Amid tightening budgets, the Border Patrol is seeking investments in a wide variety of tools and capabilities that will allow it to be more effective and efficient while lowering costs, according to officials from the agency and the Science and Technology branch of the Department of Homeland Security.
Those tools and capabilities include sensors, improved situational awareness, decreased processing times, better decision making and lower operating costs in all mission areas of the Border Patrol, the officials said.
DHS S&T and the Border Patrol earlier this month released the priority areas of a new research and development (R&D) strategy put together by the two agencies. The priority areas include improved mission essential tasks for border crossings between ports of entry, for subterranean activity, for detecting contraband dropped or delivered from aircraft, for illegal border activity via inland waterways and lakes, to improve situational awareness in lightly patrolled and remote areas, improving in-processing at permanent and tactical checkpoints, to facilitate strategic and tactical decision making, and lower costs through decreased energy usage at forward operating bases and remote checkpoints.
Much of how the Border Patrol currently deploys agents and assets it based on experience and historical patterns but predictive analytics would be helpful and fine-tuning these deployments and improving risk-based security, Paul Benda, the director of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) said in a webinar hosted by S&T. Taking advantage of “big data” will provide low cost means for the Border Patrol to “connect-the-dots” in ways they haven’t thought of before, he said.
The Border Patrol has an interest in using surplus Defense Department technology that is returning from deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, Ronald Vitello, the deputy chief of the Border Patrol, said during the webinar. He said the Office of Technology Innovation and Acquisition is currently cataloging the various technologies, understanding the timetables for when they may be available and what the sustainment costs would be.
Vitello said that the Border Patrol would likely use some of military technologies along the Southwest Border. Benda, however, said that the Defense Department typically is resource and manpower rich when it comes to operating these systems, a luxury the Border Patrol doesn’t have, so that using these technologies will require a “strong” cost-benefit tradeoff.
Detecting tunnels and activity in them remains a difficult challenge. Vitello said that the Border Patrol is using a system designed for the military to detect tunnels but said it works best in confirming intelligence that indicates where a tunnel might be located.
So far no technology has used to discover a clandestine technology without some type of intelligence, Anh Duong, director of the Border and Maritime Security Division within HSARPA, said during the webinar. She said persistent and portable tunnel detection systems are needed that work despite different types of local geologies adding that these systems currently have a limited ability to localize a potential tunnel.
Duong mentioned that boring capabilities, which can cost between $10,000 and $12,000 per hole, are expensive and that non-invasive techniques are needed to preserve the local geology and decrease the number of holes that are drilled. Vitello said that the Border Patrol would like to be able to detect tunnels as they are being constructed versus after they are operating.
Vitello also said that the use of tunnels is nothing new for smuggling drugs and illegal aliens through the border but that in the last two years there has been an increase in the number and sophistication of these tunnels.
Detecting and quickly finding objects—typically drugs—being dropped from aircraft after crossing the border from either Mexico or Canada is difficult, in part due to the difficulty in tracking the aircraft because they are small and fly low. Vitello said that the Border Patrol can’t patrol the air border just waiting for aircraft to show up, and said the ability to detect these aircraft is low.
Not only are the assets in terms of agents and equipment sub-optimal for interdicting dropped goods, the time to target is lagging, according to a briefing slide. That means better understanding threat patterns and having ways to narrow the search for goods after they’ve been dropped would be helpful, Vitello said.
To boost surveillance capabilities in lightly patrolled and remote border areas where agents can’t frequently operate, the Border Patrol needs to find ways to lower the costs of operating sensors, such as increased battery life, Duong said. Vitello said that change detection techniques in these areas would also be useful.
HSARPA is hosting a series of webinars to inform industry and other stakeholders about new R&D strategies that have been developed for the various components that make up DHS. Benda said that the agency expects to host another webinar next month that will focus on chemical and biological defense.