT plan, SBInet included a COP, although it had to be developed by prime contractor Boeing [BA]. Moreover, along the way, Boeing and CBP found that it was never easy to take radars and cameras from different vendors and make them work as part of an integrated system without additional development work. And, at the time, CBP was trying to get other sensors such as unmanned aircraft systems and unattended ground sensors hook into the COP.
“We were trying to create something that did not exist,” Borkowski said.
Now, based on its market research, CBP has found that there are COPs and related integrated sensor systems that exist although maybe not as “robust” as the agency once envisioned during SBInet, Borkowski said.
“Most of them really do not have much of a capability to plug in something other than there own cameras and radars that come with them out of the box,” Borkowski said. “Sometimes they’re [the towers] not as high but they exist. So yes they have COPs and they come as a complete package deal.”
In addition to the IFTs, the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan will include other options to help the Border Control obtain better situational awareness, including mobile sensor systems, remote video surveillance systems (RVSS), agent portable surveillance systems (APSS), and hand-held long-range thermal imaging systems that look like large binoculars.
CBP, through an interagency agreement with the Army, has already purchased 4 APSS and will buy 11 more by the end of this year. The APSS are tripod mounted radar and day/night camera systems that can be lugged by several agents.
Borkowski said to expect an RFP for the RVSS will likely be released in January. The RVSS is a pole-mounted day/night camera that is linked to a single monitor at a Border Patrol station.