A Continuing Role As "America's Lifesaver"

Coast Guard Modernizes Its National Distress & Response System

By OTTO KREISHER

Otto Kreisher is a reporter for Copley News Service.

Although deeply involved in homeland security and a host of other tasks, the mission that probably remains closest to the hearts of the men and women of the Coast Guard is their historic duty to rescue mariners in distress--search and rescue, or SAR, in other words.

From the rowed surf boats of the 19th-century lifesaving stations to the powerful cutters and helicopters of today, the essential elements for a successful rescue have been the same: (a) knowing that a vessel is in trouble and where it is; and (b) the timely deployment to the scene of the assets needed to carry out the rescue.

But the current U.S. maritime emergency communications system that is supposed to facilitate those key functions is not only outdated but also severely limited in capability. To correct the problem, the Coast Guard is in the midst of a major upgrade program called the National Distress and Response System (NDRS) Modernization Project.

The project will replace today's single-channel analog radios, hand-plotted status charts, and spotty coverage with multifrequency state-of-the-art digital communications, computerized emergency locator and asset management, and effective coverage over virtually all of the coastal and inland navigable waters of the United States and U.S. territories.

"We are revolutionizing the way we do business,'' said Coast Guard Capt. Ronald T. Hewitt, program manager for the NDRS modernization project.

Although the $500 million project is mainly intended to improve the command, control, and communications infrastructure for maritime safety, Hewitt said, it also will help the Coast Guard carry out its other coastal missions--e.g., environmental protection, fisheries management, and law enforcement.

"It will help in homeland security in the new environment as well," he added.

A glaring illustration of the problems with the current national distress system was the sinking of the sailboat Morning Dew just outside Charleston, S.C., on 29 December 1997, according to Hewitt--and to Elaine Dickinson, a spokeswoman for BoatUS, a major voice for America's 70 million recreational boat owners and sailors.

Trying to enter Charleston--at night, while beset by rain and heavy winds--the 34-foot boat (with its owner, his two teenaged sons, and his nephew on board) crashed into a jetty only a mile and a half from the nearest Coast Guard station, Dickinson said.

One of the boys tried several times to call for help. But the Coast Guardsman on watch at the station could not understand the garbled message from the frantic youth.

Although a crewman on a merchant ship entering the harbor four hours later heard cries for help and alerted the Coast Guard, all four of the Morning Dew's crew drowned before the wrecked boat was found.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation criticized the performance of the Coast Guard itself, but also labeled the Charleston station's emergency response equipment as inadequate. A federal court awarded $21 million last year to the families of the victims.

Planning for the NDRS modernization already had started before the Morning Dew accident, but the tragedy "created the political awareness of the need for it," Hewitt said. Most of the Coast Guard's current distress and response system equipment dates to the 1970s and is badly out of date, he commented.

A key weakness of the existing system is that the radios can handle only one channel at a time, Hewitt said. This means that, when a Coast Guard station uses its radio for other communications, it no longer can monitor Channel 16-- the maritime emergency, or guard, channel for distress calls. The current radios also cannot handle data transmissions, Hewitt noted.

The radios in the new system will be tuned to both Channel 16 and Channel 70, the new emergency frequency, plus three voice channels and a data channel, all of them usable at the same time. The upgrading will give Coast Guard stations the ability to communicate in connection with their other functions and still hear distress calls. The new radios also will provide "protected" or secure transmission of sensitive information, Hewitt said.

Another problem with existing radios, he said, is that they provide virtually no help in locating a vessel sending a distress call. "We have no clue where the call is coming from." The new system will automatically provide a line of bearing, accurate within plus or minus two degrees, from the receiving station to the vessel in distress, according to an NDRS briefing paper. This will narrow the search to an area of only 14 square miles (at a range of 20 nautical miles). If more than one station hears the distress message, Hewitt said, the new system will provide multiple bearings, reducing the search area even more.

The modernized system also will be compatible with the newest maritime radios, which have a Digital Selective Calling (DSC) capability and can provide an exact position through a link with the Global Positioning System (GPS) on Channel 70. The DSC radios also can be fitted with a "Mayday button" which, with one push, can transmit a distress signal that could provide the Coast Guard helpful information on the nature of the problem, the boat's position, and other useful data.

For data on the vessel to be available, however, Dickinson said, boaters must have a marine mobile safety identifier number, which is provided by BoatUS.

Although the Federal Communications Commission mandated the DSC radios for boaters, neither the FCC nor the Coast Guard had a program in place to register the new radios, she said. "BoatUS jumped in. We do it as a public service--do it for free." BoatUS maintains the information on registered vessels in a database that the Coast Guard can access.

The DSC system is a key component of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System established by a 1988 international treaty.

The new distress system also has full voice and data digital recording capabilities--which, if they were available at the time, Hewitt said, would have allowed the watch stander in Charleston to have quickly played back and "stretched out, or refined'' the garbled message from the Morning Dew. Not only will the new equipment include computerized consoles that automatically display the position of a boat sending a distress signal, he added, it also will track and display the positions and status of all of the Coast Guard assets--boats, helicopters, and/or fixed-wing aircraft--available to respond to an emergency.

Today, using the old analog radios, a regional Coast Guard station has to call all of the cutters and aircraft in its area of responsibility to determine where they are, then mark their positions with pins on a wall chart, Hewitt explained. The current system has 277 remote receiving stations, an insufficient number to cover the nation's 25,000 miles of coastline. The modernized system will have 400 stations, closing the 65 coverage gaps that now exist, with a little cushion to spare. The remote stations will feed into the Coast Guard's 46 regional centers around the nation.

The commercial-off-the-shelf digital equipment used in the new system will be much easier and cheaper to maintain than the old analog gear, which can differ considerably from one regional center to another, Hewitt said.

The contract specifications for the new system require the remote stations to be able to receive a distress message, from a one-watt transceiver, at a range of 20 nautical miles. But most hand-held radios have three to four watts of power and the typical mounted marine radio has 20-25 watts, which can more than double the effective range, Hewitt said.

The modernization project is now nearing the end of the first contract phase, in which three contractors developed detailed proposals. That phase cost $38 million, he said.

The Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego assisted Hewitt's staff on various technical aspects of the project, including direction-finding and the conduct of an advanced technology demonstration for the DSC radios, he said.

A contract for the installation of the new NDRS system is scheduled to be awarded in September to one of the competing contractors: Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems; the Science Applications International Corporation; and Motorola Systems Solutions Group (now a part of General Dynamics Decision Systems).

The next phase of the program will cost an estimated $477 million, Hewitt said, bringing the total NDRS cost to about $515 million.

The winning contractor also will be awarded a separate contract to maintain and upgrade the system for a base period of up to six years--which could be extended to as much as 19 years, according to Mary Small, the contract officer.

The Coast Guard will buy all of the equipment associated with the new national distress system, but will lease most of the land on which the 400 remote receiving station towers will be located, Hewitt said.

The contract calls for installing the new system in stages, with the first centers up and running in 2003 and the entire system operational by 2006.
The first fully operational system is to be installed within 12 months of contract award, Hewitt said, in the Atlantic City Regional Center and the Eastern Shore area, which runs from Sandy Hook, N.J., to the tip of the Delmarva peninsula.

The Atlantic City/Eastern Shore site was selected, he said, partly because that site would be convenient for the project staff, which will have to conduct a "rigorous test and evaluation" of the new equipment.

While testing at the first site is being conducted, the other new remote transmitting and receiving towers in the system will be built around the nation and in the U.S. territories. "As soon as the system is tested and proven, we will start installing the equipment at the other sites," Hewitt said.
The service's view of the future--Coast Guard 2020--notes that: "Technology will not eliminate the dangerous work of rescuing people and protecting property, but will enhance Coast Guard performance. ... The Coast Guard will remain America's Lifesaver and Guardian of the Sea."
The new system will become operational in various "blocks" of coastline served by the regional centers, starting along the Atlantic Coast in 2004, then moving to the Gulf, the Pacific, and into the Great Lakes, the Western Rivers--primarily the Mississippi and Missouri--then to Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and in 2006, the Caribbean.

One problem with that installation schedule, Dickinson said, is that the FCC required the new DSC capabilities to be available on fixed-mount maritime radios in 1999. "The radio market has gotten a little bit ahead of the government," she noted, and now offers many models of the new DSC radios.

"The problem is, the Coast Guard will not be monitoring Channel 70 until 2006. That means boaters cannot rely on the Coast Guard receiving Mayday calls on Channel 70 until then. That's our biggest concern," Dickinson said.

But, she added, "when the whole system is up and running, it certainly will save lives and reduce search-and-rescue time." *