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security beat
January 2008
Satellite to Demonstrate Maritime Surveillance for Coast Guard
Reported by Stew Magnuson & Breanne Wagner
 The Coast Guard will enter the space age when a rocket carrying an experimental payload lifts off at the end of 2007 from the Kapustin Yar launch site in Russia.
Designed to track vessels far from U.S. shores, the payload is outfitted with a receiver that will collect ship identification data and transmit it to ground-based Coast Guard stations.
“Significant ship-tracking capabilities could be accomplished far out to sea if a receiver were placed on a spacecraft,” said Dana Goward, director of the Coast Guard’s maritime domain awareness program.
The unnamed concept demonstration payload -- built by ORBCOMM Inc. of Fort Lee, N.J. -- was slated for launch in late December aboard a Cosmos rocket. The Coast Guard awarded ORBCOMM a $7.9 million contract in 2004 to develop and demonstrate the ship-tracking technology on board a spacecraft. The payload was placed on one of ORBCOMM’s new satellites.
While in low-earth orbit, the receiver will collect information from ships equipped with the automatic identification system, or AIS, which is a vessel tracking system that all large vessels are required to use. The information is transmitted via the Global Positioning System, sensors and digital radio signals, the Coast Guard Navigation Center website said.
The Coast Guard hopes to use the technology for its future nationwide automatic identification system (NAIS), which is the service’s three-stage plan to extend its ability to track and identify vessels. The first stage will track ships near 55 critical ports. The second stage calls for AIS tracking as far out as 50 nautical miles.
Satellites will be added in the final stage, and along with a network of offshore platforms and buoys, are expected to identify ships as far as 2,000 nautical miles. The system is expected to be operational in 2014, according to the service.
Space-based technology can capture far-reaching vessel tracking information that would be harder to acquire using ground- or sea-based systems, said Greg Flessate, ORBCOMM vice president of sales and government services. Satellite surveillance is the preferred method because its is the most cost effective option in relation to the amount of area that sensors cover. They “extend beyond the terrestrial base … each one leaves a 3,000 mile footprint,” he said.
No subsequent contracts have been issued, Flessate said. But even if the company does not receive additional contracts, it will still test out AIS technology for commercial purposes.
“We plan to make a business out of it,” Flessate said.
Along with the Coast Guard spacecraft, ORBCOMM will launch five company-funded AIS-equipped satellites on the same booster. They will replenish ORBCOMM’s existing constellation. AIS receivers will be integrated into its system whether or not the Coast Guard becomes a customer, said Flessate. Up to 25 AIS-equipped satellites could be in space by 2011, he added.
Other customers could include the Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, insurance firms and trucking companies, he said. The company maintains a 29-satellite constellation to provide two-way data subscription communication services for commercial trucking, railcars, oil wells and marine vessels.
A commercial firm has never attempted space-based AIS data collection, but the military successfully proved satellites could pick up the signals in December 2006 during a TacSat-2 experiment, said Chris Huffine from the Naval Research Laboratory.
 Customs and Border Protection is pressing on with congressionally mandated pilot projects that will show if it is feasible to screen every shipping container for nuclear materials before they arrive at U.S. ports.
They will share the results of these operational tests with Congress in April, however, CBP commissioner R. Ralph Basham hopes lawmakers will scrap the idea, which calls for 100 percent screening of sea and air cargo by 2012.
“It is no secret that we in DHS did not favor this approach, since we felt the risk-based strategy … is both more effective and more operationally feasible,” he told the annual CBP Trade Symposium.
CBP has a manifest data mining system that is supposed to designate high-risk containers to be separated out for special screening. Low-risk containers would be speeded through.
DHS’ opposition to the idea was well known on Capitol Hill this summer, but the 9/11 bill reiterated Congress’ support for the idea when it passed by an overwhelming margin.
The pilot projects are ongoing in Qasim, Pakistan, Cortes, Honduras and Southampton, United Kingdom. There will be “modified versions” of the pilots kicking off early this year in Singapore, Hong Kong, Salalah, Oman, and Pusan, South Korea.
Basham said overseas trading partners share DHS’ opposition to the law.
“I can tell you they’re unhappy,” he told reporters later.
Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson backed up that claim at the symposium.
“We need to consider carefully the implications of 100 percent container screening relative to a risk-based system targeted at shipments that are higher risk on the global supply chain, and whether the benefits will justify the very significant costs.”
 Anyone who has followed the Defense Department’s never-ending struggle to allow its disparate communications systems to link to each other knows what the term “stovepiped” means.
Different systems used by different services built by different contractors are not able to share information.
The Transportation Security Administration — starting with a clean slate in 2001 — could have avoided these pitfalls, but instead chose ad hoc technologies that resulted in a wasteful, inefficient information backbone, according to a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report.
Part of the blame falls on Congress and the tight deadlines it imposed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the report said.
“Due to time constraints, TSA’s technical environment evolved in a decentralized manner, leading to stovepiped systems with limited information sharing and technical standards,” the report said.
For example, performance data on airport baggage screeners and metal detectors must be collected from every machine once per hour. Each system has its own way of collecting, storing and downloading data. A TSA staff member must take this data, write a daily report and e-mail or fax the information to TSA headquarters. The process is “cumbersome, time consuming and labor intensive,” the report said.
TSA concurred with the report’s findings and spelled out plans to address some of the issues. The report warned that TSA will have to beef up its hiring to effectively get a handle on the problem.
“The declining number of staff within the central IT division also impedes the [chief information officer’s] ability to manage the IT infrastructure and support new technology requirements.”
 A changing climate will have profound impacts on U.S. national security as droughts, floods, famines and epidemics create instability throughout the world, according to a joint report released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security.
National security implications include heightened internal and cross-border tensions caused by large-scale migrations, conflicts over scarce resources and an increase in epidemics, said “The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change.”
“Across the board, the ways in which societies react to climate change will refract through underlying social, political and economic factors,” said the report.
Scant attention has been paid to the social implications of climate change, said the authors at a briefing. They touted the report as one of the first attempts to create a dialogue between the science and security communities.
However, the Pentagon has commissioned two reports on the topic — one in 2003 — and the latest released this year by CNA Corp., which was authored by 11 retired three- and four-star generals and admirals.
They came to similar conclusions: the United States must be prepared for the societal upheavals that may come as indirect results of climate change.
Former CIA director and co-author of the CSIS report, R. James Woolsey, said there is common ground for the “hawks” and “tree huggers” when it comes to tackling one of the perceived causes of global warming — namely greenhouse gasses. The environmentalists want to reduce the gasses by eliminating dependence on oil. The so-called hawks want the same because over dependence on oil makes the nation vulnerable. He put himself in both camps.
“You don’t have to persuade all the hawks to become tree huggers or all the tree huggers to become hawks, “ Woolsey said. “What we need to realize is that the things we need to do have a lot in common and we need to get busy on them.”
 The devastating wildfires that engulfed more than 500,000 acres in southern California last fall highlighted the need for a federal fire response capability, said Paul McHale assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and America’s security affairs.
“Wildfires are not included in the 15 national planning scenarios at this time but I suspect they may will be added at some point in the not too distant future,” McHale said at a National Defense Industrial Association Coast Guard conference. The California wildfires were a catastrophic event that required a national response, he said. They sent thousands of residents fleeing and reduced more than 2,000 homes to ash.
McHale was referring to the national response plans, which outline an all-hazards approach to address major incidents, such as hurricanes and attacks employing weapons of mass destruction. Ideally, the government should be able to respond to multiple disasters happening simultaneously — for example — a hurricane strikes the East Coast as an earthquake hits the West Coast.
More than one year ago, McHale said that the government had thoroughly planned for only two them — pandemic influenza and hurricanes. One year later, that is still the case, he said.
McHale and his office have complained that the other federal agencies are not doing their part to help prepare for these disasters.
If widespread fires are added as a scenario that will make 14 catastrophic disasters the federal government is unprepared to take on.
Please email your comments to SMagnuson@ndia.org
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