The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is nine months behind on plans to test and procure the next generation of body scanners, called Advanced Imaging Technology-2 (AIT-2), and has underestimated challenges for upgrading existing AIT systems and the AIT-2 systems to meet future requirements, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says in a new report.
The auditors say that TSA was nine months behind schedule when it began qualification testing of the AIT-2 systems in July 2013 because the three contractors developing the body imagers—American Science & Engineering [ASEI], L-3 Communications [LLL], and Smiths Detection—had difficulties providing their respective qualification data packages, which verify that they have met contract requirements and are ready for testing.
Under a revised deployment schedule, the AIT systems were to be installed by March 2014, according to the report, Advanced Imaging Technology: TSA Needs Additional Information before Procuring Next-Generation Machines (GAO-14-357). However, the agency told GOA that before it makes any AIT-2 purchases, it is updating its AIT technology roadmap that is supposed to be ready this September.
The AIT-2 systems will have a smaller footprint than the existing AIT systems used by TSA, taking up somewhat less space at aviation security checkpoints. The current systems are supplied by L-3.
L-3 is currently in the process of installing upgraded automated threat recognition (ATR) software the existing AIT systems so that they can detect smaller items that may be hidden on persons than the current systems, according to GAO. Those upgrades to meet Tier II requirements are 17 months behind schedule and began in January, the report says. It adds that the upgrades are slated to take seven months to complete.
TSA’s requirements also call for the AIT-2 systems to meet Tier II detection levels and have higher passenger throughputs than the current systems. The agency also plans to seek proposals from the AIT-2 vendors for providing the Tier III and Tier IV capabilities, which also correspond to the size of items that the imagers must detect.
TSA’s current roadmap, issued in October, 2012, for the AIT program calls for Tier III requirements to be met by the end of 2014 but GAO says that under a plan submitted by the AIT vendor, L-3, in April 2012, once the Tier II requirements were satisfied it would take “several years to develop and deliver a TIER III system for TSA to test, followed by an operational test and evaluation system validation phase that would take several months.”
GAO says that “according to the experts we interviewed from the national laboratories that contributed to the development of imaging technology, the milestones contained in TSA’s October 2012 roadmap are not achievable because it did not reflect the time needed to make sufficient improvements to the technology to ensure that it would be able to meet additional tier levels.”
The report says that TSA failed to use information from the laboratories and vendors to produce its AIT roadmap, and as result “underestimated the time it would take to develop and deploy AIT-ATR Tier III systems.
For the roadmap expected in September, GAO says that TSA needs to incorporate data from the vendors, laboratories, and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology branch to ensure that milestones are more realistic. However, GAO also cites an L-3 representative as saying the technological challenges of going from Tier II to Tier III requirements include more targeted algorithms, which will require new data sets, additional research and resources before understanding what are realistic deployment timeframes.
GAO says that this means future deployment timelines for the most challenging requirements, Tier IV, are unknown.
“Therefore, given the current state of technology as well as the amount of research that has to be conducted on developing algorithms that can meet Tier II and Tier III requirements, neither TSA nor the AIT vendors can reliably predict how long it will take to meet Tier IV requirements,” GAO says.