Virtually blind: failures reported in key component of U.S.-Mexico electronic fence.

• Position: SECURITY BEAT: HOMELAND DEFENSE BRIEFS

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The Project 28 virtual border fence in Arizona cannot currently deliver live streaming video to Border Patrol agents in the field, a Department of Homeland Security official said.

Streaming video is a key capability that would have allowed agents to observe and track in real time illegal aliens or smugglers crossing the border.

The revelation that a highly touted component of the system does not work as promised came only days after the Obama administration announced that it is moving forward to expand the program to other areas along the southern border. The budget proposal includes $8 billion to deploy the high-tech virtual fence in other areas.

Kurt Guth, Secure Border Initiative director of systems engineering, said video from the cameras and sensors deployed along the border cannot be pushed to Border Patrol agents traveling in trucks or other vehicles because the department has not identified an affordable cellular or satellite communications systems that can operate in such a remote area.

Instead, images of smugglers or illegal migrants crossing the border are transmitted back to a control center in Tucson where operators there verbally guide agents to the target over radios.

Guth admitted that this is unchanged from current procedures where legacy cameras are in place. The only changes are that there were no cameras along the 28-mile test site and that the sensors have improved in quality, he said at a National Defense Industrial Association homeland security science and technology conference.

DHS is currently carrying out a market survey to find out what options are available. The common operating picture software, which is designed to push live, streaming video to Border Patrol agents so they can track intruders in real-time, works as promised, Guth said.

However, "in the area of operations--the lack of infrastructure if you will--for the wireless or satellite communications, is causing us some pause in our deployment of that capability," Guth said. The program doesn't have the funding to set up its own...