Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is conducting market research of mobile tower systems that would be equipped with cameras and possibly radars for a potential follow-on purchase to existing Mobile Surveillance Systems (MSS) for deployments along the country’s northern and southwest borders, according to the director of the agency’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI) program.
The agency released a Request for Information (RFI) in early July for mobile surveillance platforms that are available commercially or through the government. The RFI will allow CBP to do a “kind of cost versus capability trade,” Borkowski tells TR2. “Can I get 90 percent of the capability I’m interested in at 50 percent of the cost?”
Borkowski says he expects there will be more MMS or MMS-like procurements “but that’s going to be advised by this process we’re going through.” The SBI program received $100 million in stimulus funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Border Patrol has asked that $15 million be set aside for MSS purchases “or something like them,” he says.
The agency currently owns and operates 44 MSS systems, the bulk of which were acquired from Griffon Corp.‘s [GFF] Telephonics business and some from ICx Technologies [ICXT]. The Border Patrol operates 40 of the MSS systems along the southwest border, and more recently one in the San Diego, Calif., sector, two in the Swainton, Vt., sector, and one in the Detroit Sector.
The systems operating along the southwest border have been operating for a couple of years but they are not without their problems, which basically have to do with operating in rugged environments. Borkowski says that these “were breaking down too often” with less than 50 percent operating at a time.
“We accepted them with the understanding that we would work with the vendors to get them fixed,” he says. “And most of that is done.”
Boeing [BA], the prime contractor for the SBI program, is under contract with CBP for the maintenance and repair of the MSS systems, which are now up and running between 70 to 75 percent of the time, Borkowski says. “We’d like it to be higher… [but] we’re making progress.”
With the MSS design pretty much stable, the goal now is to get a better understanding of the life-cycle factors associated with operating and maintaining the systems, Borkowski says. That will also help determine how to proceed with future procurements.
“Now that we’ve got something of a stable design, we’re trying to get some history and experience, how much does it cost to keep them going and what are the types of things in those systems that tend to break most often,” he says. “We don’t have enough experience to have that data so we can’t really do a good projection going forward of whether or not these Mobile Surveillance Systems are going…to be good long-term solutions. We’re in the data collection mode.”
There’s no guarantee that CBP will acquire additional MSS from either Telephonics or ICx.
“We’re being a little bit cautious here because we don’t want to commit to far to the existing systems without a little more confidence in them going forward,” Borkowski said. “And that’s one of the reasons for doing the RFI.”
Southwest Border Update
Construction is finished and the sensors have been hung on the first operational SBInet deployment in Arizona, called Tucson-1, but Borkowski has pulled the reins in somewhat on full system integration and system integration due to several issues.
“I don’t think that they are particularly show stopper issues but they’re issues for which we had…containment strategies,” he says. “That means we have band aids that we put on the system so that it performs properly. I don’t mind putting band aids on observed behaviors if it’s a short-term approach. But what I’d like to do is say I’ve got this band aid for now and here’s this long-term fix so that I don’t need the band aid.”
The two issues taking up the most of his time concern radar accelerations and computer crashes, both of which also cropped up during system qualification testing. The problem with the radar is that while it is scanning it will accelerate and even overshoot its stops. The band aid fix is adding software to prevent this issue but for a while the reason why the problem was occurring wasn’t understood, Borkowski says.
“We now have a good detailed root cause analysis and for the first time we’re getting statements like, ‘if this happens then it will do rapid acceleration,'” Borkowski says. “We didn’t used to have that.”
Interestingly, he says understanding the root cause of the problem can be difficult when working with commercial-off-the-shelf systems.
“You get what you buy and the problem with that is you don’t really understand the inner workings of the system,” Borkowski says.
Boeing is buying the radar from Telephonics, which in turn is acquiring it from Israel’s Elta. Borkowski says going all the way back to the original manufacturer has taken time but was necessary.
“Bowing still needs to put a bow on it and give me a formal briefing,” he says. “That requires a little more testing and we’re probably going to go modify those radars and that’s going to take some time.”
Regarding the computer crashes, Borkowski says the display screens that present the sensor data to Border Patrol agents would freeze up. The band aid fix has been to reboot the systems, and that has been fine given that there are four or five workstations so others are operating while one is being restarted. Yet again, he says the root cause of the problem wasn’t understood at first.
However, once the problems were better understood and fixes were made, it’s hard to get the workstations to crash now, Borkowski says.
Slight Delay Ahead?
The upshot of these problems means that the System Acceptance Testing may be delayed by around a month or two. If that happens, which appears likely, Borkowski says the operational testing by the Border Patrol will begin in Jan. 2010, about four to six weeks later than planned. How long operational testing lasts will be up to the Border Patrol, he says.
“I’m frustrated that we had to really bear down and insist on this discipline in the process and that we’ve maybe gotten too comfortable with these containment strategies,” Borkowski says. “That bothers me. But on the other hand, what we’re going to get out of it, the month slippage is well worth it I think.”
The next major milestone decision in the Southwest Border component of SBInet is likely next summer where the Department of Homeland Security’s Acquisition Review Board (ARB) will hold an Acquisition Decision Event (ADE) 3 meeting on the program. Prior to that point Tucson-1 and the next installment, Ajo-1, have to be finished and operating. If the ARB gives the nod at ADE 3, then CBP will move out on completing the installation of SBInet throughout Arizona.
Borkowski says that if the Tucson-1 deployment goes well, there is the possibility of some incremental deployments along other portions of Arizona’s border with Mexico prior to ADE 3 just to keep “momentum” going.