Lawmakers recently expressed frustration about the fact that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) virtual fence program remains behind schedule.
During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in early June, members of Congress were told the first component of the SBInet program would be operational days later. But after more than four months, that first element–a $20 million effort called “Project 28” to protect 28 miles of the southwestern border–is still not ready for delivery to the government.
The system is largely a collection of commercially available equipment like radars, mobile communications stations, unattended ground sensors, radios and satellite phones. Boeing [BA], the contractor, faces the challenges of integrating those disparate platforms.
The delay to Project 28 has been with software integration problems–like the time it takes for information collected by radars to be displayed at command centers, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
That report questioned whether the program will be able to cover 370 miles of the border with pedestrian fences and 200 miles with vehicle fences by the end of next December.
During a hearing before two homeland security subcommittees, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the full committee, said he needs Boeing to describe how it will turn the program around.
Roger Krone, the president of Boeing Network and Space Systems, said that CBP acted responsibly this summer when it refused to accept the system. He also said during questioning that even though the cost of making Project 28 is twice the original estimate, that cost would not be passed on to the government.
The company has made fixes to the program since the summer, and just applied the final patch to the system, Krone said.
It is so close to meeting the needs of Customs and Border Patrol that he said he is 90 percent certain the system will pass the next series of tests that will allow the government to accept it in November.
Gregory Giddens, the executive director of DHS’s Secure Border Initiative, is optimistic about the prospects but told sister publication Defense Daily after the hearing he is slightly less certain than Krone about the probability of acceptance.
But despite the delay on Project 28, the contract structure insulates protects the program from cost growth, he said in a statement.
“CBP can assess contractor performance at each step without committing future funding,” Giddens said.
The hearing highlighted the disappointment among lawmakers who are coming to grips with the reality that virtual fence technology is further behind than they thought and than was suggested during recent debate on the immigration bill.
During that debate, “implications were made about the system that are resoundingly not true,” said Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), the ranking member of the border and counterterrorism subcommittee.
Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.), the chairman of the investigations and oversight subcommittee, asked if the system would ever work as it was initially pitched.
“Or are we pouring money down the drain,” Carney asked.