By Craig Collins - Defense Media Network
In asking for border system resembling the one just killed DHS has observers scratching heads
A small fence separates densely populated Tijuana Mexico (on right in photo) from the United States in the Border Patrols San Diego Sector. Following the cancellation of SBINet DHS has issued an RFP with similar requirements to the failed program.
On Jan. 18 the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) released a Request for Information (RFI) in which it expressed interest in commercial off-the-shelf solutions for deployment at fixed elevated sites hereafter referred to as Integrated Fixed Towers that would provide automated persistent wide-area surveillance for the detection tracking identification and classification of illegal entries.
The capability sought would provide additional situational awareness and will allow CBP to more efficiently and effectively respond to border incursions where deployed."
The RFI raised eyebrows among homeland security experts who closely followed the doomed trajectory of a system conceived in 2005 to bring integrated cameras and sensors to the entire U.S./Mexican land border: the Secure Border Initiative Network or SBInet.
The history of SBInet is complicated but can be summed up as follows: a contract award to Boeing Co. in 2006; a 28-mile prototype widely panned that began operating in Feb. 2008; and a newer 53-mile segment including a leg near Tucson Ariz. that underwent a favorable round of evaluations in the fall of 2010.
One of the problems with the SBInet prototype agreed both DHS and Boeing was that commercially available technology with the capability to meet the networks goals did not exist. With its effective Tucson-anchored leg Boeing seemed to be in the eyes of its evaluators on the way to developing this technology reducing manpower needs while providing real-time data on potential border-crossing attempts.
So why does the new RFI specify that the new system use commercially available technology which DHS has already agreed at least tacitly does not exist? Outsiders are baffled.
Rick Nelson Director of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program at the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies
said Except for a few minor modifications ... the RFI looks exactly like the original SBInet proposal did."
A Flawed Process
Part of the confusion about the RFI stems from a closely guarded alternatives analysis" concluded at the end of summer 2010 that examined four scenarios for deploying technology to the border. In those scenarios SBInet alone didnt win the day.
In response to the analysis DHS taking a Department of Defense-style approach decided to kill the program rather than chase its spiraling costs.
The problem with taking a DoD-style approach to acquisitions said Nelson is that DHSs acquisitions workforce doesnt have nearly the size or maturity of the Defense Departments and it bears much of the blame for the shortcomings of SBInet.
But I place the majority of the blame on DHS and the acquisition process because theyre ultimately responsible for making sure the contract is being executed accordingly and they didnt do that.
They shifted the requirement I think on Boeing and they made it very difficult. So it was a situation where it was new in DHSs history. They lacked the acquisition workforce to execute a contract of this scale. And these contractors are all new relative to the homeland security enterprise and they were trying to be first to market with what they thought was going to be a good product."
Looking ahead Nelson sees two issues emerging: first the insistence that a new Integrated Fixed Tower system use commercial off-the-shelf technology is almost certainly going to have to be dropped. Sole reliance on commercial-off-the-shelf technology is not practical in the operating environments were expecting this stuff to operate in" he said.
Its the same reason why commercial off-the-shelf technology doesnt work in the middle of the Indian Ocean to shoot down cruise missiles."
Second and more important for the bigger picture of homeland security is that DHS is going to have to improve its acquisitions process in order to attract the best solutions from the best contractors. The Jan. 18 RFI is not
to Nelson a signal that the agency has learned from its mistakes.
My concern with the cancellation is that punishing the prime contractor at a time when youre trying to build up the homeland security industrial base may not be the best long-term idea" he said.
Some of these traditional defense industry-focused companies like Boeing and Northrop Grumman may find its not worth their time to invest in the homeland security enterprise if its too difficult to get the requirements articulated and if the contract is going to be mismanaged.
Again Im not saying all parties werent at fault but at the end of the day DHS was the one ultimately responsible for getting what they contracted."
