The Coastal Surveillance System and MDA

Anh N. Duong, director for the Borders and Maritime Security Division within DHS’ Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate, said that threats to the nation’s maritime border include terrorists and smugglers, and they employ an adaptive strategy. “The bad guys tunnel under, fly over, or sail around our borders.

“Our goal is to bring knowledge and technology to address gaps in maritime border and cargo security,” Duong said. “We focus on operations, innovation, and partnerships.”

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. But also important are the small vessels of, for instance, fishermen and pleasure boaters, which operate in the maritime domain in large numbers. “The overwhelming majority of small vessels operating in and around the United States coasts and in our ports and inland waterways are engaged in legitimate activities. However, a small number are platforms for illegal or illicit activities, such as human and drug trafficking, and may be used for waterborne attacks on our maritime infrastructure,” said Thomas Tomaiko, program manager, Borders and Maritime Security Division, S&T Directorate, DHS.

The DHS S&T Directorate developed the Coastal Surveillance System (CSS) to create a concise, dynamic, large-scale view of a defined maritime environment so users can locate, track, and prosecute small vessels of interest in real time with up-to-date geospatial intelligence.

“The whole concept of this is to share information across components and agencies within the U.S. government, down to the local law enforcement level,” said Gerald Bowe, operations manager, Maritime Security Technology Program, Borders and Maritime Security Division, DHS S&T Directorate. “There are many sensors collecting data. We are creating a fusion center to put that data together, then making it available for everybody to see. We’ve created a standard interface control for radars and cameras. If a port or facility has a radar, all we need is an Internet connection.”

The CSS has been deployed to the Customs and Border Protection’s AMOC, the U.S. Coast Guard Los Angeles-Long Beach Sector, and the S&T Maritime Security Technology Pilot at SRI International in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The Coast Guard provides security in ports, harbors, and waterways in many different ways. One of the evolving missions is to provide force protection for U.S. Navy ballistic missile submarines in and out of their bases at Kings Bay, Ga., and Bangor, Wash.

“The AMOC has a solid picture of what’s in the air and is able to share the awareness with DHS/DoD partners, but less so on the water,” stated AMOC Public Information Officer Tina Pendell. “Our name says ‘Air’ and ‘Marine,’ but we’re mostly air. We want to assist in developing CSS in order to share more visibility of the maritime domain with our partners.

“CSS allows us to work closely with the Coast Guard and other agencies for intelligence sharing and cross-flow of communication, creating a multi-force cued response, the coordination of operational assets to prevent replication of assets on-scene as well as the on-scene relief to each other during an incident, and appropriate asset allocation for the situation,” Pendell said.

To demonstrate how the CSS would work, DHS S&T set up a SCANTER 5202 surface surveillance radar provided by Terma North America at Carlsbad, Calif., linked to SRI in St. Petersburg over a cellular connection. “We were getting a nice picture here at the AMOC,” said Steve Savala, a detection enforcement officer at the AMOC. “Within minutes we were tracking targets, at ranges that have exceeded our expectations.”

“Many shore-based maritime surveillance radars, such as those used in vessel traffic services [VTS], are optimized for tracking larger targets,” said James Moore, director for Land and Naval Systems Business Development for Terma North America. “For maritime security purposes, it’s important that the radar has a high resolution capability to detect and track small targets.”

The demonstration showed the ease of integrating existing sensors and networks into CSS to create a regional and national picture, and how that data can help maintain the big picture at a command center like the AMOC.

“This partnership is developing new technology that serves the nation, as AMOC is a national task force that attends to critical security issues for America,” said Tony Crowder, executive director of the AMOC. “The work S&T is doing extends beyond a singular component and is meeting interagency operational requirements against a difficult threat vector. This groundbreaking work is sure to be part of the permanent solution needed to neutralize the maritime threat. This operational relevance is what DHS S&T should be doing with all its projects.”

 

Cross-border Cooperation

Canada and the United States have the longest international border in the world. Maintaining the integrity of this border is a challenge that requires a close partnership to identify and address threats as early as possible. So maritime domain awareness is a critical element in border security for both countries.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and other Canadian federal departments and agencies have a long history of cooperation with their U.S. counterparts to keep the border open to legitimate trade and travel but closed to crime. The RCMP is a key participant in the Canada-U.S. Cross-border Crime Forum (CBCF) that addresses transnational crime issues such as organized crime, counterterrorism, smuggling, economic crime, and other emerging cross-border threats.

According to Sean Wheeler, an operations coordinator for border integrity with the RCMP, many of the waterways between the two countries allow for quick transit between them in protected waters. Wheeler said this presents an opportunity for criminal organizations to use small vessels to conduct smuggling activities between Canada and the United States.

To this end, as part of the Beyond the Border Action Plan, the Shiprider program recently received legislative approval in Canada, allowing for joint RCMP-U.S. Coast Guard operations. “Under the Shiprider program, each vessel has specially trained law enforcement officers from each country that are authorized to enforce the law on both sides of the border, thereby eliminating legal impediments to conducting operations that cross the border,” said Wheeler. “Shiprider also helps leverage each country’s resources to provide greater coverage and more effective use of human resources. RCMP and its U.S. partners have also worked to coordinate its command and control capabilities. For example, a common secure communications channel for RCMP, CBP, and USCG allows for instant communication. This allows for real-time coordination between the two countries in response to cross-border events.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and other Canadian federal departments and agencies have a long history of cooperation with their U.S. counterparts to keep the border open to legitimate trade and travel but closed to crime.

“The RCMP has worked to improve its capabilities by working closely with Vessel Traffic Safety authorities and investing in radar technology capable of small vessel detection,” Wheeler said. “Where suspicious events are detected, Shiprider plays a critical role in response. This model of close cooperation between Canada and the U.S., with enhanced legal authorities, supported by communications, technology, and intelligence, greatly improves maritime border security and particularly helps address small vessel threats.

“Both countries are working to identify areas where threats and gaps in awareness can be addressed in a cooperative manner,” Wheeler said. “The use of technology will play a critical role in filling these gaps.”

 

Maritime Force Protection Units

The Coast Guard provides security in ports, harbors, and waterways in many different ways. One of the evolving missions is to provide force protection for U.S. Navy ballistic missile submarines in and out of their bases at Kings Bay, Ga., and Bangor, Wash.

The men and women of the Maritime Force Protection Units (MFPUs) require specialized training to succeed with their mission. Thanks to an S&T investment by the Navy for ship-handling simulators, the Coast Guard is receiving benefits, too.

“We work with the Office of Naval Research [ONR], and help ‘transition’ programs to acquisition,” said John Freeman, director of Surface and Expeditionary Warfare Programs at the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD) in Orlando, Fla. “ONR helped develop the Conning Officer Virtual Environment [COVE] trainer for the Surface Warfare Officers School to train and certify officers in ship handling.”

The Navy’s success is now being leveraged to support the Coast Guard.

“We’ve adapted the COVE simulation technology to that immersive environment of the Coast Guard units that escort ballistic missile submarines in and out of port,” said Freeman. “The economies of scale can really pay off for you.”

The two Coast Guard MFPUs work with the Navy to escort and protect afloat Navy vessels transiting to and from the naval submarine bases at Bangor and Kings Bay. The MFPUs are single-mission units with personnel specifically trained to conduct these escorts and vessels specially designed or uniquely equipped for the mission.

The MFPUs each have a 14-station COVE simulator to train patrol commanders (PATCOMs), gunners, smallboat coxswains, and crewmembers. The scalable COVE system can train a single person, a single team, or many teams, all configured to the appropriate vessels, their characteristics, and manning.

The Coast Guard training is conducted on site, said Scott Burlingame, a program manager at NAWCTSD. “We simulated the environments for both bases, and can run scenarios to exercise protocols and tactics with multiple platforms in a coordinated, integrated fashion.”

“If we had a unique situation unfold during today’s escort, we can re-create that entire scenario with an 11-boat package plus OPFOR [opposing forces] tomorrow so that every PATCOM can live through it.”

There is a large station with multiple screens for a 360-degree in-the-round view for the PATCOM, and 13 more generic training stations (GTS) to train gunners, smallboat coxswains, and crewmembers. The GTS can simulate anything from an 87-foot Coast Guard patrol boat to a container ship to a terrorist go-fast boat.

According to Cmdr. Thomas P. Sullivan, who commands MFPU Bangor, the simulation is used to train, qualify, and re-create actual events. “If we had a unique situation unfold during today’s escort, we can re-create that entire scenario with an 11-boat package plus OPFOR [opposing forces] tomorrow so that every PATCOM can live through it.”

PATCOM candidates demonstrate their knowledge of the tactics, techniques, and procedures in the simulator, and part of their qualification board is conducted in the simulator, according to Lt. Cmdr. Joyce Dietrich-Holm, operations officer at MFPU Kings Bay. “They can face different types of opposing forces, work around commercial and recreational vessel traffic, and practice different tactics that would be difficult or virtually impossible to do on the water.”

The Transit Protection Training System is not limited to the Navy or Coast Guard, but could be configured to train any maritime enforcement agency for escort duties. “It can go anywhere,” said NAWCTSD systems engineer Ryan Aleson. “We have a library of a couple of hundred entities. We own the data rights of all of our ports.”

Dietrich-Holm said the Coast Guard’s adoption of COVE for MFPU training has saved both the Navy and Coast Guard a lot of money, because otherwise the training would have to be conducted under way on the water. “It’s great utilization of the taxpayers’ money.”

This article first appeared in the Coast Guard Outlook 2014 Edition.