By Calvin Biesecker
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hopes to begin moving toward limited operational deployments of the electronic fence portion of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) in a month or two to gather feed back from the user community–namely the Border Patrol–and be able to make a decision late this year whether the system is ready to be deployed throughout State of Arizona’s border with Mexico, according to the official in charge of the program.
Depending on the funding requested by the administration and the amounts approved by Congress, the current schedule calls for the SBInet deployment along the Arizona border with Mexico by 2011 or 2012, Mark Borowski, the SBI program manager, told Defense Daily on Friday.
At one time CBP had planned a far more ambitious schedule for deploying SBInet along the nation’s southwest border with Mexico and even the northern border with Canada but technical snags from a hurried rush to deploy the technology before proper testing of the individual sensors and systems and as an integrated whole led to delays. About a year ago the Department of Homeland Security accepted the original SBInet deployment, which covers a 28-mile stretch of border in Arizona and is called P28, about eight months late from prime contractor and systems integrator Boeing [BA] (Defense Daily, Feb. 25, 2008). P28 became a prototype demonstration rather than a full-up operational deployment.
Now CBP is hoping to begin grading roads and creating access for the installation of permanent towers in March or April for what is called Tucson-1, which would cover a 34 mile stretch of border with day/night cameras, radars, unattended ground sensors and related communications equipment, in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, Ariz. The towers are used to hang the radars and cameras, microwave antenna, a solar panel to recharge batteries, and other power and computer systems. In addition Boeing will begin acquiring the sensors and other systems that will go on the towers, which are provided by CBP, for the Tucson-1 deployment.
Boeing is acquiring the radars from Telephonics, a division of Griffon Corp. [GFF], and the day/night cameras from FLIR Corp. [FLIR].
Before the decision is made to begin prepping for the Tucson-1 deployment, Boeing and Borowski’s team must makes some fixes to the system that were identified during system qualification testing at Playas, N.M., in December. Those modifications include debugging some of the software code and improving software related to the stabilization of the cameras during windy conditions, he said.
“So we found those kinds of things and one of the reasons we found them is because we were doing this [testing] over a continuous period of time and actually trying to stress the system,” Borowski said.
At the testing ground in Playas Boeing has installed a production version of a tower with the sensors and related equipment and also hung sensors elsewhere to simulate additional towers.
Borowski said that overall the system qualification testing went well. For that, Boeing hired people to move through the desert to simulate different scenarios to test how well the integrated system worked.
The fixes are expected to be completed by the end of February to enable the start up of the preliminary deployment of Tucson-1, Borowski said. There will have to be some additional testing to confirm those fixes but he is feeling good about the progress.
“Right now our assessment is we are on track and those fixes are nothing that look like showstoppers, but we want to be clear,” Borowski said. “We haven’t checked off the boxes yet.”
Several months after beginning the groundwork to deploy Tucson-1, Borowski expects to begin another limited deployment along another stretch of border in the Tucson Sector, Ajo-1. That is a roughly 30-mile stretch of border.
Both Tucson-1 and Ajo-1 are expected to be up and running by the end of this year with Tucson-1 ready first to conduct system acceptance testing to ensure that it meets the technical specifications as demonstrated in the qualification testing at Playas. Once that’s done, the plan is to have the Border Patrol operate the system to provide the feedback that will suggest whether it works as needed, doesn’t work, or if certain changes need to be made, Borowski said.
With the feedback in hand, the Department of Homeland Security will make a decision, slated for late this year, on whether to proceed to full deployment along the remainder of the Arizona border.
Early last month, DHS held an Acquisition Review Board (ARB) meeting to review and approve the proposed program baseline of SBInet for the full Arizona deployment. That baseline consists of cost, schedule and performance milestones. In part, the meeting resulted in “agreed” program baseline targets between DHS and the program office, CBP said in response to a query on Friday.
The ARB meeting also resulted in a “limited start” for the Tucson-1 deployment, with final approval awaiting “closure” on the fixes identified in the system qualification testing done in December, CBP said.
The next ARB meeting for SBI is slated for late in 2009, which is when the ultimate decision will be made on whether to proceed to the full deployment throughout Arizona based on the results of the Tucson-1 and Ajo-1 deployments, CBP said.
The performance plan in the Arizona deployment calls for the system initially to be able to detect and identify at least 70 percent of all border incursions with the sensor data feeding into a command and control architecture that includes a software platform called a Common Operating Picture (COP). The COP is basically how the data is displayed at the various Border Patrol stations for command and control purposes.
Once the deployments begin throughout Arizona, there will be opportunities along the way to spiral in improvements, based in part on continued feedback from the Border Patrol, Borowski said. This could include additional sensor data from Air and Marine assets or even additional data that is displayed through the COP.
The development of the COP has also been challenging but is performing well, Borowski said. There will have to be tradeoffs along the way in terms of the type of functionality the Border Patrol wants, he said.
Deployment of SBInet along the Arizona border will be followed by the deployment along the El Paso Sector, which includes New Mexico’s entire border with Mexico. This could be underway in 2011 if the deployment in Arizona is accelerated for a 2011 finish and funding is available, he said.
Deployment of electronic fence technologies along the U.S.’ border with Canada is another facet of the program that is receiving attention. Congress has appropriated a combined $60 million in FY ’08 and FY ’09 for pilot projects on the northern border.
Borowski said that two mobile sensor towers will be deployed this spring, in Vermont and New York, to see how they work.
In addition, legacy video equipment that is currently used in the country’s southwest border area will also be put to the test in late spring in the Buffalo, N.Y., and Detroit, Mich., areas. He said the testing in Buffalo will be along the Niagara River for testing in a riverine environment. He hopes that the COP system will also be part of the Buffalo and Detroit tests to see how well the command and control software works with the legacy sensors.
Initial deployments of Tucson-1 and Ajo-1 were originally slated for last year after Boeing received a nearly $56 million task order in June to begin that work (Defense Daily, July 8, 2008). However, continued program difficulties and a change in program management–Borowski took over SBI last September–led to further delays.