Last Thursday I participated in a bloggers roundtable with the Director of the U.S. Navy’s maritime domain awareness program, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. M. Stewart O’Bryan.It turned out, not a lot of interest in this subject besides me. It is still early in the process for developing MDA, but I thought I would post all the questions I was able to ask (a bunch of them), and you can see the answers for yourself. From the transcript (PDF).
Galrahn: Q Hi, this is Raymond Pritchett from Information Dissemination. Thanks for putting this roundtable together.Comment: I didn't ask all of the questions in the roundtable, you can read the transcript to see the other questions asked, but I do enjoy it when I get to ask a bunch of questions like that specific roundtable.
I have a few questions, but the big one, I think, that I see pop up when people are talking about Maritime Domain Awareness is, what is the expectations and what is the level of buy-in that you're seeing from the commercial sector, not just in the United States, but globally, and among those naval partners that you guys are developing? I mean, is there some expectation for AIS systems?
Or what is -- how do you approach the commercial sector with this, as Maritime Domain Awareness is certainly in part monitoring their activities as well and identifying what is not among the normal activities at sea?
ADM. O'BRYAN: Right.
I mean, the commercial entities and flagging nations have a keen interest in it, because they operate on these seas. And illicit activities and bad actors have found ways to work into the systems and hide themselves, amongst legal entities that are doing work.
One of the things is that our efforts will eventually reduce potential delays, streamlining port operations and increasing port safety and security, which I think is a benefit to the commercial entities that are in this business of shipping goods. Ninety percent of the commerce and the cargo trans across the oceans and seas, in the effort to move commerce and cargo.
You had mentioned AIS. AIS is an automatic information system which shares databases about vessels and has been mandated by the International Maritime Organization for 300 gross tons and above.
And it provides various data about a ship -- its location, its course and things of that nature -- which helps start as a baseline for having an understanding of the ships and vessels that are in operation off of anybody's coast.
Galrahn: Because early discussions of MDA revolved around the examination of, say, the airline industry where you know where every plane is for the most part. They follow a standard protocol, whereas the sea has been ungoverned by these protocols for millenniums.
And I'm just trying to figure out, where does -- where does the connection go for what the Navy's efforts are, in terms of developing international buy-in?
What is -- what is the response that you're seeing from the industry side, for private-sector buy-in?
ADM. O'BRYAN: Yeah, the model that you're referring to is like the FAA model. And so industry, navies and nations are in agreement that we need to have this understanding, not only for just security reasons but also for safety, to avoid collisions at sea and to facilitate legitimate practice and shares of goods. So there is an agreed upon and a common appreciation for this awareness in the maritime domain. As a good example, piracy levels have decreased in the Straits of Malacca, because of this kind of sharing of information and security.
It provides the ship safe and free navigation across chokepoints and things, as is -- it has -- we've recently seen some improvement in the Gulf of Aden.
So I think industry and the whole government agencies are starting to come together and start to discuss these common threats and common desire to have this understanding and work together.
Galrahn: Ladies, I can ask questions all day. If you guys want to ask others --
LT. CRAGG: Raymond, go ahead and then --
Beth: Definitely go ahead. (Laughter.)
Galrahn: Well, I have another question about -- what is the intent of maritime domain awareness? Are you monitoring the environment, or are you monitoring the threat?
ADM. O'BRYAN: It's -- it is effective understanding of anything associated with maritime domain. That can impact the safety, the security, the economy or the environment of the -- you know, in the United States, and that understanding is widely recognized, I think, by most nations and navies, that that's -- it's just not limited to security. It's also environmental.
Galrahn: So say the United States government, through the -- I'm assuming it's multi-agency from our perspective --
ADM. O'BRYAN: Yes.
Galrahn: -- is monitoring the coast of Florida, and you're watching all of the fishermen out there, are you worried about running into any sort of privacy rights as you're watching 20,000 fishing boats?
ADM. O'BRYAN: Well, it's not that we have detailed information on each one of those fishing vessels. It's just that -- the awareness that there are fishing vessels out there.
And what you look for is not who or an individual or things of that nature; you look for anomalies. If you know that the common fisheries are in a certain body of water and you start detecting vessels in another area that's not common, that in itself is an anomaly, and the Coast Guard or the Navy or Customs or some other entity may want to go out and either query the vessels in that area or send someone out to look at it.
Galrahn: So it's almost you're monitoring patterns for behavior. It's like a behavioral science type project.
ADM. O'BRYAN: Yeah, it -- that's one approach. It's not the only approach. It's very -- it's a layered building of an understanding of this area. As you said, it was ungoverned. I'd say that it's not necessarily ungoverned, but it's very free and open, and because of that, illegal activities find value in exploiting that openness.
Galrahn: When you're talking about maritime domain awareness in development, does the -- how do you determine intent?
ADM. O'BRYAN: Well, that's a difficult question, even in -- can you elaborate a little bit more on that? What do you mean?
Galrahn: Well, does this capability will allow you to determine the intent? Is there any sort of -- I don't know, I mean, maritime domain awareness is huge. It's got this -- it's enormous, and it's global. And thankfully, there's a lot of people who are interested in it. But when you're looking for patterns, behavioral patterns that are -- anonamal (sic) -- I'm not even sure of the word you're using, but basically an anonymy (sic) -- anol -- I can't say it -- (laughs).
ADM. O'BRYAN: Anolamy (sic) -- anolamy -- it's anolamous (sic) -- you've got me doing it. (Laughs, laughter.)
LT. CRAGG: Anomaly?
Galrahn: Okay.
ADM. O'BRYAN: Yes. Very good. Thank you.
Galrahn: Thank you. Yeah, when you have these situations where they're unique, it's different, looks a little strange, how do you determine the intent? I mean, is that when you dispatch a ship, a plane?
ADM. O'BRYAN: Well, I mean --
Galrahn: I mean, what are we looking to gain here, other than a behavior pattern recognition process?
ADM. O'BRYAN: Well, that in itself is -- it's vital to understand what behavior is normal, in order to identify behavior that is inconsistent, or maybe intent. So by acknowledging the behavior that's outside of the norm, the Navy is better -- the Navy and the Coast Guard, for that fact, are better able to identify a threat before it is, you know, able to cause harm.
And so I guess in a way that's kind of intent. But as you go out to explore a vessel that is acting abnormally, you can then ascertain more information and maybe be able to better understand whether the intent is to do harm or not. I mean, that's a tough one, you know.
Galrahn: Sure. Is maritime domain awareness seen as a technological-enabled capability, or is there a human element to developing this information?
ADM. O'BRYAN: I think at the onset there is a lot of human interaction and -- and equity that is -- has been required. But the goal is to try to find -- when you start trying to gather huge amounts of information, you're basically upon an information explosion, and you probably could not have enough human interaction to go through this.
So technology we see as the answer to be able to sort through the disparate types of information and try to build linkages and point us to those anomalies or things that would be of interest. So they'll still require some human assessment or evaluation, but technology should be able to help us do this at a more rapid pace.
Galrahn: Yeah, I was going to ask about data-sharing. I assume that nobody's going to own the data, everybody's going to own the data, it's for a common picture. How are you looking at the data-sharing side -- (audio break) -- accountability perspective when integrating all of these regional coast guards and naval forces?
ADM. O'BRYAN: Well, there are some existing networks that are out there, and they have got inside them already approved and signed agreements. So we have to work with those regions on how we share and get information assurances. One of the discussion topics here was the possibility of federating these regions and how we would go about it. And some of the discussion revolved around developing a model, developing a technical standard and some of those things here. So the discussions will need to continue on how we start to continue to share, and where that baseline is, and how many layers of information is it that we'll be able to share, depending on the members of the various regional networks and global networks.
Galrahn: So we're looking at a pretty massive and global application development here. I mean, this is -- you're -- this sounds like you're looking for technology, presumably Web-based, for a public network that's secured. I would -- I'm just assuming.
ADM. O'BRYAN: Well, it would have -- it would be accessed (in RAN/and ran ?) and managed by the various regionals. But it's more federating the regions because of their common interests and needs vice a global -- but eventually the effect you achieve is awareness of things around the globe, as it applies to your region.
A global single network is something that's -- could be envisioned way out in the future, but not at this point, as far as I'm aware of.
OK, I'll ask the question that wasn't asked, where is MDA going?
It looks to me like the Navy has settled on what might be a technologically driven human behavior at sea monitoring system. Apparently there is an expectation that they will be able to see everything moving at sea, and the data will reveal patterns that can be capitalized on. Maybe, but I don't think anyone knows for sure.
MDA will apparently be a real-time operational picture capability, in other words a tool for monitoring the environment. This will be useful, although I am not convinced MDA is the significant leap forward in capability it was once promised to be, and I think it will ultimately be very expensive. I also did not get the impression there is much complexity in concept or depth to what MDA could be. It sounded to me like a very operational level capability, and not much more.
I can imagine a lot of contractors will want to compete for this project though.
No comments:
Post a Comment