The real cost of CBP’s failed SBInet is $1.389 billion

The detailed and documented promise of SBInet was the construction of an integrated system of fixed towers, sophisticated cameras, radar, satellite uplinks, and other state-of-the-art surveillance technologies sending images of illegal border crossers in real time to central communication centers for value-added intelligence analysis. In turn these collected images with coordinates would appear on the laptops of Border Patrol agents in the field for action by agents in the field. But at the time that SBInet was terminated by Napolitano, Boeing’s SBInet consisted only of about twenty communication towers in Arizona, a few communication centers, and other supplementary surveillance systems. CBP subsequently named these remnants of SBInet that were still operable Block 1.

Since Boeing’s vision of a functioning SBInet integrated system never actually worked, despite contrary claims made by CBP after the SBInet contract was cancelled, the question then becomes how much did the American public pay for this dysfunctional technology? From 2006 until Boeing’s SBInet contract was formally terminated in 2011, exact Congressional appropriations were extremely difficult to ascertain. Absent hard data, journalists and researchers commonly accepted the numbers provided by politicians and CBP. Typically SBInet and its subsidiary programs were described in the media as costing “a billion dollars” (Julia Preston, “Homeland Security Cancels ‘Virtual Fence’ After 1 Billion Spent,” New York Times, 14 January 2011).

The few government reports accurately describing SBInet usually counted appropriations by specific pieces or contracts of the SBInet program and/or the cost of SBInet over a specific year. This kind of partial information made it next to impossible to determine the actual total cost of SBInet with any accuracy.

In 2016 SBInet is most frequently described by journalists and researchers-including this journalist-as costing $1 billion or more than $1 billion because these are the accepted numbers commonly used in public discourse and the media.

But how much did SBInet actually cost? Is it really $1 billion. Or if more than $1 billion, then how much more? One million? Ten million? A hundred million?

An analysis of federal documents in the public domain identifies the exact total cost to date of the failed SBInet program. As of 25 February 2016, SBInet’s contract obligations totaled $1,389,094,692.01 (Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation, contract number HSBP1006D01353).

Beginning on 14 March 2007, the first SBInet “action obligation” to Boeing is $680,381.00 “Action obligation” refers to the federal budgetary category for “…the total value of all the obligated funds on the contract or order, represented in the U.S. dollars and cents” (Federal Procurement Data System Contract Reporting, PGI 204.606 Reporting data, FPDS Entry-Amounts Section, Revised 11 December 2014).

Since that initial obligation to SBInet, there have been 340 additional action obligations to Boeing.

The last SBInet obligation to Boeing is $100,00 on 9 July 2015.

These same government data show that Boeing did not stop receiving action obligations even after Napolitano publically cancelled Boeing’s SBInet contract in the first weeks of January 2011. In fact, there have been sixty-sevenobligations to Boeing for a total of $60,682,827.01 since Boeing’s contract was terminated.  

Presumably some of these obligations to Boeing are to cover Boeing’s expenses in maintaining and repairing the twenty communication towers and other facilities completed in Arizona for Block 1 from early January of 2011 to the present. These costs, whatever their purpose over the five year period from early January 2011 to January 2016, averaged $12,136,565 per year.

When contacted about the SBInet contract, a Boeing representative responded by e-mail that Boeing could not answer any specific questions about federal contracts including the amount of the award.  

The real cost to date of the failed SBInet program , a cost which excludes the SBInet impact upon both federal agents, border residents, and border crossers, far exceeds the commonly used estimate of $1 billion. It is extremely misleading to describe the cost of the failed SBInet program as more than a billion dollars because such an estimate does not suggest the amount by which one billion dollars is in fact exceeded. That amount is, according to federal documents, $389 million.

The quality, utility, and efficiency of CBP’s failed SBInet program should be judged, like any other federal program, by its real cost to the public. According to government data, that cost to date is $1.389 billion.

Robert Lee Maril is the author ofThe Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.–Mexico Border. He blogs at leemaril.com.