Category Archives: Maritime Domain Awareness

“Indian Navy Commandos Retake Ship In Arabian Sea” gCaptain/Reuters

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The Indian Navy approaches the M/V Lila Norfolk in the Indian Ocean, January 5, 2024. Photo courtesy Indian Navy

gCaptain reports,

“An Indian Navy warship intercepted the MV Lila Norfolk on Friday afternoon, less than a day after the navy received news that it had been hijacked off Somalia’s coast in the North Arabian Sea.”

The crew of 21 had taken shelter in a citadel. By the time the Indian Navy destroyer, INS Chennai, had arrived, the pirates had fled.

The MV Lila Norfolk “was kept under continuous surveillance using MPA (Maritime Patrol Aircraft–Chuck), Predator MQ9B & integral helos.”

Notably, the Indian Navy is one of several users of the MQ-9B Sea Guardian Medium Altitude Long Endurance UAS including the Japan Coast Guard, the UK, Taiwan, and Greece. The US Coast Guard after years of observation of Customs and Border Protection’s use of earlier model MQ-9 Predators, the USCG has yet to procure or even experiment with a shore based long endurance UAS.

“Head of Royal Canadian Navy Outlines Ottawa’s Pacific Strategy” –USNI

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This is starting to get a little old, but I am trying to catch up.

US Naval Institute reports on a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) interview with Vice Adm. Angus Topshee, Commander, Royal Canadian Navy, Chief of the Naval Staff, that discusses their Navy’s increased emphasis on the Pacific.

I have included the video of the interview above.

Three AOPSs at pier before the commissioning ceremony for HMCS Margaret Brooke (AOPV-431). Canadian Navy photo

He discusses operating with the Coast Guard for drug interdiction, icebreaking, and fisheries beginning about time 9:00. The new Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships are expected to play important roles in these activities.

Map of the Arctic region showing shipping routes Northeast Passage, Northern Sea Route, and Northwest Passage, and bathymetry, Arctic Council, by Susie Harder

He explains why he does not see the NW Passage (which includes Alaskan waters) as a future international trade route (12:30).

He anticipates an end to the moratorium on fishing in the Arctic (14:30).

Discusses response to “Gray Zone” threats to undersea infrastructure (15:30).

Discussed war in Ukraine (19:00). Re sinking of Moskva, “Cruise missiles should not sink ships” (20:30). Drones (21:00). AI (24:50).

Where will they concentrate their efforts–Indo-Pacific (27:00). AOPS will be used for Fisheries in the Western Pacific.

Artic is an expeditionary theater, you have to bring everything with you, because there are no port facilities (29:00). Looking to create dual use facilities.

Recruiting (31:30). National Shipbuilding program (35:30), Technology sharing.

“Allies, partners tap into technology to monitor maritime domain” –Indo-Pacific Defense Forum

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Winkel Tripel projection, WGS84 datum, central meridian : 150°E. Source Wikipedia Commons, Author: Eric Gaba

The Indo-Pacific Defense Forum reports,

“Maritime domain awareness (MDA) in the Indo-Pacific is moving from an abstract aspiration to a functional collective security approach for managing the region’s dynamic offshore spaces,” noted an April 2023 article in PacNet, a publication of Pacific Forum, a Hawaii-based foreign policy research institute. “Much of the cost-savings in maritime enforcement activities is due to emerging technologies including access to satellites that provide clearer and more accurate images, as well as artificial intelligence and big data platforms dedicated to vessel tracking, prediction, and anomaly detection.”

There are fusion centers in India, Singapore and Vanuatu. These fusion centers would be useful in wartime, but they are essentially a cooperative exchange of information among maritime law enforcement agencies. In addition to its importance in countering IUU and drug smuggling, better maritime domain awareness may give warning of a terrorist attack. Shouldn’t the US Coast Guard have a fusion center in Alameda under Pacific Area? Probably should be one on the West coast of South America too.

“C4F’s Hybrid Fleet Completes Target Detection Test” –4th Fleet

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A Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vessel operates alongside U.S. Coast Guard fast response cutter USCGC Emlen Tunnell (WPC 1145) in the Arabian Gulf, Nov. 29, during Digital Horizon 2022. (Sgt. Brandon Murphy/US Army)

Below is a 4th Fleet News Release. This development will have obvious impact on Coast Guard drug and alien migrant interdiction efforts. This is a result of extending experimentation with unmanned systems to 4th Fleet in much the same way it was done in 5th fleet.

 Oct. 17, 2023

C4F’s Hybrid Fleet Completes Target Detection Test

By USNAVSOUTH/4TH FLEET PUBLIC AFFAIRS

KEY WEST, Florida   –  Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-South) and Saildrone successfully completed an evaluation of the unmanned surface vessel Saildrone Voyager’s radar and electronic sensors against surface targets in the vicinity of Key West September 29, 2023.

Part of U.S. 4th Fleet’s campaign to inform the hybrid fleet, the evaluation looked at how many Saildrones the fleet would need to cover a given area of water and optimize the probability that the Saildrones would detect suspected drug runners at sea.

“This successful detection test is the completion of one small step in our campaign to inform the hybrid fleet,” said Capt. David Fowler, U.S. 4th Fleet’s Maritime Operations Center Director. “This is the type of testing and development that we can conduct even as we move toward continuous hybrid operations in the Caribbean.”

Right now continuous operations are underway with Operation Windward Stack. The U.S. 4th Fleet operation deploys long-dwell Saildrone unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to the Windward Passage in the Caribbean order to operationalize the combination of unmanned and manned systems in normal day-to-day operations.

In the coming months, other long-dwell USVs, interceptor USVs, long range UAVs, and VTOL UAVs will join the Saildrones in Operation Windward Stack. These systems will combine with traditional naval surface vessels to expand maritime domain awareness (MDA) and define combinations of unmanned and manned forces that work best for specific operations.

U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command/U.S. 4th Fleet supports U.S. Southern Command’s joint and combined military operations by employing maritime forces in cooperative maritime security operations to maintain access, enhance interoperability, and build enduring partnerships in order to enhance regional security and promote peace, stability and prosperity in the Caribbean, Central and South American region.

Learn more about USNAVSOUTH/4th Fleet at https://www.fourthfleet.navy.mil, https://www.facebook.com/NAVSOUS4THFLT and @NAVSOUS4THFLT.

“Inside the U.S. Navy’s Cutting-Edge Drone Boat Tech”–WSJ

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A reader brought the video above to my attention, recognizing the significant Coast Guard participation in the program. 

Below I have reproduced the text that accompanied the video on YouTube. 

Drone boats appear to be on the cusp of a revolution. The U.S. Navy’s Task Force 59 has been pairing cutting-edge unmanned surface vehicles with artificial intelligence to expand the military’s eyes and ears in the Middle East. Now, similar efforts will be rolled out in the Pacific and Central and South America. The military’s objective is to leverage machine learning to detect and anticipate threats before they occur. Experts say the U.S. is currently the leader in this field, but competitors like China and Russia are racing to catch up. I traveled to Manama, Bahrain to see the high-tech drones in action and speak to officials about how they’re preparing for a future with robots in the world’s waters. 0:00 A rare look at the U.S. Navy’s drone boat operation 0:30 Meet the Navy’s Task Force 59 2:14 Drone boat capabilities 4:05 How artificial intelligence is layered with the drone boats 5:11 The global race to advance unmanned marine vehicles 7:23 What’s next for the U.S. military? Check out more from my exclusive interview with Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Naval forces in the Middle East, about unmanned vessels and the Navy’s future fleet:    • Drone Boats, AI and the Future of Mar…   I’m Shelby Holliday, a reporter for WSJ. Subscribe to join me as I explain some of today’s most pressing geopolitical events, from superpower showdowns and conflicts to supply chain snarls and natural resource struggles.

The link embedded above was to this video. 

Thanks to David for bringing this to my attention.

“US Navy ‘operationalizes’ drones in 4th Fleet’s UNITAS event” –Defense News

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Personnel from the U.S. and Colombian navies attend a demonstration of Aerosonde MK4.7 Hybrid Quad drone during UNITAS on July 16, 2023. (MC1 Hunter Harwell/U.S. Navy)

Defense News reports,

“The U.S. Navy leveraged air and surface drones throughout its two-week UNITAS 2023 naval exercise near Latin America, the first major event since service leadership announced the region would host the sea service’s second unmanned operations hub.”

The Coast Guard certainly has an interest in 4th Fleet’s use of unmanned systems since their area of responsibility (AOR) includes the Eastern Pacific drug transit zones and the Caribbean.

Apparently, not all the systems are in place yet.

“Some of the same systems will return this fall for operations and exercises in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean, he added.”

Importantly 4 Fleet is developing a “mesh network that compiles a detailed common operating picture of the region — then AI tools could help flag areas where potentially problematic activities are happening.”

Hopefully we will see video of the SINKEX as recorded by the UAS.

“As it helps combat unlawful fishing internationally, NGA is ‘posturing’ for an AI-driven future” –DefenseScoop

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DefenseScoop reports that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is using AI to sort data for an application called Enhanced Domain Awareness (EDA) to provide maritime domain awareness information to US and partner countries to help them deal with Illegal, Unregulated, Unreported (IUU) fishing.

“Just to give you a sense of the scale and how much we’re talking about — there’s around 470 U.S. own space-based remote sensing systems that are available today. And that’s going to expand to around 1,400 by 2030, we expect. So globally, there’s about a seven-fold increase in those systems. So the limiting factor isn’t how much of the Earth we can observe or how often — it’s how quickly we can derive insights from that data. And so that’s where, of course, AI and automation comes in. It helps us increase the speed and our capability to react to military and human humanitarian response efforts,” he explained.

This grew out of a SOUTHCOM effort and isn’t limited to IUU.

“When you log into EDA, whether it is on the U.S. side or the partner-nation side, many of the projects that you’ll see in there revolve around different priority lines of effort,” Kurey explained. For Southcom, besides IUU “you’ll find other things like counter-narcotics missions, and things like that. But it’s all encompassing, and you’ll find information and data and projects that I mentioned before will support a tactical environment, operational environment, or strategic messaging,” he said.

The system is being extended to other users.

As the platform continues to mature and blossom, now other combatant commands — including U.S. Northern Command, European Command and Indo-Pacific Command — are beginning to explore how they can integrate it into their own initiatives for data organization and support.

“Coast Guard signs strategic plan for unmanned systems” –MyCG

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MyCG reports the completion of a Coast Guard UxS Strategic Plan,

“,,,the Coast Guard will find ways to use unmanned systems to improve our mission execution. Second, the Coast Guard will prepare to defend against threats from unlawful use of unmanned systems. Finally, the Coast Guard must establish and enforce a regulatory framework for the safe and lawful use of unmanned systems and automation in the Marine Transportation System.”

Using Unmanned air systems (UAS) and surface systems (USV) for increased Maritime Domain awareness is a no brainer.

Unmanned systems will certainly impact crewing requirements for the marine transportation system, with things like remote watch standers, market forces will make that happen.

The most challenging part of this will be “to defend against threats from unlawful use of unmanned systems.” This should include criminals, terrorists, and malevolent state actors.

A team aboard Coast Guard Cutter Stratton’s long range interceptor-II cutter boat participates in the interdiction of a self-propelled semi-submersible vessel in the Eastern Pacific Ocean July 18, 2015. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class LaNola Stone.

For criminals, shipping drugs without using crewmembers that might provide intelligence on their operations if captured, has to seem like a good idea.

The wars in Yemen and Ukraine have already shown us what terrorists or a nation state might do with unmanned surface vessels.

The US Navy and many others are working on unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) as weapons platforms.

Snakehead Large Displacement Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (LDUUV)

Will the Coast Guard include countering UUVs as part of its mission?

Will this prompt a return of the Coast Guard’s ASW mission?

It’s likely unmanned surface vessels will be required to counter unmanned undersea vessels.

“Video: Interview With VADM Cooper On TF 59 Milestones, US 5th Fleet” –Naval News

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Naval News provides a video of an interview with 5th Fleet/NAVCENT commander VAdm Charles Bradford (Brad) Cooper II. In addition to the video above, the Naval News post provides a transcript of the interview (always appreciated).

The video provides more than talking heads. There are snippets of video showing the operation of unmanned systems and the people mentioned.

PATFORSWA Webber class cutters show up in the video three times.

Task Force 59 is an exciting development. It appears likely this model will be replicated in other areas including with the 4th Fleet in the Drug Transit Zone. Hopefully the Coast Guard is taking the opportunity to learn as much as possible from these operations. If the Coast Guard does not have a Coast Guard R&D liaison to Task Force 59 we are missing a good bet.

221207-N-NO146-1001 ARABIAN GULF (Dec. 7, 2022) An Aerovel Flexrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) takes off from U.S. Coast Guard fast response cutter USCGC Emlen Tunnell (WPC 1145) transiting the Arabian Gulf, Dec. 7. U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59 launched the UAV during Digital Horizon, a three-week event focused on integrating new unmanned and artificial intelligence platforms, including 10 that are in the region for the first time. (U.S. Navy photo)

Related:

“Sea Machines and USCG partner on computer vision domain awareness” –Marine Link

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Photo from Sea Machines website, https://sea-machines.com/ai-ris/

Marine Link reports that a 270 foot WMEC has been fitted with an artificial intelligence recognition and identification system (AI-ris) computer vision product by Sea Machines.

“AI-ris uses artificial intelligence to identify and track visual targets of interest. Installation on the cutter was made possible under an ongoing Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between Sea Machines Robotics and the USCG Research and Development Center in an effort to evaluate how computer vision systems can be utilized for autonomous navigation, collision avoidance, and target detection. The deployment of AI-ris provides the USCG a new tool for maritime domain awareness and allows Sea Machines to refine its computer vision technology with feedback from the USCG across a range of environmental conditions and operational scenarios.”

No idea why the report did not name the cutter that got the system. Even the photo that accompanied the report has no hull number.

Sea Machines and the Coast Guard Research and Development Center (RDC) do have some history, having used their SM300 Autonomous Command & Control system.