C4ISR and the Common Operating Picture
In July 31 testimony to Congress, Coast Guard Assistant Commandant for Capability Rear Adm. Mark E. Butt said the Coast Guard continues to improve its operational effectiveness through modernization and management of its command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR). “The dynamic and demanding operating environment in the maritime domain demands our C4ISR capabilities be interoperable and flexible in order to deliver the right capability, at the right time, to our operational commanders and deployable assets. In addition, these systems must be standardized across our assets to maximize effectiveness and affordability to ensure long-term sustainability.
Knowing everything there is to know about a large ship – where it’s coming from, where it’s going, who the crewmembers are, what the cargo is – is important.
“The Coast Guard uses C4ISR systems to produce actionable information, improve situational awareness and enhance collaboration among Coast Guard operators and our partner agencies,” Butt said. “At the tactical level, this information helps command staffs effectively allocate resources, prioritize missions, and coordinate operations. At the strategic and national levels, these tools improve maritime domain awareness, a critical component of our maritime safety and security missions.”
Camilla, an explosive-detecting canine, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Nicholas Heinen from Marine Safety and Security Team New York, inspectferry passenger bags in Rowes Wharf, Boston, Mass., on April 16, 2013. Following the explosions at the Boston Marathon, the Coast Guard wasoperating with a heightened awareness alongside partners and fellow first responders. The Coast Guard works every day with port partnersto maintain safety and security within the maritime community, including ferry embarkation sites, harbors, and waterside facilities. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class MyeongHi Clegg
“The Coast Guard’s C4ISR management strategy is to address obsolete or redundant technology and bring new capability to the operators at a faster rate … through enterprise architecture development and management to be able to quickly respond to a variety of changes in the operational environment … The end results are standardized systems, enhanced availability, more efficient and effective repairs, and minimized operational risk during maintenance and upgrades, as well as reducing support costs through the establishment of a cooperative and streamlined support structure,” Butt said.
“The central component of effective C4ISR is searchable and discoverable data managed, moved and formatted within a Common Operational Picture (COP) that provides operators with the information needed to carry out their missions,” he said.
It’s interoperable because the Coast Guard complies with the chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction Common Operational Picture Reporting Requirements (CJCSI 3151.01).
“The COP is designed to receive inputs from disparate information sources, process and correlate the data, and distribute it through the enterprise across multiple security domains,” Butt said.
The sources include the Nationwide Automatic Identification System, which uses a series of shore-based transceivers in ports and along the coast of the United States to facilitate vessel tracking, and the international Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) system, which provides vessel position information and offshore tracking of all 300-ton and larger U.S.-flagged vessels, or vessels bound for a U.S. port or traveling within 1,000 nautical miles of the U.S. coast. The Coast Guard maintains a National Data Center that stores the positions of all foreign and domestic LRIT ships, and the service is a member of the DoD Global COP Architecture. Operators on Coast Guard cutters at sea are connected with the COP, allowing the integration of the ship and aircraft sensor data with area and district operations centers and the enterprise COP. The CBP’s Office of Air and Marine runs the national law enforcement illegal trafficking interdiction center, the Air and Marine Operations Center (AMOC, located at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif.), and the U.S. Northern Command’s Situational Awareness Geospatial Enterprise (SAGE). All collaborate to exchange data with the Coast Guard COP to maintain the MDA picture.
Research and Development
The Coast Guard’s Research and Development Center (RDC) in New London, Conn., is heavily involved in assessing new and emerging technologies to improve efficient, time relevant collection, analysis, and dissemination of data, information, and knowledge. According to Jack McCready, chief of the C4ISR branch, research is under way to improve sensor feeds from multiple, independent sources into a COP at sector and district command centers. “We’re looking at how we can use and adapt mobile technology and hardware devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to capitalize on their flexibility and mobility to create ad-hoc networks.”
“Our portfolio lists a variety of maritime security projects, including contraband marking, noncompliant video recording, tactical data link enhancements, ongoing operational test and evaluation of portable entanglement systems, and testing of portable trace narcotics/explosives detection systems, to name a few,” said Bert Macesker, executive director of the RDC. “We are working a number of non-technological maritime security research projects, including the game-theoretic approaches for PWCS [Ports, Waterways and Coastal Security] patrols that include ferry escorts and other partner assets, scheduling patrols for fisheries protection, and new panga search planning tools. The PROTECT [Port Resilience Operational/Tactical Enforcement to Combat Terrorism] tool deployment is getting quite a bit of attention as a key non-material approach to improve and quantify critical infrastructure patrols.”