Boeing Gets Contract for U.S. Border Security Plan

Posted September 20, 2006 in [Security]

U.S. Goes With Boeing
For Border-Security Plan

By JOSEPH SCHUMAN
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE

With a wider overhaul of U.S. immigration unlikely to make it out of Congress soon, the Bush administration today is expected to announce it has picked Boeing to take the lead in a plan to curtail illegal immigration through high-tech surveillance.

Congressional sources tell the Washington Post that the Department of Homeland Security has rejected a costly plan to rely on unmanned aerial vehicles to secure the border and will instead go with the Boeing idea of building 1,800 towers along the 6,000 miles of northern and southern frontiers. Under the Boeing plan, aerial drones will be used only when needed to pursue suspects. Instead, a variety of electronic sensors on the towers, including cameras and heat and motion detectors, would track all movement in and out of Mexico and Canada, in what the Post describes as a test of whether technology can address one of the nation's hottest political and security concerns. Boeing will be asked to install or at least help supervise the construction of the network, starting near Tucson, Ariz., congressional officials tell the New York Times. But the initial contract will be valued at just $80 million rather than the $2 billion estimate provided for the six-year deal, the Times says.

Boeing, which beat out teams that included Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Ericsson, focused its bidding strategy on coming up with a solution that could be expanded to cover the whole U.S. border area without causing problems for the rest of DHS's antiterrorism initiatives, Boeing executive Wayne Esser tells the Times. "This is not a Department of Defense type of procurement," he said. "Customs and Border Protection just doesn't have that kind of a budget." The overall project, President Bush's Secure Border Initiative, has attracted defense companies that are looking for new revenue sources at a time of uncertainty about Pentagon spending, The Wall Street Journal notes. While the total projected value of SBI hasn't been made public, it is expected to be the biggest DHS program since the 2004 contract given to Accenture to create the U.S. Visit system aimed at monitoring foreign travelers.