Boeing wins high-tech border security deal

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.