The Project 28 virtual border fence in Arizona cannot currently deliver live streaming video to Border Patrol agents in the field, a Department of Homeland Security official said.
Streaming video is a key capability that would have allowed agents to observe and track in real time illegal aliens or smugglers crossing the border.
The revelation that a highly touted component of the system does not work as promised came only days after the Obama administration announced that it is moving forward to expand the program to other areas along the southern border. The budget proposal includes $8 billion to deploy the high-tech virtual fence in other areas.
Kurt Guth, Secure Border Initiative director of systems engineering, said video from the cameras and sensors deployed along the border cannot be pushed to Border Patrol agents traveling in trucks or other vehicles because the department has not identified an affordable cellular or satellite communications systems that can operate in such a remote area.
Instead, images of smugglers or illegal migrants crossing the border are transmitted back to a control center in Tucson where operators there verbally guide agents to the target over radios.
Guth admitted that this is unchanged from current procedures where legacy cameras are in place. The only changes are that there were no cameras along the 28-mile test site and that the sensors have improved in quality, he said at a National Defense Industrial Association homeland security science and technology conference.
DHS is currently carrying out a market survey to find out what options are available. The common operating picture software, which is designed to push live, streaming video to Border Patrol agents so they can track intruders in real-time, works as promised, Guth said.
However, “in the area of operations — the lack of infrastructure if you will — for the wireless or satellite communications, is causing us some pause in our deployment of that capability,” Guth said. The program doesn’t have the funding to set up its own communications backbone, he said.
“We’ve decided to defer from the deployment of that capability,” he said.
The Project 28 pilot program was beset by technical difficulties from its beginnings in 2006. Lead contractor Boeing received $20 million to set up the virtual fence using commercial-off-the-shelf products in the Sasebo area south of Tucson, but Government Accountability Office reports confirmed that parts of the system, including the sensors, did not initially work.
Mark Borkowski, executive director of the Secure Border Initiative, told the Arizona Republic newspaper that satellite communications did not function well because the lag time from the sensor to the spacecraft to the vehicle was too great. The targets moved out of view before the image reached the vehicle, he said.
He said the system has been upgraded to meet Border Patrol specifications and needs, and will work despite the criticism.
Guth suggested that Border Patrol agents may not like the live, streaming video capability anyway — that they may prefer looking for targets outside their windows rather than watching a screen inside the truck.
“It’s actually a bigger change for them to have their head in the vehicle looking at a screen than it is for them to be out looking around with an earplug in their ear for the radio. This is what they’re used to doing,” he said.
Guth’s suggestion that CBP agents did not necessarily want to have live streaming video as part of the virtual fence system confirms earlier criticisms by GAO. The watchdog agency questioned Project 28 senior management for having failed to consult with frontline users before designing the system.