US Virtual Border Fence Doesn't Work

lelitsch writes "The Washington Post reports that the initial pilot of the Virtual Border Fence planned by the DHS and subcontracted to Boeing has been a miserable failure. A lot of the points in the report have the hallmark of death-march software development projects. Some choice quotes include 'did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol,' 'DHS officials do not yet know the type of terrain where the fencing is to be constructed,' and 'the design will not be used as the basis for future... development.' The article notes that Boeing was forced to deliver 'something' early as President Bush pushed for immigration reform in Congress in 2006. That reform effort died last year in the Senate."

Comments

No, we just think you're stupid

[PontifexPrimus]

...and here's why.
Relevant quote:

As of January 1, 2000, children born in Germany to foreign parents acquire German citizenship at birth if at least one parent has lived legally in Germany for a minimum of eight years. Children who acquire German citizenship under this provision will be allowed to hold dual citizenship until they reach adulthood; they will be required to choose between their German and foreign citizenship by the age of 23 at the latest. Children born to foreign parents before the enactment of the new law who are under the age of ten will also be able to claim German citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany, if the above named conditions (time of legal residence) apply.

If you're so woefully underinformed, just keep from commenting, ok?

DHS vs basic math

[unchiujar]

some relevant quotes
"Boeing has already been paid $20.6 million for the pilot project, and in December, the DHS gave the firm another $65 million to replace the software with military-style, battle management software. "
"Boeing has said that the initial effort, while flawed, still has helped Homeland Security apprehend 2,000 illegal immigrants since September"
A quick division $85 600 000 / 2 000 gives $42 800 per illegal immigrant. And this is the cost to the taxpayer without personnel salaries and other expenses, just what was payed to Boeing. I strongly doubt that each illegal immigrant, if not apprehended, will cost the US tax payers $42 800.

Development Issues

[Gallenod]

I work for DHS and a friend of mine runs a small program that's been managing sensors on the border for 25 years.

Boeing was hired as the project's integrator and instead of subcontracting or working with the existing systems tried to do everything themselves. Why? To keep as much money for themselves, of course. They ignored, at first, all the existing systems and tried to replace them with proprietary technology that would anchor them into govermnent contracts in perpetuity.

They failed. Now they have to rely on refined data from a government-developed system to produce any results at all. This is a pattern I've seen in 26 years of working for the government: we hire an outside vendor who comes in and has to rely on our knowledge to make anything work. In a lot of cases they get us to do much of their work for them. The vendor's employees get huge bonuses and we get downsized. Granted there are times where if you don't bring in someone from the outside nothing will change, but the number of times internal staff saves the vendor's ass has been, in my experience, much higher than the other way around.

Sometimes it's better to spend your money on what your own staff can do instead of just assuming that an outside vendor will automatically develop something better. For some reason, too many executives undervalue the abilities of their own people and hire big names like Boeing for many times what it would have cost to develop better systems in house. The Secure Border Initiative is apparently one of them.

Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons

[drinkypoo]

And you do know that SDI was a pipe dream that tricked the Soviets into a defense spending contest that basically collapsed the Soviet empire and caused the breakup of the USSR? It was never designed to be a working solution.

SDI had two purposes. One: win the cold war. Only we could afford to go into space over and over. Two: produce technology for the weaponization of space.

And they were talking about using satellite mounted mirrors/laser system to blast down missiles. Where is that?

Uh, do you know the contents of every US military satellite currently orbiting?

No? I didn't think so.

The technology, however, is on the way. Being able to do these things from the earth is much harder than being able to do them from space (aside from power requirement issues, which can be solved by spending more money to put up more mass.) If you can fly a 747 with a chemical laser in it and shoot down a missile (done) then you can build the laser anti-missile satellites. Especially since our spy program has taught us so much about optics and tracking.