By Calvin Biesecker
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last month issued Boeing [BA] a new $55.7 million task order to begin constructing surveillance and communications towers along separate stretches of the United States’ Southwest Border beginning this month as part of the electronic, or “virtual” fence portion of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI).
The task order is for two projects, Tucson 1 and Ajo 1, which cover about 34 miles and 30 miles respectively of the U.S. border with Mexico in the Border Patrol’s Tucson, Ariz., area of operations. Tucson-1 overlaps about 11 miles of the original SBI deployment called Project 28 (P28), which DHS later changed to a prototype demonstration to help prove out plans for subsequent deployments of the electronic fence. Once DHS accepted P28 from Boeing earlier this year, it said the mobile towers that Boeing had originally set up and installed various sensors and communications systems on would be taken down and eventually replaced with fixed tower sites (Defense Daily, Feb. 25). Integration challenges delayed the final acceptance of P28 by about eight months as Boeing struggled to make work the sensor payloads that it was hanging on the mobile towers and the software it was developing to provide Border Patrol agents with a common operating picture based on the sensor information.
Boeing is expected to begin preparing the Tucson 1 installation this month, installing nine fixed towers that will be fitted with sensors such as radar and cameras, and eight fixed towers that will be fitted with communications equipment. Additionally Boeing will be deploying around 200 unattended ground sensors and provide about 6 miles of access roads to enable tower construction and maintenance, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told Defense Daily last week.
The electronic fence portion of SBI is also often referred to as SBInet, and is aimed at improving the situational awareness of Border Patrol agents through the use of technology as a force multiplier so that agents can quickly react to incursions by illegal migrants, drug smugglers, and others potentially engaged in illegal activity along the southwest–and eventually northern borders–of the U.S.
The tower installations for Ajo 1 are expected to begin in September.
Once the towers are up for each deployment, CBP will conduct readiness reviews prior to allowing Boeing to begin installing the sensors and communications equipment. That payload installations for Tucson 1 and Ajo 1 will be done under a yet to be awarded dollar amount for the second part to the current task order, the CBP spokesman said. In addition to installing the sensor and communications equipment, Boeing will perform integration testing and facilities upgrades, he said.
DHS tentatively hopes that Tucson 1 will attain conditional acceptance in November followed by Ajo 1 in December, the spokesman said.
So far Boeing has received over $400 million in task orders under its SBI contract. For P28 the company had a $20 million deal with CBP but ended up forfeiting $2 million of the total due to the integration problems. Last December the company received a $64 million task order to upgrade and test the situational awareness software, called the common operating picture (Defense Daily, Dec. 10, 2007).
Then in January CBP awarded Boeing a $303.3 million contract for supply chain management services related to the physical fencing that is being installed along portions of the U.S. border with Mexico. CBP contracted with Boeing for these services because of the company’s expertise in managing complex supply chains, saying that the company was well positioned to gather and distribute steel and aggregate at a pace consistent with the planned construction schedule.
For FY ’08 Congress approved $1.2 billion for the SBI program but restricted the obligation of half of that amount pending receipt of a program spending plan by CBP. As of July 1 all spending restrictions were removed, the CBP spokesman said.
Moving forward, CBP may face additional restrictions on spending in its FY ’09 budget request for SBI, which still has to be approved by Congress. In addition to seeking another very detailed expenditure plan for various aspects of the SBI, House appropriators want DHS to produce an analysis of alternatives for how the country can best secure its borders, according to a report accompanying the House Appropriations Committee’s version of the FY ’09 Homeland Security Bill.
“Alternatives should consist of reasonable combinations of elements (e.g., agents, sensors, and cameras), instead of being limited to individual elements that are unlikely to be fielded in isolation,” the report says. “CBP should also include alternatives proposed by communities or other stakeholder groups, such as eradication of vegetation; enhancement of natural barriers; or incorporation of security features into projects.”
The request for an Alternatives Analysis is a repeat of one Congress made in approving the FY ’08 budget for SBI. But the House appropriators say the CBP “completely ignored” a comparison of alternatives to fencing when presenting the expenditure plan.
The House appropriators, just like their Senate counterparts, approved the Bush administration’s $775 million FY ’09 budget request for SBI. However, the House report language restricts $400 million of the funds from being spent pending receipt and approval of an SBI expenditure plan that meets 12 detailed requirements, including a definition of milestones and costs for the program to date, an action plan for meeting current and future program commitments, and a review of the plan by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The Senate appropriators don’t have any funding restrictions in their version of the homeland security spending bill but agreed last year with the House to fence $650 million of the $1.2 billion FY ’08 appropriation for SBI.
The GAO reported last month that DHS has improved its justification for some of the spending plans for SBI but still doesn’t provide ways to show how progress is being measured against program goals (Defense Daily, July 1).