Thread: Boeing not sure to get 'virtual fence' work beyond 2009

Boeing not sure to get 'virtual fence' work beyond 2009

By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.08.2009

The new director of Homeland Security's "virtual fence" project said Friday that Boeing Co. is not a lock to continue working on it past 2009.

Homeland Security awarded Boeing the prime contract for the Secure Border Initiative in September 2006 for three years with three one-year options. SBInet is the virtual fence component of the initiative. The first of the one-year options would start in 2010.

"I am not committed one way or another at this point," said Mark Borkowski, executive director of the Secure Border Initiative program. "We are going to be doing some analysis this year of what are the right priorities for this program, and given those priorities, what's the right way to buy them. Those analyses will advise what we do in terms of future contracts and whether or not we use Boeing."

In October, Borkowski replaced Greg Giddens, who was the second executive director of SBI since its inception in September 2006. Borkowksi is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who had previously worked at Border Patrol headquarters and at NASA headquarters.

During a phone interview Friday, he addressed issues regarding the SBInet virtual fences: On how the SBInet program is being reviewed by the new Barack Obama administration:

"They may well have their own ideas of what they want done and that could change things. We've been asked questions, we've provided a lot of information. There is a dialogue back and forth and the new administration is making its decision now." On how the "Project 28" test project taught them that a system still in development is best left in the hands of "geeks":

Officials learned that it is not as simple as putting off-the-shelf technology on towers, stringing it together, turning on the switch and handing the system over to the Border Patrol, Borkowski said.

"It's really more complex than that so we ought to go back to the basic way you build programs like this, which is in a very structured, serial, step-by-step, very deliberative engineering process so that you increase the chance you will find what's broken as you move through that process in a controlled environment. That's a key lesson learned and that's what we've been doing."

"If I am going to put stuff together for the first time and the odds are that at least some things will not work, I really ought to be doing that while it's still in the control of the engineers, you know, the geeks, whose jobs it is to worry about that. I ought not to be doing that at the time I'm putting it in the hands of the frontline agents." On similarities and differences between the Project 28 prototype system and the new versions set to go up this year:

It's the same basic structure, with day and night cameras, radars and ground sensors, with upgraded components.

"We've replaced the cameras and radars with ones that we think are better performing for here and we've also replaced the communication method. … In the early Project 28 there were satellite communications and that led to lags and delays, so we went to microwave and, of course, the new system has microwave." On the testing that has been going on in Playas, N.M., since last summer on the new system:
Officials have built one fully equipped tower and have been testing it with sensors hung on other places, such as buildings and air-strip towers in the area. They have sent people on foot, on horseback and in vehicle across the desert to determine how well the system detects and identifies them.

During a test in December, they left the system running for two weeks to see how it fared. It did reasonably well, but didn't pass. They are still working on the issues, which include the system locking up after being on for extended periods, and the cameras not working in high winds. On what he brings to the table as executive director:

"A lot of experience in the program management of big, complex programs. That's what I was trained to do in the Air Force and then I did a great deal of that at NASA. … Program management is not something that any person with good leadership skills and basic management sense can do. It's a skill that you develop through years of experience and training. I can look at this program and see where I need to build discipline and I can set priorities."

Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com.

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/279337.php

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