Rear Adm. Patrick M. Stillman is the Coast Guard's program executive officer for the Integrated Deepwater System.

The Coast Guard remains a multimission force in service to the American people as it incorporates a greater emphasis on homeland security and strives to define its "new normalcy." The Coast Guard was one of the first federal agencies on-scene after the 11 September attacks. Coast Guard forces previously assigned to other operations--including 55 cutters, 42 aircraft, and thousands of personnel--were immediately reassigned to homeland-security tasks. Additionally, cutters patrolled the nation's shores and harbors to maintain a deterrent presence and escort high-value vessels (such as cruise ships, tankers, etc.) into and out of American ports. Protecting America's waters from terrorist activity has never been more critical.

It is a common misconception that maritime homeland-security missions are conducted solely near the shores of the United States. The truth is that any successful maritime homeland-security strategy "pushes out" our borders, detecting and eliminating threats well before they reach U.S. shores. This is true not only of terrorist activity, but also of more traditional maritime security threats such as illegal drugs and undocumented migrants. Any other approach takes unnecessary risks with our national security.

President Bush and the Department of Transportation are helping the Coast Guard rise to the challenge. On 25 January 2002 the president stated: "When it comes to securing our homeland, and helping people along the coast, the Coast Guard has a vital and significant mission. The budget that I send to the U.S. Congress will have the largest increase in spending for the Coast Guard in our nation's history."

The president's proposed fiscal year 2003 budget will provide the Coast Guard with the capabilities needed to perform its missions.

To be sure, the Coast Guard faces constraints. The Coast Guard's "deepwater" cutters and aircraft are aging and technologically obsolete, and they are increasingly incapable of efficiently conducting their 14 federally mandated missions and performing essential homeland-security missions. The Coast Guard's post-11 September shift in operational emphasis has only compounded the problem. For example, fisheries enforcement dropped by as much as 90 percent after the attacks, and the service has boarded less than half the number of fishing vessels it boarded last year.

Fortunately, the Coast Guard has been working for the past four years on a solution to the asset-obsolescence problem--the Integrated Deepwater System (IDS). More than a one-for-one replacement program, the IDS will provide the Coast Guard with a state-of-the-market integrated system of assets to detect and respond to maritime threats. The Deepwater program has followed a cutting-edge mission-based performance acquisition strategy to achieve that goal. Three industry teams were given the flexibility to design a system to fulfill mission requirements, with the only specified platform being what is called the National Security Cutter. The three prime contractors during Phase 1 were Litton-Avondale Industries, Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems, and the Science Applications International Corporation.

The program has strong support from both President Bush and the Department of Transportation--the FY 2002 budget for Deepwater was $320.2 million, and the president has requested $500 million for FY 2003. A timely build-out of the Integrated Deepwater System is essential to executing the Coast Guard's homeland security strategy.

Progress to Date

The Deepwater program achieved several important milestones during the past year:

(1) Acquisition Solutions Inc. completed an independent assessment of the Deepwater acquisition strategy in June 2001, giving it high marks. Its final report states that the Deepwater project "has been well conceived, developed, and managed. We laud its focus on mission and the freedom it has given the competing contractor teams to innovate."

(2) Phase 1 of the Deepwater acquisition strategy was completed on 15 June 2001, and the three competing industry teams completed functional designs for their integrated solutions. The Phase 2 RFP (request for proposals) for system implementation was released on 29 June 2001.

(3) Proposals were received on 27 and 28 September. The Coast Guard is currently reviewing the proposals and has scheduled the contract award for the third quarter of FY 2002.

Deepwater and Maritime Homeland Security

The Problem: The objective of maritime homeland security is to protect American marine resources, littoral infrastructure, and maritime regions. Several factors render this task extraordinarily complex:

* The United States wishes to facilitate the free flow of goods and services across borders, which means that the Coast Guard must strike a difficult balance between commerce and security.

* The sheer volume of maritime traffic entering the United States is vast and growing. More than 7,500 foreign-flag ships visit the United States every year, many with multinational crews and cargo. This complicates the Coast Guard's ability to distinguish adversaries from legitimate traffic.

* The scale of the maritime homeland- security problem is enormous. The territory involved covers more than 95,000 miles of coast and 350 ports. The U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone covers more than 3.4 million miles, requiring units to operate in a vast body of water running from the Arctic Ocean to the Caribbean.

* Smugglers already take advantage of our relatively open borders and waterways. Terrorists may use the same waters to infiltrate weapons and/or operatives into the United States. The attack on the USS Cole in Yemen on 12 October 2000 illustrates the destructive power that even small boats can wreak in the hands of terrorists.

* The very nature of weapons of mass destruction makes it imperative that these threats be interdicted as far as possible from U.S. shores.

The Deepwater Solution: The Deepwater program is essential to the maritime homeland-security mission. It is most easily discussed using four of the elements of the Coast Guard's maritime homeland-security strategy, which are to: (1) build maritime domain awareness; (2) enhance the service's presence and response capabilities; (3) protect critical infrastructure and enhance force protection; and (4) increase the Coast Guard's domestic and international outreach. Following is a more detailed discussion of each of those elements.

Maritime Domain Awareness

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. James M. Loy described maritime domain awareness (MDA) as "the effective knowledge of all activities and elements in the maritime domain that could represent threats to the safety, security, or environment of the United States or its citizens." MDA not only allows the Coast Guard to anticipate and respond to potential threats in a timely fashion, but also to optimize the deployment of valuable assets.

The significant improvements in surveillance and communications generated by the Deepwater program will vastly improve the Coast Guard's ability to build MDA by providing enhanced capabilities such as:

* Advanced land, air, and sea-based active and passive sensors that: (a) will possess superior detection, classification, and identification abilities; and (b) will greatly expand the areas under surveillance/detection at any given time.

* The ability to build, maintain, and contribute to a common operational picture displaying the total traffic and the special "targets of interest" over a wide area. This ability will include access to real-time voice, video, data streams, and the relevant databases of other federal agencies; and

* Secure data streams that can be used for reliable communication.

Presence and Response Capabilities

Actually being able to interdict and board ships is a key to the enforcement of U.S. laws and the monitoring of the maritime environment. Future Deepwater assets will have the speed, agility, and firepower needed to overcome the sophisticated equipment available to today's smugglers, terrorists, and other potential adversaries. The interoperability of these future Coast Guard assets with the assets of the nation's other armed services will allow the synergistic sharing of information and the more efficient coordination of effective responses.

The IDS also will give the Coast Guard: (1) the ability to launch and recover small boats, helicopters, and unmanned aerial vehicles in high sea states; and (2) the ability to better coordinate and operate with the U.S. Navy and our NATO allies.

Protect Critical Infrastructure And Enhance Force Protection The U.S. coastline presents an array of targets potentially attractive to terrorists, including but not limited to ports, military facilities, cargo ships, oil tankers, nuclear power plants, and oil refineries. Attacks on any of these targets could damage critical military facilities, shut down vital economic hubs, and/or cause major economic and environmental disasters.

Deepwater's linkages with the National Distress and Response Modernization Project (NDRSMP) will enhance its ability to protect critical infrastructure. The NDRSMP will modernize and upgrade the national distress-and-response system used to monitor the international distress frequency, coordinate search and rescue and other Coast Guard operations, and communicate with commercial and recreational vessels at risk. This upgraded system will provide the foundation for an advanced Coast Guard command-and-control network for units­­including deepwater ships and aircraft--protecting U.S. ports and coastlines.

Deepwater also will improve the effectiveness of joint Coast Guard/Navy missions, including overseas port security, the enforcement of economic sanctions, maritime surveillance, convoy escort, and other force-protection missions. The National Fleet agreement, signed in September 1998 and reaffirmed in 2001, addresses various issues related to Coast Guard/Navy integration, as well as the coordinated planning, training, procurement, and research and development needed between the two services. The Deepwater program will provide the Coast Guard with the flexibility and capabilities required to perform joint missions in the uncertain security environment of the 21st century.

Domestic and International Outreach

The Coast Guard's outreach efforts also play an important role in preserving maritime homeland security. The service's most important international outreach efforts include joint cooperation and training in the areas of security and law enforcement. Because the missions of most foreign navies are very similar to those of the U.S. Coast Guard, this sort of international cooperation is in high demand.

The Deepwater program also will be important in the area of foreign military sales. Given the strong global demand for cutter-sized ships, Deepwater assets will have far more appeal to many potential international customers than larger, more expensive naval vessels.

The Coast Guard's international efforts help the United States establish and maintain valuable relationships with foreign militaries. These relationships augment the Coast Guard's own law-enforcement and intelligence capabilities, which enhance the service's ability to perform its maritime homeland-security mission.

Coordinating responses to disasters is one of the Coast Guard's most important domestic outreach missions. The Coast Guard has a proven track record of performing consequence-management missions, having served as an on-scene force and providing command-and-control support to responders for extended periods of time during such incidents as the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center, the TWA Flight 800 crash, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The United States must prepare for the day when all efforts to prevent terrorist attacks fail and another tragedy occurs. If and when that time comes, the Coast Guard's ability to respond rapidly will be critical.

Staying the Course

The 1999 Interagency Task Force on Coast Guard Roles and Missions argued that a number of complex new missions and tasks, only dimly perceived at the end of the 20th century, will almost inevitably be thrust upon the Coast Guard in the future, as has been the case in the past. Tomorrow's Coast Guard therefore must have the flexibility, the capability, and the joint, multiagency, and multinational interoperability needed to fully discharge its responsibilities to the nation.

Few anticipated that what seemed at the time a very long-term goal would come to pass in so short a time. It is already clear that the homeland-security mission will be vitally important in the coming decades. Asserting that the Coast Guard can "play a role" in homeland security is a gross understatement--the Coast Guard's combination of law-enforcement and military capabilities make it uniquely suited to undertake the most vital missions related to maritime homeland security.

The president's recommended FY 2003 budget, combined with continued support for Deepwater in the coming years, will provide the Coast Guard with the necessary flexibility, capability, and interoperability required for future missions.

The challenge before the Coast Guard--and the American people--is to stay the course. The men and women of the Coast Guard are up to the task. We must be certain they are provided the tools they need to do their job.