Border securityCBP MSC vehicle contracts to Telephonic appear problematic

By Robert Lee Maril

Published 11 May 2016

According to federal government documents, problematic contract inconsistencies predominate in yet another CBP surveillance technology program. The CBP contract in question calls for the production of Multiple Surveillance Capability (MSC) vehicles. Unfortunately, the unintended consequences of these documented problematic delays in the CBP and Office of Technology Innovation and Assessment (OTIA) acquisition process with Telephonics MSC vehicle contracts have serious ramifications. Equally troubling is that CBP MSC contract delays from 2010 to 2015 mirror SBInet delays from 2006 to 2011. These contract delays with Telephonics MSC vehicles, a surveillance technology already in place in other countries, continues to create a U.S.-Mexican border far less secure or safe than it should or has to be.

According to federal government documents, problematic contract inconsistencies predominate in yet another CBP surveillance technology program. The CBP contract in question calls for the production of Multiple Surveillance Capability (MSC) vehicles. The MSC contract, supervised by Mark Borkowski’s Office of Technology Innovation and Assessment (OTIA), originally was awarded in 2010 in a bidding process following CBP procedures and standards. Telephonics Corporation was one CBP awardee of the MSC vehicles contract. Then, more than two and one-half years later, CBP terminated for cause this same contract with Telephonics for MSC vehicles. In late 2015, two and one-half years after CBP’s termination for cause of the Telephonics contract, CBP appears to have awarded the same MSC vehicle contract to Telephonics.

From its start in 2010 to the awarding of the MSC contract to Telephonics in late 2015, this process overseen by Borkowski’s OTIA has taken more than five years. At the same time, according to a Telephonics press release, exactly two functioning MSC vehicles appear to have been produced by Telephonics during this five year time period (“Telephonics Mobile Surveillance Capability Chosen by US Customs and Border Protection,” press release, 19 January 2016.) Aberrations in the CBP MSC contracts with Telephonics have directly resulted in substantial delays in getting this needed surveillance technology into the hands of the U.S. Border Patrol along the Mexican border.

Even before Janet Napolitano finally pulled the plug on the sickly Secure Border Initiative network (SBInet) in 2011, now renamed Block 1 by CBP, Mark Borkowski and his team at OTIA commenced a new round of CBP surveillance technology proposals to defense contractors. The intent of this post-SBInet multi-contract strategy to multiple contractors was to place modern surveillance technologies in the hands of Border Patrol agents along our Mexican border. These new technologies, some of which have been utilized by foreign governments for years, are designed to facilitate Border Patrol agents operating at maximum efficiency to protect our southwestern border.

As reported first in HSWN, according to government documents the failed SBInet program has cost to date $1.389 billion. Borkowski’s new post-SBInet program, divided into five different major contracts awarded to eight corporations, has an additional total contract value to date of $687 million (Robert Lee Maril, “The Real cost of CBP’s failed SBInet is $1.389 billion,” Homeland Security News Wire, 7 March 2016).