Just over a month after the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt aboard a Detroit-bound passenger plane, the Obama administration this week sent Congress a budget request that includes a 14 percent increase for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in FY ’11, with particular attention given to the purchase of another 500 full body scanners that would be deployed at checkpoints at most airports in the U.S.
The $8.2 billion request for TSA in total budget authority, is part of a $56.3 billion request for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) overall in FY ’11, 2 percent higher than the FY ’10 budget. The discretionary budget request for DHS in FY ’11, which is what congressional appropriators will act on, is $43.6 billion, nearly 3 percent more than Congress approved in FY ’10.
The TSA request for the body scanners, called Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT), is $214.7 million, and would purchase 500 of the systems, the most the agency has ever budgeted for.
Already TSA is under contract with OSI Systems [OSIS] to buy 150 of the company’s backscatter X-Ray based systems and has deployed 40 of L-3 Communications‘ [LLL] millimeter wave-based scanners. The agency plans to purchase another 300 AIT systems in FY ’10 and currently can buy them from either OSI’s Rapiscan division or L-3 Communications [LLL].
All combined, the existing and planned purchases would be for 990 AIT systems, which DHS says would provide coverage at 75 percent of the checkpoint lanes at Category X airports, the largest, and 60 percent of the lanes and Category X, I and II airports. A DHS official says these machines would likely be used for primary screening but that hasn’t been finalized.
The nearly 1,000 systems are 112 more AIT systems than TSA’s previous requirements called for. Moreover, the nearly 4,000 page document detailing the Department of Homeland Security’s budget request says that TSA requires 1,800 of the systems at Full Operating Capability (FOC). The document doesn’t say when FOC would be achieved or provide the outyear funding levels for the systems. Previous deployment plans for the 878 units called for installation by the end of FY ’14 although that is obviously being accelerated.
There are about 2,225 passenger checkpoint lanes at the nation’s airports. That means TSA is looking at having a system at nearly every security lane, much the way walk-through metal detectors are deployed now.
However, TSA officials said in late December following the failed Christmas day bombing that doing a one-for-one replacement of the metal detectors would be difficult for several reasons. One is that the throughput of the AIT machines is slower than metal detectors. Another is the fact that the AIT systems cost at least 15 times more than the metal detectors. And the body imagers take up far more room, which is a concern given that most airport security checkpoints are real-estate constrained.
The budget request also includes $218.9 million to hire additional Transportation Security Officers and managers to operate the AIT systems.
New GAO Report
A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) cites TSA as saying that the agency had completed operational testing of AIT systems by the end of 2009. However, the GAO says that in a report it issued last October the agency had not assessed the technology’s vulnerabilities in previous testing.
Regarding the underwear bomb used by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the Detroit-bound flight, GAO says that “TSA has not assessed whether these and other tactics that terrorists could use to evade detection by screening technologies, such as the AIT, increase the likelihood that the screening equipment would not detect the hidden weapons or explosives. Thus, without an assessment of the vulnerabilities of checkpoint technologies, it is unclear whether the AIT or other technologies would have been able to detect the weapon Mr. Abdulmutallab used in his attempted attack.”
Checkpoint Technology
The AIT budget request is contained within a $344.1 million line item for Checkpoint Technology, which is nearly three times the $117.3 million enacted by Congress in FY ’10. The budget documents do not provide a line item breakout of the Checkpoint Technology spending although AIT systems obviously make up the bulk of the proposed spending next year.
TSA did say it plans to spend $60 million on 811 portable explosive trace detectors (ETD) in FY ’11, with $39 million going for actual systems and $21 million for related consumables. The portable ETDs are not the next-generation benchtop ETD’s that TSA is currently buying from Smiths Detection and Morpho Detection. Instead they will be a new procurement, a DHS official says.
While additional funding breakouts aren’t provided for Checkpoint Technology, a table in the budget documents does provide the numbers of various systems that TSA plans to buy with FY ’11 funds. These include 25 Advanced Technology (AT) X-Ray systems, which would get the agency to 96 percent of its Full Operating Capability with these machines, 35 of the next-generation ETDs, 50 enhanced metal detectors (EMD), 50 shoe screening devices (SSD), 600 credential authentication technology (CAT) systems, 245 automated wait time (AWT) systems and no Bottled Liquid Scanners (BLS).
However, the budget language appears to offer TSA wiggle room on what it might purchase. “Equipment purchases may include AT, AIT, AWT, BLS, CPI, SSD, CAT, CAD, NextGen ETD, technology integration solutions, and additional units or upgrades to legacy equipment.”
EDS Equipment
While spending on Checkpoint Technology would go up, the request for Explosive Detection Systems (EDS) to scan checked bags would decrease. The proposed budget for EDS procurement next year is $103.6 million, down from $202.8 million in FY ’10.
The EDS systems to be purchased include reduced size, medium throughput and high throughput machines. DHS says that TSA is exploring the possibility of using reduced size EDS, which are supplied by Reveal Imaging Technologies and L-3, to combine checkpoint and checked baggage operations at low efficiency/high cost airports.
While the budget documents don’t say it, it is possible the TSA is slowing the rate of EDS purchases pending the outcome of a competition later this year for next-generation systems that would have higher throughputs and possibly even lower false alarm rates than currently deployed systems. L-3, Rapiscan and another company, SureScan, are all developing stationary gantry EDS for that procurement. Presumably the first significant buys of new generation EDS systems would be done using FY ’12 funds.