Domain Defense

The Navy and Coast Guard began years ago to devise a national strategy for maritime security based on improved global intelligence.

By JASON SHERMAN, Special Correspondent

The nascent quest for a national strategy for maritime security, most recently mandated in a Dec. 21 directive from President George W. Bush, marks a fundamental change to the nation’s idea of national security. A nation that once considered itself sublimely secure is creating a layered defensive structure to protect its shores and maritime approaches.

But, unlike other major turning points in national security strategy, such as President Harry S. Truman’s 1947 containment policy or President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 thunderbolt on opening relations with China, this one was not developed in the White House. The Coast Guard and Navy have for years been crafting and joining together many of the basic building blocks of an overarching strategy on maritime security.

Senior Coast Guard officials in the late 1990s began advocating a concept called “maritime domain awareness,” a new capability that would provide detailed situational awareness of activity in waterways approaching the United States. The idea was to build an intelligence picture of activity on the sea, coastal waters and ports to facilitate Coast Guard search-and-rescue activities, law enforcement and environmental response planning.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, began calling for a “maritime NORAD,” referring to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, to track and identify all ships approaching U.S. shores. His vision: to identify and intercept vessels from hostile nation-states and ships ferrying transnational terrorists potentially armed with weapons of mass destruction.

Soon thereafter, the Coast Guard established a maritime domain awareness program integration office, staffed in part with Navy liaison officers, to oversee a series of initiatives and facilitate a robust exchange of information. This office oversees efforts to acquire technologies such as automatic identification systems, maritime patrol aircraft, and radiological and nuclear detection and response capability.

The Defense Department (DoD) in 2002 created the U.S. Northern Command to coordinate Pentagon homeland defense efforts and allocate military support to civil authorities.

“We can’t defeat a threat if we don’t see it,” Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, told Congressional lawmakers in March. “The time has come to integrate our collection capabilities in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the threat as it exists within the maritime domain.”

McHale’s enthusiasm is buttressed by the new White House directive that calls for the DoD and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to codify in a set of new policies what new equipment and organizations are necessary to tighten security across the vast waterways surrounding the United States, which are vulnerable to exploitation by terrorists. The nine-page “National Security Presidential Directive NSPD-41/Homeland Security Presidential Directive-13” calls for the two departments to craft a “National Strategy for Maritime Security” and establish a cohesive approach to protecting the seas around the country.

Senior Navy and Coast Guard officials recently formed the Maritime Security Integration Group, chaired by Adm. Robert Willard, vice chief of naval operations, and Vice Adm. Terry Cross, vice commandant of the Coast Guard, to carry out this work.

“We’re not kidding around,” said Navy Vice Adm. John Morgan, deputy chief of naval operations for information, plans and strategy. “This is a serious attempt to ensure that we drive out any wedges between not only the Coast Guard and the Navy, but 15 or 16 other agencies. I sit on a panel in the White House with all those agencies. … I have never seen better cross-communication.”

“There are no turf wars between us,” said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Dennis Sirois, assistant commandant for operations. “We’re working every day.”

The big questions DHS and DoD must answer in responding to the directive, according to a naval analyst following the issue, include “Who is going to pay for what?” and “Who is going to operate it?”

Will the need for increased maritime surveillance, for example, be covered by the Navy Multimission Maritime Aircraft, a modified Boeing 737 designed for surveillance of wide swaths of open ocean, or the Coast Guard’s Deepwater modernization programs’ long-endurance surveillance aircraft? The services’ recent efforts to merge their activities indicate the two aircraft may cooperate in monitoring the world’s oceans.

A new project, the Sea Fighter, may be reflective of the future approach by the two services. An experimental catamaran with a combined Navy and Coast Guard crew, the 262-foot Sea Fighter will test the potential of high-speed craft and serve as a technology test bed for both services. It currently is undergoing sea trials.

In addition to the Coast Guard-Navy coordination, an executive-branch group, the Maritime Domain Awareness Senior Steering Committee, is working “to develop an enhanced capability to identify threats to the maritime domain as early and as distant from our shores as possible by integrating intelligence, surveillance, observation and navigation systems into a common operating picture accessible through the U.S. government,” said McHale.

Run by McHale and Michael Jackson, deputy secretary of the DHS, this group is reviewing interagency practices, coordination and executing of policies and strategies related to maritime security. Along with representatives from the DoD and DHS, participants include officials from the departments of State, Treasury, Interior, Commerce, Transportation and Energy, the CIA, the FBI, the White House, the Joint Staff and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Because the Sept. 11 attacks involved hijacked civilian airlines, safety in the skies has been the major focus for the federal government. But the maritime approaches to the nation present a huge challenge. More than 95 percent of overseas trade arrives through U.S. seaports; a staggering 9 million shipping containers enter the nation each year across 26,000 miles of commercially navigable waterways and through 361 seaports.

“The maritime domain facilitates a unique freedom of movement and flow of goods while allowing people, cargo and conveyances to transit with anonymity not generally available by movement over land or by air. Individuals and organizations hostile to the United States have demonstrated a continuing desire to exploit such vulnerabilities,” the presidential directive states.

A comprehensive picture of what’s happening on the water around the nation as envisioned by an objective maritime domain awareness capability requires sifting through mountains of information. Data from open sources — such as cargo manifests, crew lists, sailing times and destinations, hulls, crew composition and so forth — must be fused with government intelligence reporting and delivered in a timely fashion to operators who can intercept the potential threat.

“We seek to increase our awareness and knowledge of what is happening in the maritime battle space, not just here in American waters, but globally,” said Adm. Thomas H. Collins, Coast Guard commandant, in a recent speech to the National Defense University. “We need to know which vessels are in operation, the names of the crews and passengers, and the ships’ cargo, especially those inbound for U.S. ports. Global maritime domain awareness is critical to separate the law-abiding sailor from the anomalous threat.”

As Navy and Coast Guard leaders put the finishing touches on the strategy, which is due in June, officials from both services say it will incorporate a far-reaching approach that begins with monitoring maritime activity at ports all over the world and sets in place a layered “defense-in-depth” framework that can be adjusted based on the threat level.

In addition to these efforts, the Pentagon is negotiating a new memorandum of agreement with DHS that will allow Navy forces to be rapidly placed under Coast Guard command and control, as required by the mission.

“It is in the maritime domain that I believe we have our single greatest opportunity to enhance our domestic U.S. security,” said McHale. “We must achieve, in short, complete synchronization of Coast Guard and Navy capabilities.”