Customs and Border Protection (CBP) says it will release a draft Request for Proposals (RFP) in December and the final RFP in either January or February 2012 for a fixed-sensor system that will be deployed along the border in Arizona to monitor for illegal migration and drug smuggling activities.
Industry officials had expected the draft RFP for the Integrated Fixed Towers (IFT) program to be issued as early as late October.
The program would consist of ground surveillance radars and day/night surveillance cameras mounted on fixed towers, power generation and communications equipment to support the tower sites, and command and control equipment for displaying information received from the surveillance towers on a common operating picture, according to CBP in the Nov. 17 FedBizOpps.gov. The IFTs appear to be very similar to the fixed sensor towers that are operating along a 53-mile stretch of border in Arizona under the now canceled Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet) program that was developed by Boeing [BA].
The IFT system is considered to be non-developmental and based on an open system architecture for use by Border Patrol agents. CBP says it plans to select among commercial, commercial-off-the-shelf and government-off-the-shelf equipment that best balances system performance and cost. The framework for the trade-offs between performance and cost will be contained in the RFP, with the capabilities set forth in priority order.
Companies whose proposals are within a competitive range will be required to conduct system demonstrations before contract award at their own expense, the agency says.
The IFT system will help agents detect, track, identify and classify items of interest along the nation’s borders. In a FedBizOpps.gov posting last week, CBP provides examples of desired IFT system performance parameters.
In January the Department of Homeland Security terminated further acquisitions under the SBInet program and then quickly followed with a Request for Information for the IFT program (Defense Daily, Jan. 18 and Jan. 20). Some of the companies that can be expected to bid for the work, are be part of teams competing for the work include Boeing, General Dynamics [GD], Raytheon [RTN], L-3 Communications [LLL], FLIR Systems Corp., and the DRS Technologies division of Italy’s Finmeccanica.
The IFTs are one component of the new Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Program that also includes Mobile Surveillance Systems, pole-mounted camera systems, agent portable surveillance systems, handheld devices and unattended ground sensors. [Sol. No. HSBP0111RSWBTS. Contact: Timothy Evans, contract specialist, [email protected], 571-468-7004]