GovernmentExecutive.com

Boeing has won a multibillion-dollar border security contract, according to congressional officials.

The Washington Post and the New York Times reported Wednesday that congressional sources briefed on the decision Tuesday said the firm has been tapped by the Homeland Security Department to manage its high-tech border initiative.

The company's proposal included plans to erect a network of 1,800 towers equipped with sensors, cameras, and heat and motion detectors. Boeing plans to deploy the system along both the northern and southern borders within three years. According to congressional sources, Boeing's plan relied less on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles than competing proposals.

The contract, known as SBINet, was issued under the Secure Border Initiative, one of the largest and most important Homeland Security projects.

When Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the SBI program last year, he said it would take five years to gain operational control of the northern and southern borders. He told lawmakers this summer that homeland security funding in the fiscal 2006 emergency supplemental bill, along with the deployment of National Guard troops to the border, will enable the department to accelerate the program.

He said the department plans to have more than 18,300 Border Patrol agents hired by the end of 2008, which he said would double the force from 2001 levels.

Michael Jackson, DHS' deputy secretary, told an industry audience in Washington earlier this year that SBInet "is not about simply buying gizmos." The performance-based, indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contract is about reshaping the way government monitors the border. "We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business," Jackson said.

SBInet was designed to replace two previous efforts to gain control of the borders: the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System and America's Shield Initiative.

ISIS was scrapped in 2004 after government investigators found that technology for it either did not work or was never deployed. The shield initiative replaced ISIS, but the department said SBInet is a better, more comprehensive program.

COMMENTS

• I agree with the previous posters. Unless there are human law enforcement personnel to respond when these hi-tech sensors detect illegal aliens crossing the border, this whole project is a waste of valuable time and money. In more than 26 years of federal law enforcement service, I have yet to see any piece of technology take a violator into custody! I have, however, witnessed the expenditure of billions of dollars for toys like these, which haven't always proven to be wise expenditures. By the way, will this deal cover R & D, as well as the manufacture of these devices, training of personnel in how to use them properly, and maintenance of this equipment, which is going to be subjected to extremes of heat and cold, dust and sand, etc.? GovExec.com reader Posted September 25, 2006 12:58 PM
• What a wonderful pick! Boeing has a lot of experience building fences and is a natural for this contract! How did Brown and Root miss this one? Was the vice president asleep again? Taxpayer Posted September 22, 2006 6:37 AM
• Wouldn't a 40-foot tall and 20-foot wide wall stretching across the entire Mexican boarder be cheaper and more effective? What I perceive is just another system requiring constant monitoring and ongoing repair. So we have detected an illegal entry. Big deal! When the claxon sounds off who is going to be at Latitude XX, Longitude YY, to apprehend the intruders? I know, let’s spend 200-plus grand each day/night, in sending out choppers to pursue the illegal entries to different points across the thousands of miles that will not have manned patrols. This will be a huge money pit of taxpayers’ money handed over to the Boeing conglomerate. This is such a very wasteful scheme to place on the American public. The wall will work. Build it, and they won’t come! DDF Posted September 20, 2006 9:54 PM