Bush turns to big military contractors to gain control of U.S. borders
By Eric Lipton The New York Times
THURSDAY, MAY 18, 2006
WASHINGTON The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President George W. Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: giant military contractors.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the U.S. borders.
Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan - like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment - the defense contractors are zeroing the long borders that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States.
It is a humbling acknowledgment that despite more than a decade of initiatives with macho-sounding names, like Operation Hold the Line in El Paso or Operation Gate Keeper in San Diego, the U.S. government has repeatedly failed on its own to gain control of the borders.
The Bush administration intends to not simply buy high-tech equipment to help it patrol the borders - a tactic it has also already tried, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with extremely limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise and build a whole new border strategy.
"This is an unusual invitation," Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary of homeland security, told contractors this year at an industry briefing, just before the bidding period for this new contract started. "We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business."
The effort comes as the Senate voted Wednesday to add hundreds of miles of fencing along the border with Mexico. The measure would also prohibit illegal immigrants convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors from any chance at citizenship.
The high-tech plan has many skeptics.
"We've been presented with expensive proposals for elaborate border technology that eventually have proven to be ineffective and wasteful," said Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, at a hearing on the Secure Border Initiative last month. "How is the SBI not just another three-letter acronym for failure?"
But Bush said he was convinced that the government can succeed this time.
"We are launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history," Bush said in his speech Monday.
Under the plan, the Department of Homeland Security and its Customs and Border Protection division will still be charged with patrolling the 6,000 miles, or 10,000 kilometers, of borders.
But the equipment these Border Patrol agents use, how and when they are dispatched to spots along the border, where the agents assemble the captured immigrants, how they process them and transport them - all of these steps will now be scripted by the winning contractor. The winner could earn an estimated $2 billion over the next three to six years.
More Border Patrol agents are part of the answer: The Bush administration has committed to increasing the force to about 18,500 from 11,500 by the time the president leaves office in 2008. But simply spreading this army of agents out evenly along the border or extending fences in and around urban areas is not sufficient, officials said.
"Boots on the ground is not really enough," Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, said Tuesday of Bush's plan to send as many as 6,000 National Guard troops.
The tools of modern warfare must be brought to bear: devices like the Tethered Aerostat Radar, a helium- filled airship made for the air force by Lockheed Martin that is twice the size of the Goodyear Blimp. Attached to the ground by a cable, the airship can hover overhead and automatically monitor any movement, during night or day. (One downside: it cannot operate in high winds.)
Northrop Grumman is considering offering its Global Hawk, an unmanned aerial vehicle with a wingspan nearly as wide as a Boeing 737, that can snoop on movement along the border. Closer to earth, Northrop might deploy a fleet of much smaller, unmanned planes that could be launched from a truck, flying perhaps just above a group of already detected immigrants so it would be harder for them to scatter.
Each of these giant contractors is teaming up with dozens of smaller companies that will provide everything from the automated cameras to backup energy supplies to keep this equipment running in the desert.
At least five so-called system integrators - Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop, as well as Boeing and Ericsson - are expected to submit bids. The winner, due to be selected before October, will not be given a specific dollar commitment. Instead, each package of equipment and management solutions will be evaluated and bought individually.
"We're not just going to say, 'Oh, this looks like some neat stuff, let's buy it and then put it on the border,'" Chertoff said.
There is still skepticism, however. A total of $101 million is already available for the program. But on Wednesday, when the House Appropriations Committee moved to approve the Homeland Security Department's proposed $32.1 billion budget for 2007, it proposed withholding $25 million of $115 million allocated next year for the Secure Border contracting effort until the administration better defined its plans.
Rove meets House group
With conservatives in revolt over a proposal that would allow some illegal aliens to qualify for residency, the White House dispatched Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, to a meeting of House Republicans to make the case for the president's immigration plans, The New York Times reported from Washington.
House members said that Rove made little headway and that most Republicans remained adamantly opposed to any plan that leads to citizenship for those unlawfully in the United States.
WASHINGTON The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President George W. Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: giant military contractors.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the U.S. borders.
Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan - like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment - the defense contractors are zeroing the long borders that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States.
It is a humbling acknowledgment that despite more than a decade of initiatives with macho-sounding names, like Operation Hold the Line in El Paso or Operation Gate Keeper in San Diego, the U.S. government has repeatedly failed on its own to gain control of the borders.
The Bush administration intends to not simply buy high-tech equipment to help it patrol the borders - a tactic it has also already tried, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with extremely limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise and build a whole new border strategy.
"This is an unusual invitation," Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary of homeland security, told contractors this year at an industry briefing, just before the bidding period for this new contract started. "We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business."
The effort comes as the Senate voted Wednesday to add hundreds of miles of fencing along the border with Mexico. The measure would also prohibit illegal immigrants convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors from any chance at citizenship.
The high-tech plan has many skeptics.
"We've been presented with expensive proposals for elaborate border technology that eventually have proven to be ineffective and wasteful," said Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky, at a hearing on the Secure Border Initiative last month. "How is the SBI not just another three-letter acronym for failure?"
But Bush said he was convinced that the government can succeed this time.
"We are launching the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history," Bush said in his speech Monday.
Under the plan, the Department of Homeland Security and its Customs and Border Protection division will still be charged with patrolling the 6,000 miles, or 10,000 kilometers, of borders.
But the equipment these Border Patrol agents use, how and when they are dispatched to spots along the border, where the agents assemble the captured immigrants, how they process them and transport them - all of these steps will now be scripted by the winning contractor. The winner could earn an estimated $2 billion over the next three to six years.
More Border Patrol agents are part of the answer: The Bush administration has committed to increasing the force to about 18,500 from 11,500 by the time the president leaves office in 2008. But simply spreading this army of agents out evenly along the border or extending fences in and around urban areas is not sufficient, officials said.
"Boots on the ground is not really enough," Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, said Tuesday of Bush's plan to send as many as 6,000 National Guard troops.
The tools of modern warfare must be brought to bear: devices like the Tethered Aerostat Radar, a helium- filled airship made for the air force by Lockheed Martin that is twice the size of the Goodyear Blimp. Attached to the ground by a cable, the airship can hover overhead and automatically monitor any movement, during night or day. (One downside: it cannot operate in high winds.)
Northrop Grumman is considering offering its Global Hawk, an unmanned aerial vehicle with a wingspan nearly as wide as a Boeing 737, that can snoop on movement along the border. Closer to earth, Northrop might deploy a fleet of much smaller, unmanned planes that could be launched from a truck, flying perhaps just above a group of already detected immigrants so it would be harder for them to scatter.
Each of these giant contractors is teaming up with dozens of smaller companies that will provide everything from the automated cameras to backup energy supplies to keep this equipment running in the desert.
At least five so-called system integrators - Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop, as well as Boeing and Ericsson - are expected to submit bids. The winner, due to be selected before October, will not be given a specific dollar commitment. Instead, each package of equipment and management solutions will be evaluated and bought individually.
"We're not just going to say, 'Oh, this looks like some neat stuff, let's buy it and then put it on the border,'" Chertoff said.
There is still skepticism, however. A total of $101 million is already available for the program. But on Wednesday, when the House Appropriations Committee moved to approve the Homeland Security Department's proposed $32.1 billion budget for 2007, it proposed withholding $25 million of $115 million allocated next year for the Secure Border contracting effort until the administration better defined its plans.
Rove meets House group
With conservatives in revolt over a proposal that would allow some illegal aliens to qualify for residency, the White House dispatched Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, to a meeting of House Republicans to make the case for the president's immigration plans, The New York Times reported from Washington.
House members said that Rove made little headway and that most Republicans remained adamantly opposed to any plan that leads to citizenship for those unlawfully in the United States.
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