Technology Has Uneven Record on Securing Border

"We are not buying a pig in a poke. . . . We don't have to buy everything they sell," said Jackson, former head of a division at Lockheed Martin.

In Arizona, agents say cameras are mainly limited to populated areas because other parts of the border, where most illegal crossings occur, do not have electricity, and solar-powered cameras don't work. Sand, insects and moisture play havoc with the sensors, causing them to shut down or fire repeatedly. Agents and support staff are too busy to respond to each alarm.

On April 25, the Border Patrol's first and only Predator 2 unmanned aerial vehicle crashed outside Tubac, Ariz., just seven months after the $6.5 million craft began its flights.

To military experts, the goal of erecting a "virtual fence" recalls attempts four decades ago to shut down the 1,700-square-mile area of the Ho Chi Minh Trail used to infiltrate South Vietnam, and more recently, to halt incursions along 1,200 miles of Iraq's border with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

"It's always harder than you think," said Robert Martinage, Krepinevich's senior defense analyst. "The record is mixed."

Technology has, of course, advanced rapidly over the decades. The Southwest's climate and foliage pose fewer challenges, and U.S. law enforcement has advantages of mobility, security and infrastructure on its side, said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen D. Shaffer, a former director for intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Shaffer, now president and chief operating officer of dNovus RDI, a Texas firm that may bid on SBInet, said the project is reasonable but not foolproof. "Where the military historically has fallen short is putting all investments in sensors and not enough in the people that exploit the sensors. I would hope that DHS can get this right."

But smugglers of drugs and immigrants also are highly adaptable and willing to escalate the border "arms race," said Deborah W. Meyers, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank.

"Coyotes" are regularly caught with night-vision goggles, military-issue binoculars, hand-held global positioning systems, a treasure trove of cellphones and police scanners that allow them to listen to border agents.

Border Patrol agents said that smugglers dispatch scouts every five minutes to check enforcement through the border crossing at San Luis, due south of Yuma on the Mexican border.

"They even know the names of our drug dogs, and which are better at which drugs," one agent said. "It's unbelievable how much we are being watched."

Officials say they don't need to seal the borders. They just need to catch enough illegal border crossers to deter others from attempting the trip.

Robert C. Bonner, head of Customs and Border Protection from 2003 to 2005, said that at current staffing, the Border Patrol can handle only 10 percent of the illegal immigrant problem.

"But if you can reduce the flow even by half," he said, "with moderate increases for Border Patrol and technology, we actually can control our border in a way we haven't been able to in 20 or 30 years."

Pomfret reported from Yuma.