LONDON — Saudi Arabia two years ago sought to fortify its northern border with war-torn Iraq by installing a razor-wire fence and an integrated electronic surveillance system. This summer, the nation decided to expand the effort to all its borders. It awarded lead contractor EADS another program — reportedly worth billions of dollars — to secure the rest of the country with a virtual high-tech fence.
“The fence is very important to Saudi Arabia, which has long borders that run across all types of geographical areas, and it will add to the efforts of the border guards to ensure the safety and security of Saudi Arabia from all criminal activities,” Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, told reporters in July. “Of course terrorism is important, but there is also drug and weapons trafficking, and we also have to consider illegal immigrants.”
With an area of approximately 2.2 million square kilometers, Saudi Arabia is roughly one-fifth the size of the United States. The border security contract is the largest program of its kind in the world, said Mike Simms, vice president of solutions and services for EADS Defense and Security Systems Ltd., a subsidiary.
“There’s a lot of interest in these types of programs,” said Simms. The potential market is huge, with nations in the Middle East, Asia and South America all eyeing the progress on the Saudi Arabia project.
The company says it is benefiting from the expertise gained from similar security contracts in Romania, Qatar and ongoing work on Saudi Arabia’s 1,500-kilometer northern border. The kingdom’s remaining 9,000 kilometers of mountain, desert and sea borders will be connected through an integrated system of fixed sensors, mobile platforms and software.
The plan is to use the same technology that was installed along the nation’s northern border — a combination of radar, imagery and infrared systems.
“A lot of what we were doing was not only putting the sensors in, but also having the ability to integrate them,” said Simms. Protecting borders with sensors can be problematic because of false readings that are triggered by innocuous events, such as a camel wandering across the landscape or sandstorms. “If you have a radar track, or something moving, you can put a camera on it and check whether it’s legitimate nomads or a covert intrusion or a sandstorm … When we say, ‘this is something you need to go investigate,’ we’re fairly confident that it’s worth looking at. It’s not a false alarm.”
Already teams are undergoing simulation-based training to learn how to operate the technology. It will take three years to roll out the complete border security system, officials said. “We will deliver an entire integrated border protection [system] for land and sea for all of Saudi,” said Simms.
The challenge in securing the rest of the nation’s borders lies in the difficult terrain. While the northern border comprises mostly flat, sandy deserts and gravel plains, the terrain in the southwest is mountainous. A large chunk of the new program involves maritime surveillance of the western border along the Red Sea and the eastern border with the Persian Gulf.
Monitoring a sea border is more complex than watching land because it involves so many players, including the coast guard that patrols and enforces the law in the water, port authorities that track the movements of merchant ships and scientists who assess impacts on the environment.
“What you see today [are] lots of different organizations, each putting out their own sensors,” said Simms. “What we’re looking at are the opportunities to federate those and to allow different organizations to share sensors, share that information.”
The Port of London Authority monitors the Thames River with an EADS system.
The company is developing a vehicle-based sensor to give operators more flexibility in putting their eyes on suspicious activities. “If they want to look at a particular area in more detail, or because of the terrain if there’s a particular black spot, a vehicle can go in with radar or cameras,” explained Simms.
Though not in the contract, unmanned aircraft could be flown into certain areas to provide additional sensors and detection capabilities. The drones could integrate directly into the land-based communications system via microwave, satellite or other means.
On the back end, software will help operators sort through the data to track potential intrusions. It will have the ability to learn over time and to recognize patterns of certain events, said Simms.
“We’re trying to reduce the amount of information that’s presented to operators so that decisions are made by humans, supported by these systems,” he said.
Simms, who is in charge of investing the company’s research and development dollars in such programs, is always on the hunt for advances in sensors and integration. The company will deploy some of its own sensors for the Saudi program, but the bulk of them are third-party built. “We buy the best of breed and integrate them into our system,” said Simms.
Traditionally a military contractor, the company in recent years has forayed into the homeland security arena. In 2004, Romania hired EADS to deploy a land-based system of radars to detect illegal immigrant crossings. Securing its border was a condition for the nation to join the European Union. The company installed the sensors and also set up communications pipes to pull the data back to central control rooms where the border would be monitored.
In 2007, the company won a “security shield” contract from Qatar to protect its land and maritime borders and its offshore oil and gas platforms. During the bid process, EADS modeled how the system would work and interact with the Qatari’s operational procedures. It also identified potential data flow bottlenecks and other areas where improved decision-making was needed.
“The ability to model that and to show a visual simulation of that during the bid was a key part of bringing alive what we were doing,” said Simms. The company participated in live trials in which the Qatari government intentionally tested the system with intruders. Sensors detected them every time.