FEATURE ARTICLE

November 2006

Fear of Terror Weapons Drives Tech Funding

By Stew Magnuson

With the nation in the throes of the so-called “long war,” it is no surprise that the bulk of the Department of Homeland Security’s research dollars is going toward technologies designed to prevent terrorist attacks.

It is widely believed that Al Qaida wants to top 9/11 with an even more horrific assault on the United States by using a weapon of mass destruction. That has led analysts to put forth myriad scenarios such as a nuclear bomb in a shipping container, the poisoning of a city’s water supply or a bio-weapon unleashed on the populace. And for every scenario, there is a vendor, lawmaker or policy wonk proffering a technological solution.

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has said repeatedly that preventing a nuclear bomb from entering the United States is one of the department’s top priorities. Meanwhile, the train bombings in London and Madrid, as well as the alleged plot this summer to blow up airliners over the Atlantic with liquid explosives, shows that conventional threats are still on terrorist organizations’ menus.

As the department makes efforts to guard against these myriad threats, the science and technology directorate has been in a state of flux, with three assistant secretaries taking their seats this year. It first took on the challenge of consolidating the research and development programs from DHS’ legacy agencies. Then a presidential directive created a separate entity, the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, thus further complicating the reorganization.

The current director of science and technology, retired Navy Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, has vowed before Congress to strengthen the directorate’s management practices. Cohen came to DHS after five and half years leading the Office of Naval Research. He holds an engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and led the Navy’s Y2K project office.

DHS and its legacy agencies have had their share of high-profile failures. Hurricane Katrina pointed out shortcomings in preparedness and communications interoperability. Efforts to in the 1990s to secure the borders using surveillance technology failed to stem the tide of illegal migrants. The transportation worker identity card, designed to verify the identity of port workers, has missed several deadlines due to mismanagement and concerns that the technology won’t work in a corrosive sea environment. More recently, the Transportation Security Agency put a halt to deliveries of “puffer” machines, which detect the traces of explosives on airline passengers, after concerns mounted that their sensors were being clogged with dust.

Daniel Prieto, senior fellow and director of the homeland security center at the Reform Institute, an Alexandria, Va.-based think tank, said he is optimistic Cohen’s military background will help him take charge of DHS’ research efforts.

He has “one of those can-do backgrounds that you get in there and figure it out quickly,” Prieto said. Cohen will need a combination of “triage and strategic thinking” to put the directorate back on track, he added.

Facing critics in Congress, Cohen promised a “more responsive, customer-focused and robust science and technology management organization.”

He has broken down the directorate’s work into six informal categories:

• Energetics, which includes aviation and mass transit security, and the counter-shoulder-fired-missile program;

• Chemical-biological countermeasures;

• Information management, situational awareness and intelligence sharing, or C4ISR;

• Border and maritime security;

• Human factors, which includes biometrics and studying the behavior of terrorists;

• Infrastructure/geophysical science, which includes critical infrastructure protection and regional, state and local preparedness and response.

The Bush administration’s R&D budget request for 2007 remains mostly flat at just over $1 billion, after factoring in the creation of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which has a budget of $536 million. Its budget has ballooned from $170 million in 2004.

As resources, the department will rely on its own labs as well as an array of other federal laboratories. Among them are the research facilities of the Department of Energy, Defense Department, Health and Human Services and Department of Agriculture.

“This allows the directorate to select the best performer based on capabilities,” Cohen told the House homeland security subcommittee on the prevention of nuclear and biological attack.

Preventing an attack that involves a weapon of mass destruction — chemical, biological or nuclear — will remain the department’s number one priority, Cohen testified.

“It is essential that the nation invest strategically in research and development to detect and prevent a nuclear or biological incident and to minimize the consequences should such an event occur,” Cohen said.

DHS is establishing the national biodefense analysis and countermeasures center to conduct research and the national bioforensic analysis center to test samples in case of attack. The facilities, to be managed by the S&T directorate, will be located at Fort Detrick, Md., and are slated to open in 2008 with a staff of 120, according a DHS fact sheet.

Apart from the S&T directorate, DHS stood up the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office last year to tackle the challenges of preventing nuclear or radiological asymmetric attacks on the homeland.

Director Val S. Oxford, told potential partners at an industry day that the ability to detect nuclear materials in containers will garner much of the office’s funds. In recent months, it has awarded major contracts for a second generation of nuclear material detectors, as well as sensors that can detect shielding that may hide bombs or material.

DNDO is going to have an “aggressive system development and acquisition process to rapidly deploy detection systems,” Oxford said.

“We are shifting priorities in the department to address this threat,” he added.

The office will not only seek better sensors, but more convenient means to deploy them in a variety of circumstances. These might include portable detectors for special events such as the Super Bowl, handheld devices for Border Patrol officers, or systems that can straddle railroad lines and scan contents as trains pass underneath.

What the office doesn’t want is a “fixed defense against a mobile threat,” Oxford said. The office also wants systems where software and sensors can be installed easily so they can be upgraded and improved in the field.

As DHS guards against chemical, biological and nuclear threats, thwarting conventional attacks against airliners remains a research priority. The alleged plot in London to blow up aircraft over the Atlantic with liquid explosives renewed focus on airline security. The “puffer” machines were never designed to detect the chemicals used to construct such bombs.

The London scare will drive DHS to sharpen the Transportation Security Agency’s ability to detect all kinds of explosives, including those that are liquid based. Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson told reporters that the S&T directorate is undergoing a “crash course of working on trying to take this technology and bring it to the field.”

Meanwhile, a program using laser technology to shoot down shoulder-fired missiles aimed at commercial jetliners has entered the third phase of testing. Logistical, legal and policy challenges must be overcome before such a system is widely deployed.

For the border portfolio, Boeing Co., the recent winner of the secure border initiative contract, has indicated that it will use proven technologies to create a virtual fence along the northern and southern borders. However, a lesser-known program, US-VISIT, is researching ways to keep track of those who cross the border legally, then overstay their visas. It is estimated that up to one half of the illegal aliens enter the United States through legal ports of entry, either by car, on foot or in airports.

DHS is using radio frequency identification tags (RFID), which contain small antennas that can communicate with a reader. The tag contains basic information, including a photo, which can be linked to watch list databases.

The United States is one of the few countries that does not ask visitors to show their passport to an official as they depart. US-VISIT will seek to “close the account” to keep track of those who depart through the chips, which will not require the visitor to stop, said Michael Westray, senior member of information technology management solutions delivery at DHS.

There are about 20 separate programs in the department exploring ways to use RFID technology, ranging from commodity tracking to the storage of biometrics, Westray told the RFID Applications conference.

The program, along with other identity verification programs such as TWIC, the REAL ID Act, which will seek to create uniform machine-readable identity cards throughout the United States, will drive funding in the biometrics field.

As for stopping terrorists at the border, Prieto said efforts such as US-VISIT may have a bigger payoff than projects such as the secure border initiative. History has shown that infiltrators have come through Canada or Europe, and they attempted to enter through legal means, he said.

Prieto warned against overstating the southern border’s link to terrorism.

“I think it puts you in a position where potentially a number of southern border projects become white elephants.”

In terms of where the research dollars should flow, DHS should put more of its resources into technology that counters or detects chemical weapons, rather than nuclear or biological, which are more difficult for terrorists to acquire and deploy, Prieto said.

Please email your comments to SMagnuson@ndia.org

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