The Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved a spending bill for Homeland Security that adds $72.3 million to the budget request for aviation checkpoint security, an amount that will allow the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to accelerate its purchases of related screening equipment.
The total funding from the panel for checkpoint support is $200 million, which includes money for the field testing and deployment of passenger screening, carry-on baggage screening, checkpoint reconfiguration and electronic surveillance of checkpoints, according to a report accompanying the committee’s version of the FY ’09 budget for the Department of Homeland Security. The panel says that at the requested level of funding, $127.7 million, “deployment of screening technology would decrease by 64 percent as compared to fiscal year 2008.”
Britain’s Smiths Detection and OSI Systems [OSIS] stand to benefit from some of the proposed checkpoint spending increases. Both companies are currently supplying TSA with Advanced Technology X-Ray systems that improve the screening of carry-on bags.
The committee also wants TSA to continue funding multiple types of whole body imaging technologies, including backscatter and millimeter wave, for checkpoint screening of people. Whole body imagers are currently being pilot tested in multiple airports, with L-3 Communications’ [LLL] active millimeter wave system the most widely deployed. American Science and Engineering [ASEI] has a backscatter-based X-Ray imaging system that is also being tested at several airports and OSI also has a backscatter-based system being tested at one airport.
In addition to the plus-up for checkpoint screening technologies, the Senate appropriators also added $140.1 million to the request for the purchase and installation of explosive detection systems (EDS) and explosive trace detections (ETD) to screen checked baggage at airports for explosives. The increase to $294 million is the same amount funded by the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee.
In addition to the $294 million provided for discretionary appropriations, another $250 million in mandatory spending will be included from the Aviation Security Capital Fund fee collections. For EDS equipment TSA acquires machines from three companies: General Electric [GE]; L-3; and Reveal Imaging Technologies.
The committee includes a proviso in its report that at least $84.5 million of the EDS and ETD monies for the purchase of EDS machines are deployed at medium and small-sized airports. Reveal, whose CT-80 EDS is smaller and less expensive than the machines supplied by the other two EDS providers, stands to benefit from some of this funding. The throughput of the CT-80 is also less, however, than its competitors’ machines.
The report indicates that the recommended funding boost for EDS and ETD equipment still falls short of demand.
“The committee notes that TSA is in receipt of over 80 requests totaling $700 million for airport facility modifications for optimal checked baggage screening solutions,” the report says. “The recommended increase of $140.1 million above the request greatly accelerates the ability of TSA to implement these optimal systems.”
The Senate’s version of the bill would fence $30 million of the EDS and checkpoint spending related to DHS headquarters administration until detailed expenditure plans for related technologies are furnished to the Appropriations Committee. The report says that the FY ’08 spending plan was late and that FY ’07 supplemental funds for EDS and checkpoint screening have been “held up for over a year to due bureaucratic delays at TSA, the department, and the Office of Management and Budget.”
Also for the aviation equipment screening accounts, the appropriators approved $305.6 million for technologies maintenance and utilities, a $5 million cut to the request. The appropriators actually cut maintenance funding by $9.4 million due to procurement delays stemming from unspent funds in the FY ’07 and FY ’08 budgets. However, the panel is allowing for $4.4 million in funding to be used for disposing older EDS and ETD equipment that isn’t being used.
The Senate report also notes that the warranties on 794 EDS and checkpoint machines expire in FY ’09.