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Having won the contract for Secure Border Initiative-Network (SBI-Net) program, Boeing and its team members are gearing up efforts to provide Border Patrol members with more technology in order to make best use of their manpower.
By Michael Burnett

Having won the contract for Secure Border Initiative-Network (SBI-Net) program, Boeing and its team members are gearing up efforts to provide Border Patrol members with more technology in order to make best use of their manpower.

Boeing this fall was awarded the SBI-Net contract by the Department of Homeland Security, which will get a boost from resources that have traditionally served the military interests. Boeing, a major defense contractor, drew upon its past experiences with the Department of Defense to successfully argue that it was the large-scale systems integrator most capable of pulling off the unique mission of SBI-Net.

Even before the contract decision was announced, the groundwork for a tactical infrastructure for border security was being laid by more than 6,000 members of the National Guard who have been stationed along the U.S. border with Mexico as part of Operation Jump Start, an initiative by President Bush to relieve Border Patrol agents of some of their non-enforcement duties and place them back at the border to crack down on illegal immigration.

As Guard personnel have been rotating in and out of the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, they have been providing support that U.S. officials hail as extremely helpful in establishing routes for the surveillance technology that forms the backbone of SBI-Net.

Upon award of the SBI-Net contract, Boeing immediately set to work on its first two task orders. The first involves setting up program management offices for the entire SBI-Net program, while the second involves beginning to set up surveillance within the troublesome Tucson Sector—a U.S. Border Patrol area centered around Tucson, Ariz.

Mobile Towers

The SBI-Net team will begin by setting up mobile towers along the U.S./Mexico border, explained Wayne Esser, Boeing’s SBI-Net strategic development officer. These mobile towers will carry surveillance and communications equipment that Border Patrol agents can use to monitor the border areas and communicate with each other.

“All of the surveillance towers have a lot of things on them. We do have some in some situations where we just have communications relay towers. That’s a much simpler tower. It doesn’t have to carry as much load and that sort of thing. But from time to time, we do have to put in relay towers because of terrain and line of sight,” Esser said.

Once positions for the mobile towers have been finalized in the Tucson Sector, the Boeing SBI-Net team will replace them with permanent towers. Boeing then plans to reuse the mobile towers in other Border Patrol sectors to determine the placement of more additional towers along about 2,000 miles of total border.

“Once we deliver at the end of eight months, it won’t be like we will have it deployed and then we will go into some test phase. At the end of this first task order, we will have a fully working system. It will have initial operating capability. It is going to impact how the agents work,” Esser said.

Each tower will vary in what surveillance and communications equipment it carries, because each length of the U.S. border varies in climate, terrain, population density, and other factors. So, Esser explained, some towers may have short-range radars because they need only detect close approaching intruders, while others may have long-range radars because they must cover longer distances, like across a lake or other distances.

All information received by SBI-Net sensors is to be collected in command centers, where decisions can be made to deploy Border Patrol agents for maximum effectiveness. Concurrent with the rollout of SBI-Net, the Bush administration plans to increase the number of Border Patrol agents, from about 12,000 now to about 18,000 by the end of 2008, possibly drawing down the National Guardsmen augmenting the Border Patrol at the same time.

Boeing is inviting companies with capabilities related to its SBI-Net solution to sign up at an on-line supplier registration page.

Technology Firepower

Major subcontractors in turn are already working with smaller firms to develop technology in specific areas. Perot Systems Government Solutions, for example, plans to bring in additional firepower from military technology companies that it has worked with in the past, according to President Jim Ballard.

“One of the companies that works for us has in place an existing technology that is a PDA technology that is being used in Afghanistan right now to create an operating environment, understand what the battlefield looks like, where you need to be, what are going to be the weak areas, and so on, on this PDA,” Ballard said, referring to a company called Miletus Associates. “We think that is going to have some value.”

A second company subcontracted to Perot Systems, Monitron, manages many of the ground sensors in use by DoD. Ballard estimated the company prepared or installed about 1,500 ground sensors in the past year.

In addition, there is CTS America, which currently supplies database access for police forces in Florida from their cars.

“The company currently provides the Pensacola Police Department and some of the Florida State Police with a laptop in a patrol car that, anytime an officer responds to an event—whether he has pulled somebody over, he’s going to somebody’s house, or he’s stopping somebody on the street—he gets a whole basis of information on how to approach that event,” Ballard reported. “Is this a violent person? Are they wanted? Is this a stolen car? That’s a lot of information, so that when they step out of the car, they feel as safe as they possibly can in an unknown environment.”

In possibly introducing proven technologies from those three companies, and potentially others, Perot Systems hopes to speed up the integration of effective solutions, Ballard said.

“Some of this is change management. And some of this is really the integration of a command center approach to this,” he observed.

IT Workload

Unisys Federal Systems will provide all information technology infrastructure, information systems integration, several security systems, and IT operations and maintenance. The development of the common operating picture system, which provides command center personnel an overview of what is happening in Border Patrol sectors, also falls under the responsibilities of Unisys. This common operating picture will be used to enable Border Patrol Agents to know where illegal entries are occurring and respond to those incursions appropriately, as well as share information with other law enforcement personnel who require situational awareness of the border environment at and between ports of entry.

The common operating picture draws its data from sensors capable of detecting an illegal crossing of the border and tracking the illegal party until Border Patrol makes an apprehension, said Brian Seagrave,

Unisys vice president for border security. “Boeing and team members will deploy sensors on the border on towers or on the ground,” he explained. “There will be some airborne sensors as well, to fill gaps in ground coverage or for certain special missions. Those sensors will detect an illegal entry when it occurs, and data from the detection gets fed over communications to the common operating picture system. That is where data from sensors on the border are correlated and presented as an event to the Border Patrol personnel that are monitoring and dispatching agents.

“The operator will see that event displayed geospatially in real-time. The system will show exactly where the event is occurring on a map of the area of operations. The operator can click on the event to view the scene through long-range cameras at the border, identify the type of event, and classify the risk of the event. He can see the routes of escape the illegals have and how long until they get to escape—escape meaning they can blend in and Border Patrol will not be able to distinguish them anymore,” he continued.

Through Global Positioning System transponders on Border Patrol agents, the system will also display the location of the nearest and best qualified response assets, enabling the operator to deploy the most effective, efficient response. From within this same system, the operator can dispatch field agents to respond to the event, with recommended location of interception. Agents in the field, whether in a vehicle, on foot or on horseback, have similar visibility of the event. They receive and can acknowledge the dispatch.

Eventually, they will be able to control border cameras to conduct their own assessment of the event. That capability depends on a broadband communications network to be carried on the towers. “Another Boeing partner will put up the broadband communications. Unisys will provide the agents with the computing devices that will receive common operating picture data on the event. The idea is to enable agents in the field to take their own look so they know before they go the risks of the situation,” Seagrave added.

Border Patrol agents also will gain the ability to capture fingerprints of apprehended personnel with handheld devices. If the agents are in range of the communications towers, they will be able to instantly identify anyone they detain through scanning their fingerprints into the device. If the agents are not in range of the towers, they can store the fingerprints until they are in range or until they return to an operations center. This type of information can also be shared with other law enforcement personnel within and beyond the Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). For example, CBP officers who inspect travelers arriving at ports of entry will know automatically if individuals have previously been encountered by the Border Patrol attempting to illegally enter the country between ports.