Vital Links

The Coast Guard and Navy are cooperating across the board to increase U.S. awareness of what is happening in the maritime arena.

By DAVID W. MUNNS, Assistant Editor

Though the Navy, Coast Guard and other agencies now are carving out an overarching strategy for maritime security, they have worked for years to merge their efforts to increase surveillance and security of the nation’s coastal approaches, waterways and ports. The Navy and Coast Guard have increased their intelligence coordination, for example, and are cooperating on the acquisition of new technologies to interdict terrorist threats to the United States.

The services have expanded the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the Coast Guard’s Intelligence Coordination Center (ICC), which are co-located at the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland, Md. The center has bolstered its staff since Sept. 11, 2001, and it has improved intra-agency collaboration to collect and disseminate information more efficiently to operational commanders. For example, the center now shares cargo-related information with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

Navy Rear Adm. (Select) Tony Cothron, commander of ONI, told Seapower, “We’ve got that close-in layered defense. We’re looking farther out for the intentions of potential terrorists or WMD [weapons of mass destruction] shippers. But it’s not just about terrorism; it’s about proliferation of arms and technology around the globe, of countries that are selling high-technology capabilities to other nations that our Navy, our nation, our leadership need to be aware of.”

He described the goal of maritime domain awareness (MDA) as disseminating information “with no seam, no handoff, with one common intelligence picture provided to all the customers who are interested in that information, whether it be the vice president or a port captain or anybody in between.”

William E. Tarry, assistant director of Information Acquisition for the Office of Naval Intelligence, chairs the Intelligence Working Group, one of seven working groups of the multi-agency MDA Senior Steering Committee (SSC). He said his group is figuring out better ways to identify “the threat across the government and the intelligence requirements associated with this threat. What do you need to know about that environment? Does that information exist? If so, how do you share it?”

One example of the outcome from the cross-governmental cooperation is increased communications between military intelligence and customs authorities.

“It goes beyond terrorism to economic intelligence to proliferation of weapons to people, where intelligence lies and how do we share it,” Tarry said. Currently, there is not sufficient coordination between the organizations.

There are 26 organizations across the U.S. government participating in a strategic MDA plan, a number unheard of prior to Sept. 11. “There’s never been cooperation like there is right now,” Tarry said.

The SSC was scheduled to meet April 27 to discuss its draft of an MDA strategy, and is expected to report to the White House with its finalized assessments by June.

Dana Goward, chief of programs and architecture for the Coast Guard’s MDA Program Integration Office, also is working in collaboration with various partners to develop technologies to facilitate MDA.

“We’ve got something going on the with the naval research lab that is a multiyear effort to help us look at technologies and the use of all the world’s databases,” he said.

Additionally, two Maritime Intelligence Fusion Centers, in Norfolk, Va., and Alameda, Calif., have been created to provide a common operational picture of all traffic surrounding the U.S. maritime domain for agencies involved in maritime security. They ultimately synthesize the information they gather and provide interested parties, such as U.S. Northern Command and port authorities, the knowledge they need to determine whether inspection of a vessel is required, Goward said.

Alternately, he added, authorities for a particular port or maritime area gather information about a vessel, its crew and cargo and relay it to the fusion centers so they can flag abnormal shipping vessels for future use.

The Navy and Coast Guard also have established Joint Sector Command Centers that work closely with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, among other agencies, as test beds for science and technology, as well as serving as central locations for interagency coordination of security in and around major ports of entry.

The centers are increasing in numbers, with current locations in San Diego, Hampton Roads, Va., and Miami. New York and Boston are likely candidates for future centers, according to Goward, because of the preliminary capabilities established there from the 2004 presidential conventions.

The Coast Guard has sought to provide an expansive common operational picture of the complete U.S. maritime domain, Jeffrey P. High, Coast Guard director of MDA, told Congress. MDA will play a major contributing role in determining “vulnerability assessments of vessels and facilities; area, vessel and facility security plans; incident response plans for vessels and facilities; and personnel background checks prior to issuing transportation security cards to individuals required to enter designated secure areas,” he said.

Capt. Wayne N. Collins, commanding officer of ICC, stressed that MDA is about more than just tracking ships. “There’s a lot of background information that goes into that common intelligence picture, or intelligence preparation of the battlefield,” he said. “For example, the captain of the port needs to have an awareness of criminal groups operating in his particular area of interest and what their intentions are.”

Working with the International Maritime Organization, the Navy and Coast Guard are continuing development of an Automatic Identification System (AIS), a vessel tracking system, to establish worldwide tracking requirements of vessels that might pose a threat to U.S. borders.

Currently, the Coast Guard is deploying AIS receivers to National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration buoys. The buoys pick up signals offshore and transmit them via satellite to intelligence centers.

The Navy and Coast Guard are also looking into mounting this technology on additional platforms, such as the lighter-than-air and high-altitude long-endurance aircraft, unmanned aircraft that can stay airborne for months at a time. This would support a more complete and sustainable operational picture for commanders.

The Navy is utilizing existing technologies, such as SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System) that was developed during the Cold War for deep ocean underwater surveillance. The SOSUS consists of bottom-mounted hydrophone arrays connected by undersea communication cables to facilities on shore.

“Maritime domain awareness has almost become a term of art in this look that the two services take,” James Loy, former deputy DHS secretary and Coast Guard commandant, said in a rare open hearing of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee in February. “With Northern Command’s responsibility reaching 500 miles out to sea on the Pacific side and literally almost 1,700 miles to sea on the Atlantic side, we have truly joined forces, the Navy and the Coast Guard, to understand what’s going on and to ensure we know what’s going on in the domain that we’re responsible for,” he said.