Boeing, Bush Pressed to fix glitches in electronic border fence

President George W. Bush's vision of securing the U.S.'s southwestern border with a system of sensors and cameras faces a crucial field test this month as Boeing Co. tries to fix problems that have delayed the $8 billion project.

Cameras that take too long to focus and radar images obscured by falling raindrops were among the glitches that caused Boeing to miss a June deadline for the first stage of a so-called virtual fence along a 28-mile stretch in Arizona.

If the company gets the system to work, it would be in line for a lucrative payday, while the U.S. might be able to minimize the need for more costly physical barriers that are resented by Mexico. Bush's moribund immigration overhaul might also get a boost if confidence in border security rises.

But if administration officials can't demonstrate the system's effectiveness, "they completely blow their own credibility" on immigration enforcement, said Jessica Vaughan, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter border controls.

The Arizona project, which features nine towers bristling with cameras, sensors, radar and satellite-communication links, is the initial phase of the Secure Border Initiative Net, a program introduced by the Department of Homeland Security in 2005. Thousands of Miles

Nothing on the scale of SBInet has ever been attempted. DHS plans an electronic surveillance system to police the 2,000-mile southwestern border by 2013 and eventually the 5,000-mile northern border—a distance almost double that spanned by the Great Wall of China.

The system must operate in harsh desert temperatures and overcome the difficulties of merging information from all of its sensors and cameras into a coherent picture.

The danger "is to underestimate the difficulty of making it work in the real world," said Mohan Trivedi, director of the Computer Vision and Robotics Research Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego.

In June, Boeing engineers working on the initial phase discovered that when cameras turned toward a target, they often weren't focused or positioned at the right height. Key information from sensors and cameras also wasn't being transmitted to Border Patrol vehicles.

"You'd think there would be lab experimentation before you go out and embarrass everybody," said Representative Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican who favors reliance on physical barriers. Burden of Proof

Boeing has contracts for only $67 million for its work so far and has to prove its competence in early tests before it gets the go-ahead to wire the whole southwestern border, said Brad Benson, a spokesman for DHS's Customs and Border Protection unit.