By Calvin Biesecker
Spending on the virtual fence component of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) will run out in late October if Congress doesn’t approve an FY ’09 appropriations bill for Homeland Security by then, Jayson Ahern, deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), told a House panel yesterday.
Boeing [BA] is responsible for integrating and deploying the virtual fence, also called SBInet, under a three-year contract it won in September 2006. Originally, CBP had hoped to have an initial set of technologies deployed along the Southwest border of the United States by the end of this year, but integration challenges with the original prototype deployment along a 28-mile stretch of border in Tucson, Ariz., delayed that effort and ultimately SBInet.
Now CBP has decided to “slow down” the SBInet schedule and increase integration testing to deploy the technology when it’s ready, CBP Commissioner Ralph Basham told the House Homeland Security Committee.
Under a revised deployment schedule for SBInet, Boeing was to begin work this summer and fall on deploying a network of towers, sensors, cameras and communications systems in two areas of the Arizona border with Mexico called Tucson-1 and Ajo-1. However, in July the agency decided to put those plans on hold in favor of continued technology integration testing, the need to assure environmental compliance and to obtain land permits for the towers, and because it decided that it would prioritize deployment of physical fencing along the Southwest Border (Defense Daily, Sept. 2).
Committee Chairman Benny Thompson (D-Miss.) said he believes that “DHS and Boeing grossly underestimated the task of standing up SBInet.” He wants DHS to review “Boeing’s performance and continue to look to the innovation of this great country for border security technology.”
Having made the tactical infrastructure a priority, on Tuesday CBP asked Congress to reprogram $400 million in funding to keep moving forward with the pedestrian and vehicle fencing. It’s unclear how much of that money would be moved from the SBInet account. Ahern did say that $19.7 million that Congress had appropriated in FY ’08 for a demonstration of SBInet technologies on the Northern Border has already been reallocated for tactical infrastructure.
Ahern said that CBP did not foresee how quickly fuel, labor and material costs would rise for tactical infrastructure throughout 2008, necessitating the hefty reprogramming request. By keeping the work going and getting additional contracts in place the agency will be able to “lock” down costs before they rise further, he said.
At the end of August, CBP had 344 miles of tactical fencing, which includes pedestrian and vehicle barriers, in place along the Southwest border. Basham said that CBP remains on pace to have in place, under construction, or under contract, all 670 miles of planned fencing by the end of this year as expected.
Meeting that deployment schedule will be a challenge. Basham, Ahern and the GAO officials testified. In addition to rising costs related to the fencing, there remain issues with acquiring the necessary land, in particular working through hundreds of cases where acquisitions are tied up in courts, the said.
Under the overall SBI effort, Boeing has received $933.3 million to date, according to testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). CBP could not confirm that figure.
However, those funds include not just SBInet-related orders but also contracts for Boeing to provide supply chain management services for some of the tactical infrastructure, including a $303.3 million award in January for this purpose (Defense Daily, July 8).
Randolph Hite, director of Information Technology Architecture and Systems Issues at GAO, provided the panel with a glimpse of a forthcoming report on SBInet that points to a slew of program risks. The report, due to Congress on Sept. 22, addresses whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has defined what capabilities Boeing is supposed to deliver and how they are to be delivered, whether DHS has “effectively defined and managed the requirements” behind SBInet, and whether DHS has effectively tested the capabilities that are to be delivered to ensure they meet requirements and perform as expected.
Across the board the answer is “no, no and no,” Hite said.
For an example of the ineffective management of SBInet testing, Hite said that “system integration started before there was a test plan that described the full set of tests that were to be performed. And it began even though the individual component systems that are being integrated had not been individually tested to make sure each, in fact, met requirements.”
On the positive side, Hite said that DHS agrees with seven of the eight recommendations GAO makes in the report.