U.S. Wants Greater Maritime Domain Awareness
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A plan for the U.S. Coast Guard to get greater "Maritime Domain Awareness" is included in a new security strategy under review at the White House.
The strategy could get approval in six to eight weeks. The plan would put sensors on oil rigs and weather buoys to spot security threats at sea, and may use satellites, unmanned planes, and commercial jets to monitor ships as far as 2000 nautical miles away.
Pilot projects are already using radio receivers on privately owned oil rigs and government weather buoys, but these tests can only pick up routine Automatic Identification System (AIS) ship signals a few hundred miles out to sea.
The Coast Guard wants to push the current tracking radius to 2000 nautical miles and, ultimately, across the globe. But, since a 2000-mile reach would include vessels in the territorial waters of many other countries, the plan has raised some concerns. Privacy is another issue to be considered.
