http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/us/22 ... ref=slogin

U.S. Project to Secure Borders Will Begin in Arizona Desert

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: September 22, 2006
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — A rugged, largely unpopulated 28-mile stretch of desert southwest of Tucson will be the testing ground for the latest high-tech campaign by the United States government to wrestle control of the border, this time in a partnership with Boeing, the military and aerospace company.

Yet as top Department of Homeland Security officials and Boeing executives gathered here on Thursday to hail the start of the project — which will cost an estimated $2 billion over six years and eventually cover the entire 6,000 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders — they acknowledged that the first challenge was disproving skeptics.

“The common complaint about the government is there is a lot of lofty rhetoric, but the achievement always falls short,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. “We are very mindful of that. This is a very tall order. This is about a solution we believe is going to do the job.”

Boeing, Mr. Chertoff formally announced, beat out other military contractors that had bid to be the engineer of sorts for the program, the Secure Border Initiative.

In that role, Boeing will be charged with lining up radar systems, cameras, ground sensors, aerial vehicles, wireless communications equipment and vehicle barriers, as well as traditional fences. It will also coordinate their use by a Border Patrol force that is supposed to be made up of 18,000 officers by 2008. That is the year by which the Department of Homeland Security intends to achieve “operational control” of the border.

“There have never been before all of these tools collected in one plan,” said the department’s deputy secretary, Michael Jackson. “It is a radical change in business as usual at the border.”

The department is well aware of the decades of failed or incomplete border-security efforts, including most recently a program known as the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System that turned out to be a $429 million flop.

In that effort, begun in 1997, the cameras often broke down, fogged up in the cold and rain, or were never installed as promised. Even when cameras or sensors set off alerts, they most often were false alarms or, if they were not, the Border Patrol often did not investigate them, a report by the department’s inspector general said last year.

Given this track record, the department is starting small with a tiny section of the Arizona border, so it can quickly adjust if the strategy does not work. That means for now, the Boeing contract is worth $70 million, enough to cover setting up the management for the entire project and to pay for installing the equipment near the border post at Sasabe, Ariz., one of the busiest spots for illegal crossings.

“We recognize we are in a fish bowl here, and everybody will be watching, and we have to perform,” said J. Wayne Esser, the Boeing executive who supervised the company’s pitch for the contract. “Failure is not an option.”

At Sasabe, Boeing intends to install nine tower-mounted camera and radar systems, to track movement, day or night, in any weather. Sensors will be buried in the ground to cover areas outside the radar’s reach, Mr. Esser said. When the radar or camera notices activity, the cameras would be used to figure out how many people are involved, if they are on foot or in a vehicle or if the motion is an animal instead.

Border Patrol officers will be able to monitor the camera images from the field through wireless laptop connections. The officers will also probably have tiny unmanned aerial vehicles that can be launched from a truck to keep track of illegal immigrants until they can be caught.

Boeing will rely on subcontractors for most of the equipment. Its primary job, similar to the role it plays in building airplanes, will be to integrate all the parts into a working system, officials said. It will be given work orders in small increments, so Department of Homeland Security officials can monitor its performance.

“Build a little, prove it, build more,” Mr. Jackson said.

The key, he said, will be figuring out how to use the Border Patrol staff most effectively to pick up the illegal immigrants and return them to Mexico or other countries of origin quickly enough so that the system is not overwhelmed.

Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, said the technology sounded impressive, but he wondered if it was enough.

“As long as you have half a million new jobs here going empty each year but for these workers, they are going to find a way to get around whatever obstacles we put in their way,” Ms. Jacoby said.

About $700 million has been budgeted for the project this year and next. While officials had given an overall estimate of $2 billion, Mr. Chertoff refused to put a price on the project. “As inexpensive as possible” was all he said.