Defensive measures must cover not only the hundreds of airports, maritime ports, and land-border crossings considered official ports of entry, but also vast unprotected land and water areas as well. A comprehensive view of U.S. borders also must include awareness and engagement of threats at or near their points of origin, or at their point of embarkation for the U.S., often far outside our borders, said Susan Rhodes, Maritime Borders Program Manager.
Sandia’s team applies systems analysis and engineering — a capability built from the Labs’ extensive experience in nuclear-weapons stockpile stewardship — to understand these complexities and develop border solutions within an orderly framework.
Sandia has been involved in major border projects at many levels, including understanding the problem, developing security technologies and systems, testing security systems, and placing systems into field operations.
Ensuring that dangerous materials never approach our borders is a key element of the Materials Protection, Control, and Accounting Program, sponsored by NNSA. A key element of the program is to secure potential threats at the source by improving security of Russian Federation fissile material and nuclear warheads.
Sandia also is involved in NNSA programs to prevent nuclear smuggling across foreign borders that bound potential sources of nuclear weapons and/or material. The Second Line of Defense program — now extending to more than 15 countries — focuses on surveying sites, installing security and radiationdetection systems, and surveying and equipping foreign seaports to prescreen U.S.-bound container cargo. In another project, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office asked Sandia to develop a concept for detecting radiological and nuclear material in land, sea, and air cargo throughout the transportation-supply chain, and to recommend solutions.
For the last three years Sandia has supported Operation Safe Commerce for the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The program funded through the DHS Grants program seeks to identify, evaluate, and demonstrate technologies that would reduce risks arising from containerized cargo.
Labs researchers have created computer simulation tools to evaluate security options at several types of border crossings — including airports, seaports with cargo, pedestrian crossings, and vehicle crossings. The tools model not only the security of an entry point but also the flow of people and goods and the economic consequences of slowdowns resulting from security incidents.