FEATURE ARTICLE

May 2006

U.S. Coast Guard Launches Long-Delayed Communications System

By Harold Kennedy

CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. - The Coast Guard’s delayed and expensive search-and-rescue communications network has made its debut here and at an air station in Atlantic City, N.J.

Rescue 21, as the system is known, is intended to make dramatic improvements in the Coast Guard’s ability to locate and assist boaters in trouble, while maintaining full operability with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and emergency first responders, explained Capt. Dan Abel, system project manager.

The service is introducing the system gradually throughout the nation, Abel told National Defense. When the network is complete — now scheduled for 2011 — it will be employed along 95,000 miles of U.S. coastlines, navigable rivers and waterways, including Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and U.S. possessions in the Caribbean.

“Ninety percent of the coastline will be covered,” Abel said.

Rescue 21 is replacing the aging national distress and response system, which was built in the 1970s and includes radios, transceivers, antenna towers and an interconnecting network.

Rescue 21 represents a quantum leap in technology over that setup, Abel said. “The idea is to take the ‘search’ out of search and rescue.”

The backbone of the current system is the very high frequency-frequency modulation short-range communications network, more commonly known as VHF-FM. The Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Command, however, has found 88 gaps, or “dead zones,” along the U.S. coastlines where existing signals don’t reach, Abel said.

Rescue 21, he added, will eliminate those gaps and ensure continuous, enhanced VHF-FM line-of-sight marine-radio coverage out to 20 nautical miles from shore. Higher-powered radios may be heard even farther offshore. Abel cited these additional benefits:

A digital voice-recording capability provides immediate playback, improving the ability to review and decipher garbled or unclear transmissions. “That’s critical in search and rescue planning and response,” he said.

An improved direction-finding technology — able to locate boaters within two compass degrees — cuts the time that search-and-rescue crews need to respond to calls for help, Abel noted.

The number of voice and data channels is increased from one to six, allowing watch standers to conduct multiple law-enforcement or homeland-security operations, and to use protected communications lines when necessary.

A new marine radiotelephone service, called digital selective calling, will allow mariners with the proper equipment to send an automatically formatted distress message instantly to the Coast Guard or any other rescue authority in the world. “DSC radios are the future for search and rescue,” said Chincoteague’s Command Chief Christian M. Westerdahl.

Asset-tracking technology enables watch standers to know the exact location of Coast Guard vessels and aircraft at all times. That will streamline coordination of rescues and increase the safety of the service’s own personnel, Abel said.

Rescue 21 will help provide a common picture of activity along U.S. shores that will assist in homeland security and facilitate communications between mariners, the Coast Guard, law enforcement and other government agencies.

While citing these technological advances, Abel conceded that the new system has been dogged almost from its inception by development challenges and funding cuts. “We’ve gotten some lumps about why we’re taking so long to get the system fielded,” he said.

The Coast Guard awarded a $611 million contract for developing Rescue 21 to General Dynamics C4 Systems, of Scottsdale, Ariz., in September 2002, making it the Coast Guard’s second biggest, most expensive acquisition project. Only the $24 billion integrated deepwater systems program, the service’s ambitious, long-term plan to modernize its entire fleet of surface vessels and aircraft, is larger.

Rescue 21 was supposed to begin operating a year later, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the project has dragged on, and costs are soaring. They could reach as high as $715 million before the system is complete, Abel said.

“Originally, we thought Rescue 21 would use commercial, off-the-shelf technology, and that proved to be inaccurate,” he said. “Another assumption was that there would be minimal requirements for software development, and that also proved to be inaccurate.”

More problems revolved around the graphic displays that reveal the locations of troubled vessels. “The operators looked at them and said, ‘We’d like those reconfigured,’” Abel said.

As a result, Rescue 21 is running more than two years behind schedule. Meanwhile, Congress has signaled its impatience. The Coast Guard sought $101 million for Rescue 21 in its 2006 budget request, but the legislators approved only $40.6 million. For 2007, the service has asked for a more modest $39.6 million.

The Coast Guard officially accepted Rescue 21 in December. Chincoteague manages four small boat stations dotted along the Atlantic coastline of Virginia and Maryland. Three of them are equipped with Rescue 21, and the fourth soon will be, Westerdahl said.

The system, however, has not been installed into any of Chincoteague’s rescue vessels, which include boats of 87, 47 and 41-foot lengths. “We’re working out some issues to make the equipment a little easier for small boats to use,” he explained.

The original plan called for “just too much stuff for a small boat. We looked at it and said, ‘We have to cut back.’ So we went back to the drawing board for the boats.”

While the boats’ system is being redesigned, the gear in the stations is able to communicate with the technology currently in the boats, he said.

In fact, in November 2005, the network helped save three mariners whose boat capsized in the Atlantic Ocean near Ocean City, Md.

“The boat was taking on water at a pretty fast rate,” Westerdahl said. “The captain gave us his position, but when we got to that location, nobody was there.”

After an unsuccessful 10-minute search, watch standers in Chincoteague tapped into Rescue 21’s enhanced boater-location technology. They were able to obtain accurate longitude and latitude readings from the boat’s last Mayday call. The boat turned out to be three miles away from the location reported by the captain.

“We got there without a lot of time to spare,” Westerdahl said.

Coast Guard personnel in Chincoteague expect Rescue 21 to ease their workload. The Eastern Shore coastline is home to active commercial and charter fishing fleets, as well as a myriad of recreational boaters.

Some of the commercial boats are old and not very seaworthy, Westerdahl said. “You still have guys going out in wooden boats.”

As a result, “we average probably 300 search-and-rescue cases a year, the majority in the summer,” he said.

The Coast Guard also predicts that Rescue 21, with its improved ability to trace distress calls, will cut down on the number of hoax calls. In March, the service’s station near Jacksonville, Fla., sent three rescue boats, a helicopter and a Falcon fixed-wing jet in response to a distress call allegedly from a boat 25 miles east of Matanzas Inlet. The call turned out to be phony. The cost to the Coast Guard for the unnecessary mission is estimated at $90,000, Abel said. It was Mayport’s third hoax in two weeks.

Rescue 21’s advanced call tracing ability should reveal most hoaxes immediately, Abel said. “If the call is coming from inland, we’ll know it’s phony. I can guarantee you that nobody is taking on water in the middle of Jacksonville.”

One reason that Rescue 21 is taking so long to complete is that the system includes 240 transmission towers ranging up to 1,400 feet in height that must be built along the coastlines of all 50 states and territories. That is proving to be a formidable task, especially in Alaska, Abel said.

“Quite frankly, Alaska is going to be a challenge, because of its geography. You’re talking about putting antennas on mountaintops amidst glaciers.”

Another issue is exactly where the towers are to be located. Sometimes, they can be built on Coast Guard property. The facility here in Chincoteague has one that is 255 feet tall. Another tower is planned for a station in Montauk, N.Y. Other times, the structures can be built on other federal, state or local government land. In still other cases, private land must be bought or leased.

Before building, the Coast Guard is required to conduct an environmental review, and that can take eight to nine months, said Rescue 21’s environmental manager, Anita Allen.

The service also holds public meetings to discuss its plans. They can be lively, Abel said. “Many boaters support the towers, because they see a personal benefit from them, but others don’t,” he said. “Their attitude is, ‘I love my view of the sea shore, and I can’t believe you’re going to put a big stick in the middle of it.’”

One small group opposed a plan to build a 400-foot tower on a Coast Guard station in Shinnecock, N.Y. “They were pretty vocal,” Allen said. “We provided some landscaping, but a 400-foot tower is a 400-foot tower. You can’t hide it.”

The Coast Guard often shares its towers with other military services and federal, state and local government agencies, which install their communications systems on them. It also leases space to some private communications companies, but not those — such as television or AM radio stations — whose signals might interfere with those of Rescue 21, Abel said.

The service has some leeway about exactly where to build its towers, but each one must be located within a relatively specific area in order for Rescue 21 to achieve nationwide coverage without the gaps of the current system, Abel said. “We don’t just build those towers willy-nilly.”

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