Rear Admiral (Select) Robert V. Hoppa, director, National Maritime Intelligence Center, today announced the renaming of the National Maritime Intelligence Center (NMIC) to the National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office (NMIO).
“The name change better reflects our mission to integrate maritime intelligence by leveraging partnerships at all levels of government, the private sector and with our foreign partners,” said Hoppa. “I look forward to continuing our efforts as an Intelligence Community service of common concern and serving as a principal advisor to the Director of National Intelligence.”
“Since its establishment three years ago, the National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office has recorded many successes leading the integration of maritime intelligence with domestic and international partners,” said James R. Clapper, director of National Intelligence.
Continue Reading →PLEASE BE ADVISED:
AS OF 19 JANUARY AT 1531Z, THE SOMALI-PIRATED M/T ENRICO IEVOLI IS CURRENTLY UNDERWAY OFF THE COAST OF SOMALIA ON A NORTH/NORTHEAST COURSE POSSIBLY HEADING TOWARDS THE GULF OF ADEN AND WAS LAST LOCATED IN POSITION 11-02N 053-06E. ONI BELIEVES PIRATES WITH WEAPONS AND AN ATTACK SKIFF ARE ABOARD THE VESSEL.
AT THIS TIME, ONI CANNOT CONFIRM IF THIS VESSEL IS MOVING TO CONDUCT PIRATE ATTACKS WITH THE M/T ENRICO IEVOLI AS A MOTHERSHIP.
REGARDLESS, MARINERS ARE ADVISED TO REMAIN VIGILANT WITH THEIR COUNTER-PIRACY MEASURES AND BE ON THE LOOK OUT FOR THIS VESSEL. REPORT ANY ABNORMAL CIRCUMSTANCERS OR EVENTS PER BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES.
Continue Reading →Towing Vessel Inspection Rule
The initial heavy lifting is done, and now the U.S. Coast Guard and the industry are getting down to the devilish details of the historic towing vessel inspection rule unveiled in August.
Differences of opinion are to be expected over a document that was seven years in the making and is one of the most significant regulations for the towing industry since operators were required to be licensed in 1972.
Aimed at improving safety on the nation’s waterways, the proposed rule will cover 5,208 vessels belonging to 1,059 companies and cost operators an estimated $14 million to $18 million annually over a 10-year phase-in period. It would exempt vessels less than 26′ unless they’re towing barges carrying oil or other hazardous cargo.
Sentiment at hearings held in the fall strongly favored safety management systems audited by a Coast Guard-approved third party rather than an option for an annual Coast Guard inspection. In addition, operators opposed electrical and mechanical requirements that make them fix what’s not broken, suggested compliance cost estimates were way off base, and sought better definitions of terms like “major conversion.”
The Coast Guard also raised some hackles with its request for comment on the topic of crew endurance and manning as it considers establishing hours-of-service standards. Operators generally oppose including requirements in the proposed rule, but some mariners favor regulatory protection.
In general, many of those who weighed in echoed Jeff Parker, vice president of operations at Allied Transportation Inc., a Norfolk, Va. tug-and-barge company, who said, “I applaud the Coast Guard for getting this rule mostly right.”
Nevertheless, they want some changes to a regulation that likely will cause some barge operators to fold because they are unable or unwilling to comply.
Operators say a safety management system ensures uniform standards for all and can be scaled to the size of a company. But they want to be sure that companies can’t pit one third party auditor against another and that the Coast Guard begins qualifying auditors well in advance of the final rule. They also were skeptical that the Coast Guard would have enough of its own people to perform audits.
All vessels would need a certificate of inspection issued
Continue Reading →An August article in Proceedings laid out “Ten Realities for the New CNO.” Here, the new CNO offers his vision of the Navy 15 years hence, which touches on several of those same issues.
The Navy Support Activity in Bahrain may not be the first thing one thinks of when considering the Navy of 2025. Our operations from that small Persian Gulf island may seem like a holdover from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—something that will end as we complete those conflicts and enter an era of fiscal austerity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bahrain has been a steadfast U.S. partner for six decades, and our presence there exemplifies some of the key and enduring attributes of the U.S. Navy, whether the year is 1825 or 2025. Our sailors and Marines in Bahrain, and their complement of helicopters, strike-fighters, patrol aircraft, minesweepers, and coastal patrol ships, are forward, ready, and focused on warfighting.
In 2025 the Navy will operate from a larger number of partner nations such as Bahrain to more affordably maintain our forward posture around the world. Our future Fleet will remain ready, with the maintenance, weapons, personnel, and training it needs, although it may be smaller than today as a result of fiscal constraints. Our sailors and civilians will remain the source of our warfighting capability, and the Fleet of 2025 will be even more dependent on a motivated, relevant, and diverse force. The ships and aircraft of 2025 will predominantly be the proven platforms of today, but with greater reach and persistence thanks to new payloads of unmanned vehicles and weapons. The future Fleet will maintain our current advantages in the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace, but will fully operationalize them as warfighting domains. We will remain dominant under the sea, but the capability of our submarines will be expanded as they become part of a network of platforms, unmanned systems and sensors.
Continue Reading →On 12 May 2008, the North American Aerospace Defence (NORAD) Command celebrated its 50th anniversary with US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, acknowledging that “Both of our nations are dedicated to protecting North Americans from air attacks, and this institution remains a vital part of the defense of the continent.” This affirmation of permanence by government officials, however, does not necessarily reflect the views held by critics who maintain that NORAD is a relic of the Cold War and an enigma to Canadian sovereignty that should disappear. With the diminishing conventional military threat to Canada and changes in the military command structures, commentators, such as Ernie Regehr of Project Ploughshares, have critically questioned the need for NORAD. His focus is on sovereignty concerns and was highly critical of the Bi-National Planning Group (BPG) report of 2006 that is “effusive in its call for integration” into the American military complex. Stephen Staples of the Rideau Institute shares this scepticism, asking whether “Canada will be trapped inside Fortress America” and questions the utility of NORAD in the changing defence and security landscape.
Nor is ‘in perpetuity’ necessarily certain in the minds of many proponents who believe that NORAD is important, but that the emergence of United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) as well as Canada’s decision in 2005 not to join in Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) signals the demise of NORAD. Dr Joseph Jockel, an academic expert on Canadian defence policy and Canada-US relations, is unequivocal in his prediction that “NORAD is heading for obsolescence. Saving it requires a reversal of the Martin government’s decision on missile defence.” Others believe that USNORTHCOM will usurp the role of NORAD and that “[NORAD] will simply morph into a lesser being to fulfill its limited operational function … to be trotted out periodically by one or another nation as a symbol of enduring strength and quality of our military security relationship.”
There are certainly elements of concern to be found in both polar positions; however, NORAD continues to receive unqualified political support on both sides of the border as well as unquestioned relevance by military commanders and the reason for this is quite simple. The fundamentals that underpinned the establishment of NORAD in 1958 are unchanged. The spirit of bi-national cooperation and military professionalism that marked the genesis of NORAD has allowed this unique institution to mature and evolve within the changing dynamics of both advances in technology and the geopolitical threat environment. Today NORAD, in concert with Canada Command (COM) and USNORTHCOM, plays an important role in domestic security operations as well as in ensuring the sovereignty of continental airspace from foreign intrusion.
Continue Reading →In September 2011, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) sponsored a comprehensive two-week Commercial Maritime Shipping Industry and Port Operations Training Course (CMPOC) in Reston, VA. The training curriculum was built upon specified requirements presented by NCIS and administered by intelligence professionals from McMunn Associates, Incorporated; a wholly owned subsidiary of Parsons. CMPOC is designed to close knowledge gaps among government intelligence and law enforcement personnel on how the global maritime transportation system operates.
The two-week CMPOC curriculum involves presentations by academic experts, shipping industry business leaders, and government program managers involved in port and cargo security activities. Topics include freight logistics and management, port authorities, customs brokers and shipping agents, international regulatory organizations and labor unions, marine insurance, and maritime law. Classroom training is augmented with site visits to both commercial and military port facilities in Hampton Roads providing students an opportunity to examine in person many of the shipping and port operations topics discussed in class. Of note, CMPOC is identified as a proposed solution in the MDA Interagency Solutions Analysis (IASA) 1.0 Report, which was published by the National MDA Coordination Office (NMCO) in January 2011.
Continue Reading →As satellite technology continues to advance, unclassified commercial imaging systems are reaching an operationally relevant level of utility and persistence commensurate with the maritime domain awareness (MDA) problem set facing the maritime operational level commander. Particularly applicable for MDA are the wide area coverage capabilities of commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites such as RADARSAT, Cosmo Sky Med and Terra SAR-X.
For the past two years, the U.S. Sixth Fleet has used the wide area search modes of SAR satellites to generate actionable, near real-time, situational awareness products to support operational and tactical decision makers.
Commercial SAR satellites primarily contribute to the left hand side of an MDA prosecution chain that includes surveillance, detection, classification, identification, location, tracking and prosecution. Systems such as RADARSAT can image up to 300 nautical mile wide swaths, which can be sewn together frame after frame, yielding tens and even hundreds of thousands of square nautical miles of north to south SAR imagery.
In terms of detection, this imagery provides an expansive “ground truth” from which open-ocean or coastal maritime situational awareness can be derived. This ground truth detection information, when fused with other information sources, such as Automatic Identification System (AIS), electronic emissions intelligence or commercial shipping data bases, can aid in sorting the distinctive set of known vessel contacts from the unknown. As such, the maritime operational commander can better allocate resources and concentrate specifically on the unknown or anomalous contacts, or patterns in activity, identified through imaging.
Continue Reading →The Duke of Wellington once remarked: “All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is finding out what you don’t know from what you do. That’s what I called ‘knowing what was on the other side of the hill’.” Two centuries on, the need to “know what was on the other side of the hill” – or beyond the horizon – is the primary driver for affordable and effective maritime domain awareness (MDA), at home as well as overseas.
THE IMPERATIVE OF UNDERSTANDING AND SHARING MDA WITH GLOBAL PARTNERS
The US National Security Presidential Directive 41 defines MDA as “…the effective understanding of anything associated with the global maritime domain that could impact the security, safety, economy, or environment” – a tall order. For the United States, MDA addresses a broad spectrum of threats and challenges, from environmental disasters in the Gulf of Mexico to depleted fisheries to Mariners held hostage by pirates. ‘Understanding’ is important to success against these and other threats, but even more so is sharing that understanding with organisations charged with protecting US interests, citizens and friends in the maritime domain – from America’s inland and coastal waterways and ports to the high seas (see figure 1).
Domestic efforts are important, but perhaps even more imperative are regional and global partnerships for MDA. “Increased cooperation equals increased security”, Rear Admiral David W. Titley, USN, (Oceanographer and Navigator of the Navy and Director, Maritime Domain Awareness and Space, N2N6E, in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations) noted in an August interview. “Facilitating information sharing at the regional level is a cost-effective way to expand awareness for both our nation and our international partners. This will provide a cost-effective means to secure everyone’s littoral waterways, ensure the safety of commerce, and curtail the use of the maritime commons for illicit activities. But we can’t do it alone”, he underscored. “Stated another way, global situational awareness of the maritime domain cannot be monopolised by anyone nation, agency, or entity. It must be freely shared.”
Continue Reading →The U.S. Navy’s Liquid Fuel Board in 1904 decided to transition the fleet from coal to oil, as engineers and operators alike had come to believe that oil-fired propulsion would greatly enhance the Navy’s fighting trim. Three years later, the ‘round-the-world voyage of the Great White Fleet underscored coal’s logistical and operational challenges and the need for change.
Today the Navy has embraced a far-reaching energy-efficiency strategy and is pursuing a broad spectrum of “technology insertions” that include alternative fuels for its ships and aircraft. This is already promising across-the-board enhancements for today’s as well as tomorrow’s fleet, not unlike the Navy at the turn of the previous century. And in that, the Service is focused on a game-changing target: the 2016 deployment of a “Great Green Fleet,” first announced by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus in his October 2009 Navy Energy Forum address. The nation’s energy vulnerability clearly has military and national security implications, he explained.
“We do not have operational independence, and we are tied to a vulnerable logistics tail,” Mabus said. “[I]n the drive for energy reform the goal has got to be increased warfighting capability.”
At the 2010 Navy Energy Forum, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Gary Roughead said the Navy’s path to a Great Green Fleet was not a “public relations gimmick” but epitomized the Service’s new energy-security research, development, policy and operations.
“It’s more than simply how ‘green’ can we be seen,” said Roughead. “It really is an operational issue for us.”
The Green Fleet concept signals the Navy’s strategic embrace of a dramatic sea change that could break dependence on fossil fuels for powering the future surface ships and provide an alternative energy model for the United States. In short, it’s a strategic and operational imperative that cannot wait.
Continue Reading →On August 1, 2011, following three years of diplomacy between the National Maritime Domain Awareness Coordination Office (NMCO) and the Japanese Coast Guard (JCG), the country of Japan became the 68th nation to activate and participate in the Maritime Safety and Security Information System (MSSIS). The Japanese Coast Guard (JCG) is comprised of approximately 12,000 personnel, and protects Japanese maritime interests under the oversight of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. As such, the mission of JCG is similar to the US Coast Guard’s spectrum of missions to promote and protect their nation’s maritime security, safety, economy, and environment.
With their induction into MSSIS, the maritime vessel information shared by this program becomes a force multiplier and enabler for all JCG operations. Having identified three specific areas around Japan that would benefit from increased maritime domain awareness (MDA) coverage, MSSIS Automatic Identification System (AIS) receivers were incorporated into the Tsugara straits, Tsushima Straits and the waters around Yonakuni Island. Japan now has increased their ability to monitor 13,430 sq. km of territorial waters and over 3,000 islands, while providing Japan with vessel traffic information from the territorial waters and exclusive economic zones of other nations across the world.
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