This article first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.
The U.S. is exploring the use of commercial satellites to enhance ship identification and communication for the battle against piracy.
Long before the U.S.-flagged container ship Maersk Alabama was attacked by Somali pirates this month, a sister vessel, the Maersk Iowa, was plying the sea lanes between the U.S. East Coast and the Indian Ocean, testing a device that combines the information obtained from shipboard radar and identification transponders to give authorities a better overview of who is on the water and what they are up to.
Now, the U.S. Office of Global Maritime Situational Awareness wants to leverage that data fusion technology to create a spaced-based collaboration for International Global Maritime Awareness. Guy Thomas, the office’s science and technology adviser, envisions a networked information system using commercial satellites to transmit a common operating picture to authorities, allowing them to monitor large ocean areas.
Thomas, a former Navy signals intelligence officer working for the interagency maritime situational awareness office, thinks navigational radar and other sensor data from thousands of merchant ships — enhanced by commercial satellites rapidly relaying the information to authorities — could help overcome the challenge of monitoring the vast maritime domain.
Using existing commercial satellite technology, such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and electro-optical and infrared imaging, could provide all-weather night-and-day surveillance, even in heavy cloud cover. The satellites and shipboard sensors would complement each other, either calling attention to anomalies or checking and verifying them. The time it takes to download information from a satellite could be as little as 5 min., says Thomas. The information would be made available to authorities in an unclassified format. L-band radar, less detailed but also less expensive, would be adequate to detect the wake of ships at sea from space, he asserts.
Probably the greatest obstacle facing the warships from more than a dozen nations patrolling the pirate-infested waters between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea is that the area “is just vast, more than a million square miles,” says Gordan Van Hook, the director of innovation and concept development for the U.S.-based Maersk Line Ltd. According to U.S. Central Command, 33,000 ships passed through the Gulf of Aden in 2008. The same year, 122 piracy events occurred, with 42 successful and 80 unsuccessful.
International maritime regulations require commercial ships weighing more than 300 tons to carry an Automated Information System. Initially intended as an anti-collision device, the AIS is similar to the transponders that FAA regulations require on civil aircraft. Broadcasting on VHF radio, it divulges a ship’s identification number, navigation status, speed and course heading every 2–10 sec. Name, cargo, size, destination and estimated time of arrival are broadcast about every 6 min. Other vessels with AIS in range constantly receive those data. However, each vessel is its own information bubble, says Van Hook, and cannot share data about other ships it encounters with authorities when more than 50 mi. from shore.
In a test project funded by the Transportation Dept., Lockheed Martin put a prototype data fusion system, known as Neptune, on Maersk cargo vessels, starting with the Maersk Iowa in 2006. Neptune took the information obtained by the ship’s radar, which has a radius of about 20 mi., and combined it with data from passing ships received through its AIS. The information was sent via an Inmarsat satellite to a Lockheed Martin fusion center in Eagan, Minn., says Van Hook.
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– Christian
Good article, Christian. A maritime network would certainly be a solid first step in detection and information gathering. Perhaps supplement it with a NATO rapid response force based in the area? I think the problem that we’re experiencing with the situation is the fragmented response. If we had a specific international force in the area that was trained to recapture boats, supplemented by this network, we’d have the basic framework for sustainable presence in the area.
All very nice to know where commercial ships are; but, the problems isn’t THEM. Hello? The problem is pirate boats, of every size, scattered everywhere.
The problem is how to thwart pirate craft. In order to deter them, you have to be in place. As has been said, it’s a big, big ocean out there. Surface ships cannot respond quickly enough, helicopters are faster, but have to deploy from surface ships; airplanes are fast, but can do little to interdict pirate craft. both airplanes and helicopters have fuel/range restrictions.
what is needed, is an aircraft that can fly quickly, and hover like a helicopter, doesn’t need to deploy from a ship, can land on the water with boarding parties in order to inspect/interdict pirate craft, and which has unlimited range and linger ability. at comparatively little cost; and can be fielded now, not years away.
AMPHIBIOUS, FAST, ALL WEATHER, RIGID SHELLED, SOLAR/BIODIESEL POWERED AIRSHIPS.
(not blimps)
While a better network would be nice, I don’t subscribe to the “techno-fix” theories for solving the age-old threat of piracy on the high seas.
One idea we could resurrect from the past is to commission several Q-ships (see Wikipedia) — These would be vessels which appeared to be merchants but carried concealed armaments and troops to lure pirates in and then smash’em flat.
Also, since the pirates are operating out of known ports, destroying their harbors might make them reconsider the error of their ways.
Another try by a contractor to re-invent the wheel. Yawn…
Good Morning Folks,
I think Spookie Jones goy it right. This is a thinly disguised attempted for Lockheed and the satellite industry to sell goods.
I think that anyone who has look at the proposed QDR will see that this is not the way this problem should be dealt with. Once the pirates are on the water as it was in the 17th. Century they have won. Again I will refer to a book that is being published in May, I have an advanced copy of it and am almost done reading it called “The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates” by Peter T. Leeson should be a must read for all who are attempting to deal with this problem and professor Leeson for George Mason University should be hired as a consultant on this issue.
I have some serious disagreement with prof. Leeson’s assumptions of pirate tactics and their demographics of the 17th. Century, I think he focuses on the exceptions rather then the average to base his arguments, but he could have done it either way and come to his same conclusions, which I can mostly agree with.
It would appear that this problem is the classic case of how “The Six Strategic Principles” that as the basis of the QDR can be applied to dealing with what at first seems to be a purely military problem. Since I think Christian is going to put up a piece on the QDR soon, I won’t go into details but save my comments for that posting.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
The key to solving this problem is to stop these guys BEFORE they get close to a merchant ship. You need the right information at the right time and an ability to respond quickly. If these pirates are operating from known ports, then we probably have a good idea how to respond quickly. And if we can really spot these guys from satellites and distinguish them from the good guys we can give some good information EARLY enough to the ‘quick response force’ so they can respond BEFORE any more innocent lives are endangered. This sounds like a good idea to me. Is there any other way to collect this kind of information?
Every US-flagged vessel should be implicitly considered to have been granted a letter of marque and effectively an auxiliary cruiser of the USN. Arm the damn merchantmen and this goes away, much more cheaply than some multi-echeloned technobabbleladen ISO9000 compliant TQM passive-agressive BS.
There is already a system on merchant vessels its called AIS (Automatic Identification System) and its been around for years and required by law. AIS is the ship version of the transponders aircraft use it transmits the ships name, speed, heading and whole bunch of other things the user wants to add. With an AIS unit can you see all the information of vessels in the area it can also be integrated with the ships radar & gps so that instead seeing a return you can have all the information on the radar screen which is quite helpful. The downside anyone can buy an AIS unit and therefore your broadcasting detailed information about your ship to anyone out there. I worked on a ship in pirate area and we decided not to transmit AIS, no sense in darwing more attention to ourselves.
AIS data is also on the web where you watch live ship tracking like here for example http://www.shipais.com/
I used to be a small boat operator of a Survey Ship, for us to even be seen on radar we had to have a radar reflective ball on a pipe sticking up 2.5 metres in the air. With out it no one would have picked us up on radar.
So straight away I see a problem with this Tech.
I made this same post over at “war is boring” and someone noted that the “motherships” would still show up.
But this would still not help in the Gulf of Aden.
I agree this is most likely a marketing ploy.
I believe some of the writers are looking for a solution in one step. How about seperating the wheat from the chaff? If you can remove the legitimate shipping and concentrate on the remainder you have simplified the problem. Yes I agree current navigational radar will not pick up the small pirate boats but there are other options. The idea here is to bring the data that is known to the watchstander on each ship to a central point and to form a larger picture