    [House Hearing, 113 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                     HOW TO IMPROVE THE EFFICIENCY, SAFETY,
                    AND SECURITY OF MARITIME TRANSPORTATION:
                         BETTER USE AND INTEGRATION OF
                         MARITIME DOMAIN AWARENESS DATA

    =======================================================================

                                    (113-33)

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                                SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                    COAST GUARD AND MARITIME TRANSPORTATION

                                     OF THE

                                  COMMITTEE ON
                       TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                 JULY 31, 2013

                                   __________

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                 COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

                      BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
    DON YOUNG, Alaska                    NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
    THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin           PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
    HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina         ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
    JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee,          Columbia
      Vice Chair                         JERROLD NADLER, New York
    JOHN L. MICA, Florida                CORRINE BROWN, Florida
    FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey        EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
    GARY G. MILLER, California           ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
    SAM GRAVES, Missouri                 RICK LARSEN, Washington
    SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia  MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
    CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan          TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
    DUNCAN HUNTER, California            MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
    ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD, Arkansas  GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
    LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania           DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
    BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas              TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota
    LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana               STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
    BOB GIBBS, Ohio                      ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
    PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania         DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
    RICHARD L. HANNA, New York           JOHN GARAMENDI, California
    DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida              ANDRE CARSON, Indiana
    STEVE SOUTHERLAND, II, Florida       JANICE HAHN, California
    JEFF DENHAM, California              RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota
    REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin            ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona
    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              DINA TITUS, Nevada
    STEVE DAINES, Montana                SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York
    TOM RICE, South Carolina             ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
    MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma           LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
    ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas                CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois
    TREY RADEL, Florida
    MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina
    SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania
    RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
    MARK SANFORD, South Carolina
                                    ------                                7

            Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation

                      DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
    DON YOUNG, Alaska                    JOHN GARAMENDI, California
    HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina         ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
    FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey        RICK LARSEN, Washington
    PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania         TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
    STEVE SOUTHERLAND, II, Florida,      LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
      Vice Chair                         CORRINE BROWN, Florida
    TOM RICE, South Carolina             JANICE HAHN, California
    TREY RADEL, Florida                  NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
    MARK SANFORD, South Carolina           (Ex Officio)
    BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania (Ex
        Officio)

                                    CONTENTS

                                                                       Page

    Summary of Subject Matter........................................    iv

                                   TESTIMONY
                                    Panel 1

    Rear Admiral Mark E. Butt, Assistant Commandant for Capability,
      United States Coast Guard......................................     2
    Stephen L. Caldwell, Director, Homeland Security and Justice
      Issues, United States Government Accountability Office.........     2

                                    Panel 2

    Bill Vass, CEO, Liquid Robotics..................................    23
    Steve Morrow, President and CEO, Insitu, on behalf of the
      Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.........    23
    Lisa Hazard, Operations Manager, Coastal Observing Research and
      Development Center, Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
      University of California, San Diego............................    23
    Newell Garfield, III, Ph.D., Director, Romberg Tiburon Center for
      Environmental Studies, San Francisco State University..........    23

               PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY MEMBER OF CONGRESS

    Hon. John Garamendi, of California...............................    39

                   PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES

    Rear Admiral Mark E. Butt........................................    40
    Stephen L. Caldwell..............................................    55
    Bill Vass........................................................    73
    Steve Morrow.....................................................    78
    Lisa Hazard......................................................    80
    Newell Garfield, III, Ph.D.......................................    88

                           SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

    Rear Admiral Mark E. Butt, Assistant Commandant for Capability,
      United States Coast Guard:

        Responses to requests for information from:
            Hon. Duncan Hunter, a Representative in Congress from the
              State of California, regarding the number of legacy
              Coast Guard vessels with SeaWatch......................     7
            Hon. Janice Hahn, a Representative in Congress from the
              State of California, regarding grain-shipment safety
              zones in the Pacific Northwest and how the Coast Guard
              respects the First Amendment rights of water picketers.16, 17
            Hon. John Garamendi, a Representative in Congress from
              the State of California, regarding how close picketers
              are allowed to get to ships in the Pacific Northwest...    17
        Responses to questions for the record submitted by Hon. John
          Garamendi..................................................    46
    Hon. John Garamendi, request to submit a written statement from
      the International Longshore and Warehouse Union................    93

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    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2266.003

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2266.004

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2266.005

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2266.006

                     HOW TO IMPROVE THE EFFICIENCY, SAFETY,
                            AND SECURITY OF MARITIME
                         TRANSPORTATION: BETTER USE AND
                         INTEGRATION OF MARITIME DOMAIN
                                 AWARENESS DATA

                                  ----------

                            WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2013

                      House of Representatives,
               Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime
                                        Transportation,
                Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m. in
    Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter
    (Chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
        Mr. Hunter. The subcommittee will come to order. All right.
    There are no Democrats here, but we've been advised. If that's
    OK, we can start anyway. Excuse me for not wearing a tie. I had
    some neck surgery, and I'm trying to keep the incision open so
    it can fix itself.
        The subcommittee is meeting this morning to review the
    status of Coast Guard maritime domain awareness programs. The
    Coast Guard operates a broad array of systems and sensors to
    gather data to enhance the Service's awareness of activities in
    the maritime domain. At a time when budgets are being cut and
    the Coast Guard is being stretched thin, maritime domain
    awareness, MDA, provides critical information to more
    efficiently deploy personnel and assets.
        Although the Service has made progress over the last decade
    in acquiring new technology to collect, integrate, and
    disseminate MDA data, implementation has been slow, several
    gaps still exist, and budget realities mean the Coast Guard
    will struggle to achieve its goals for the MDA program.
        The Coast Guard currently attracts large commercial vessels
    and other potential threats in the maritime domain, but the
    Service still lacks a single system of--capable of fully
    fusing, filtering, and displaying all MDA information in common
    operating picture.
        The concept of the common operating picture was also at the
    center of the Coast Guard's effort to recapitalize its aging
    and failing legacy assets. The goal was to acquire new C4ISR
    technology that would enable--recapitalize vessels and aircraft
    to collect and fuse MDA information into a common operational
    picture, and then share with one another and among shore-side
    installations.
        The Coast Guard has made progress towards that goal but has
    yet to fully achieve it. The GAO recently reported that many
    recapitalized assets could not fully share data because they
    operate different C4ISR systems at different classification
    levels.
        Complicating the Coast Guard's efforts to improve MDA is
    the current budget environment. Budget constraints have forced
    the Coast Guard to drop plans to install upgrades to C4ISR
    systems on its aircraft and vessels in the future. Given this
    development, I am interested in hearing how the Service plans
    to ensure new assets acquired over the next 20 years will
    achieve their full capabilities and not suffer from obsolete
    technology.
        I encourage the Coast Guard to review its MDA and C4ISR
    programs to improve ways to deliver these capabilities more
    efficiently. Our second panel of witnesses comprises a cross-
    section of MDA stakeholders and private industry and academia.
    I look forward to their testimony on new technologies that
    could improve the Coast Guard's MDA efforts in a cost-effective
    manner.
        Maritime domain awareness is a critical tool to maximize
    the Coast Guard's capabilities, to safeguard American interests
    in U.S. waters and on the high seas. If effectively
    implemented, MDA can improve the efficiency, safety, and
    security of maritime transportation.
        I am anxious to hear from the witness on what they think
    the future holds for the MDA programs and how we can best move
    forward to make sure the Coast Guard achieves the goals it has
    for the MDA--for MDA.
        With that, I yield to the ranking member, who is not here,
    so I will recognize Mr. Garamendi for an opening statement when
    he arrives.
        Our first panel of witnesses today are Rear Admiral Mark
    Butt, Assistant Commandant for Capability of the United States
    Coast Guard and Mr. Stephen Caldwell, director of Homeland
    Security and Justice Issues at the United States Government
    Accountability Office.
        Admiral Butt, you are recognized for your statement, and
    thank you both for being here. I apologize for not having more
    of my side and the other side here, but that's OK. The people
    that are important are sitting to my sides here, so they're
    here.

     TESTIMONY OF REAR ADMIRAL MARK E. BUTT, ASSISTANT COMMANDANT
       FOR CAPABILITY, UNITED STATES COAST GUARD; AND STEPHEN L.
       CALDWELL, DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY AND JUSTICE ISSUES,
             UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

        Admiral Butt. Good morning, Chairman Hunter. Thank you for
    the opportunity to testify today and for your continued
    advocacy, interest, and oversight--yes, sir.
        Is that better? OK.
        And for your continued advocacy, interest, and oversight of
    the Coast Guard's command and control systems. As Assistant
    Commandant for Capability, my primary responsibility is to
    identify and provide Coast Guard capability and capacity to
    meet mission requirements. This includes the very important
    ability to discover, correlate, and distribute maritime threat
    data and operational resource availability to and from the
    operational assets of both the Coast Guard and other Government
    agencies. I have a brief opening statement and would like to
    submit my written testimony for the record.
        Whether responding to a distress call, interdicting an
    enlisted vessel, or investigating a maritime infrastructure
    threat, accurate and timely information gathering and sharing
    across agency domains is critical for operational
    effectiveness. The dynamic and demanding operating environment
    in the maritime domain requires that our capabilities be
    interoperable and flexible in order to deliver the right
    capability to the operational commanders at the right time.
        The Coast Guard has adopted a strategy that identifies and
    fields C4ISR capabilities specific to the asset's environment
    and operational needs. We are leveraging advanced technologies
    and working closely with our Department of Homeland Security
    and the Department of Defense partners to field C4ISR solutions
    that fit, are sustainable, and provide us with effective C4ISR.
    Allow to me to highlight a few of these.
        The simple component of our effective C4ISR is searchable
    and discoverable data managed, moved, and formatted within the
    common operating picture. This provides operational commanders
    and senior decisionmakers with mission critical information
    necessary to identify threats and coordinate operations.
        The Coast Guard common operating picture allows data
    exchanges and system interoperability among shore, surface, and
    aviation assets as well as with external partners. It
    integrates automatic data feeds from nationwide automatic
    identification system, the long-range identification and
    tracking systems, additionally, integration of data from
    customs and border protection, Department of Defense, and other
    State and local agencies. C4ISR systems improves situational
    awareness and collaboration across the services.
        At our shore command centers, the WatchKeeper System allows
    for vessel track viewing and is accessible by Federal, State,
    and local partners allowing for coordinated response to port
    security threats and search and rescue cases. Airborne HC-144
    aircraft with Mission System Pallets and HC-130J aircraft
    equipped with the Mission System suite are capable of real-time
    upload of the common operating picture track data and downlink
    of sensor data on tracks of interests to operational
    commanders.
        Aboard the Fast Response Cutters, SeaWatch displays common
    operating picture data allowing commanding officers to view
    vessel tracks and associated intelligence allowing for
    interdiction prioritization. These capability reflect the Coast
    Guard's path to put the right information at the right place at
    the time for our frontline personnel to make decisions that
    impact maritime safety and security.
        As the Coast Guard looks to the future, we recognize the
    challenges and opportunities ahead and are focused on
    continuing efforts to improve collaboration and
    interoperability. Our effort with CG1 View does this. CG1 View
    provides operators with a customizable desktop interfaces which
    allows a user to view various sensor and system inputs, such as
    Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System and Rescue 21 inputs
    for search and rescue, customs and border protection source
    passenger and cargo screening data for security operations, and
    Blue Force tracking data for coordinated, multi-unit, multi-
    agency interdiction operations.
        In addition to improved situational and maritime domain
    awareness, the Coast Guard is expanding its network-based
    connectivity capable to improve direct unit-to-unit
    communications as well as the timely exchange of information
    and C4ISR data. This approach, among a number of other ongoing
    efforts is the Coast Guard's path to a continuing effort to
    place the right information at the right place at the right
    time for the right people to make decisions that impact
    maritime safety and security.
        Thank you again for this opportunity to testify. I look
    forward to answering your questions.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Admiral.
        Mr. Caldwell, you are now recognized. You're probably in
    high demand, director of Homeland Security and Justice for the
    GAO. There's not much going on there these days.
        Mr. Caldwell. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We
    appreciate that. We've got some other directors, but it's a
    busy time, and in fact, I'm testifying before Mr. Meehan's
    committee on the Homeland Security Committee tomorrow.
        Anyway, thank you, Chairman Hunter and also Mr. Meehan, for
    being here and inviting GAO to testify. We're going to be
    talking about our the Coast Guard's efforts to develop a common
    operating picture, which is one of the important components of
    maritime domain awareness. In general, the COP, just to put it
    in simple terms, is a graphic display of information from a
    number of sources. It's customized by a wide variety of
    different Coast Guard users for different purposes and
    functions, to execute the Coast Guard's missions.
        My statement today is going to focus on four different
    systems that contribute to the COP. The first of these is the
    C4ISR project. This is one of the biggest ones, within the
    larger Deepwater recapitalization program. This C4ISR program
    was designed, among other things, to make vessels and aircraft
    both producers and consumers of the COP.
        The WatchKeeper project is the second one. This is within
    the larger interagency operations center program, and this was
    to gather maritime domain awareness information and to share it
    among not just Coast Guard and other Federal agencies, but
    among State and local authorities within key ports.
        The third system we looked at was the Enterprise Geographic
    Information System or EGIS, and this is a COP viewer that the
    Coast Guard started deploying in about 2009, used mainly by
    onshore units to customize the COP for mission planning and
    execution.
        And then finally we looked at ``Coast Guard One View'' in
    the earlier part being rolled out. This is the Coast Guard's
    newest COP viewer that was just mentioned by Admiral Butt.
        So overall, in terms of looking at these four systems and
    some of the things they've delivered, there certainly has been
    a lot of progress through these systems and others in improving
    the COP within the Coast Guard. They certainly have added more
    useful data in terms of additional sources, things like vessel
    locations and Blue Force tracking, which is the ability to
    track our Coast Guard and other friendly boats.
        Also they've increased the COP capability by improving the
    satellite communications infrastructure. They've expanded the
    number of COP users by putting them out on more workstations
    out there, so it could be used at most desktops within the
    Coast Guard, both headquarters and in the field.
        However, for all four of the systems we looked at, a common
    problem that we found related to weaknesses in acquisition
    management. In general, the Coast Guard wasn't following its
    acquisition plans or guidance in several different ways. Some
    problems were more significant than others. But these led to
    problems such as an acquisition strategy for C4ISR that was
    repeatedly changed, so a lot of the vessels and aircraft that
    were, at one point, going to have the same system having
    different systems, which limits information sharing and
    increases the time to pass data across some of these assets.
        Another problem was that requirements of non-Coast Guard
    users were not solicited when the interagency operational
    centers were being developed. This has led to the WatchKeeper
    system, which is one of the key COP systems there, not being
    used by the other maritime stakeholders it was intended for, so
    the information sharing in those centers has not been realized.
        Also, another problem was the implementation of EGIS that
    was slow and inaccurate. Because of the computer systems it was
    put on, it degraded or it even crashed other computer systems
    that were in use.
        And then finally with EGIS, some of the documentation for
    managing that acquisition were not prepared in the proper
    order. Variations were made from established policy. If those
    were made and fully documented, we would have been fine with
    those, but they weren't. So some of the alternative systems
    were not examined, and the costs are still largely unknown, at
    least when we looked at this system last year.
        So overall, these problems have led to a COP that's less
    comprehensive, less integrated, and less timely than what we
    would have expected looking at the earlier planning documents.
    In summary, those high-level plans and requirements that were
    developed between 2004, 2005 would have led to a COP that was
    seamless across the locations and platforms. While we're making
    advances, the COP has not realized its full potential at this
    time. Thank you very much. Be happy to answer any questions.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you both. I just have kind of an opening
    gambit here. I've had a chance to sit on the Armed Services
    Committee. I've had a chance to do time overseas, and what you
    see is the different services having problems when they try to
    get C4ISR, and they try to do their own common operating
    picture, and they have Blue Force Tracker, and they combine
    other stuff, and you do the intel fusion, and you want to be
    able to see your UAVs and your good guys and your bad guys and
    be able to click here and see what grid square holds which
    guys, and it seems like the better technology gets.
        And the cheaper it gets, the more robust it gets, the
    harder it gets for our services to be able to get one or two
    contractors together, be they defense contractors or otherwise,
    and form a picture that any corporation has day in and day out.
    UPS, for instance, tracks thousands of trucks and vans,
    airplanes, products, tracks the weather, does everything that
    they need to do for a global corporation. But when it comes to
    things like making sure that we can see what parts of the
    oceans have oil in them or what parts of the ocean have bad
    things happen, we're unable to do it.
        We spend a lot of money, we come up short every time, but
    the lucky part for you is you just started. You haven't wasted
    billions of dollars yet like the Army and some other services
    have on doing things that don't work yet. OK? So basically what
    we want to get into is we just want to make sure that you get
    it right from the start, because it shouldn't be that hard to
    do.
        It may be that hard to do within the confines of Government
    contracting, but my advice would be just to work through it and
    do what any corporation in your shoes would have to do and get
    something that is cost effective and relevant and able to be
    upgraded over time so that it never gets old. It's open source,
    you can plug stuff into it, and it's secure.
        But those things aren't that hard. Those sound hard, but
    they might have been in 2003, but they're not in 2013. So the
    question is this: In 2011, this is--a few other questions, but
    here's the starting one here, Admiral. In 2011, GAO found that
    after Coast Guard abandoned its goal of building a single,
    fully interoperable C4ISR system--in case anybody doesn't know,
    that's command, control, computers, communication. So those are
    your C4, then intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance is
    the ISR part. C4ISR strategy--in all vessels and aircraft,
    we're using the same C4ISR system.
        So have you decided on a system to be used by the entire
    Coast Guard?
        Admiral Butt. Thank you, sir. In 2004--and you look at the
    documentation--the Coast Guard was going down the same path as
    the other services. What we're going now on is exactly looking
    at that open architecture type support that industry uses to
    set up, because not only do we have to meet with the DOD
    services, we have to meet with Federal, local, and State
    partners. So we have both the class and the unclass COPS that
    we have to worry about and communicate so that the----
        Mr. Hunter. I'm going to interrupt if you don't mind. So
    are you saying that it's up the Coast Guard then to make sure
    that they match whatever every single State chooses to use for
    their local policing forces? So you have to have software that
    then opens up to every single coastal State or city or
    municipality, organization?
        Admiral Butt. Sir, in the port environment, for us to be
    able to work with all those partners, somebody is going to have
    to do that. And so the way we're setting up the WatchKeeper
    program is part of is to be--driving towards that open
    architecture to be able to take disparate inputs and then
    correlate both the track data, sensor data, as well as various
    databases and be able to put it in a format where the Coast
    Guard watch standard and the IOC is then able to use that
    information in the----
        Mr. Hunter. All right. That will never work. There's no way
    you can have a software that interacts with every single
    agency, organization, or municipality that may or may not exist
    among the coastlines to make sure that you don't miss anybody.
        Admiral Butt. Well, industry, sir, is coming out with
    standards. They're standards to set to, so that's what we're
    building the architecture to.
        Mr. Hunter. What standards? And when you say industry,
    which part of the--because I'm in industry, and I know
    standards.
        Admiral Butt. It's the Ozone Widget Framework, sir.
        Mr. Hunter. Say it again.
        Admiral Butt. Ozone Widget Framework.
        Mr. Hunter. Ozone Widget Framework.
        Admiral Butt. Widget Framework.
        Mr. Hunter. OK.
        Admiral Butt. Is the standards for it, so as long as the
    other partners are going towards that standard, then it would
    work.
        Mr. Hunter. Who are the other partners?
        Admiral Butt. Whether it be State, whether it be Federal
    partners, which we're working with S&T on to make sure that the
    DHS work in that direction or it would be local partners
    getting grants.
        Mr. Hunter. OK. So DHS will require anybody that gets
    Federal money to comply, theoretically, with Ozone Widget open
    architecture?
        Admiral Butt. That's the assumption we're working under,
    sir.
        Mr. Hunter. And that's all going to fit into WatchKeeper?
        Admiral Butt. That is the direction we're moving, sir.
        Mr. Hunter. OK. So you have decided? So you've decided on a
    technology and an architecture now going forward?
        Admiral Butt. That is the direction we're working, yes,
    sir.
        Mr. Hunter. Do all of the vessels and aircraft--are they
    going to get this system onboard?
        Admiral Butt. They won't get WatchKeeper. They will--what
    we're----
        Mr. Hunter. Not the WatchKeeper system, but they'll have a
    sensor suite to interact----
        Admiral Butt. The plan is to move--yes, sir. Every one of
    the major cutters, the patrol boats, and our aircraft to have
    in the COP available.
        Mr. Hunter. So how many would you say have it now?
        Admiral Butt. The HC-144s with the missionization pallet
    would have it and the C-130Js have it.
        Mr. Hunter. So if you gave me numbers, 5 out of 50
    airplanes and vessels or what would you say?
        Admiral Butt. Eighteen of the medium range planes, 18 of
    18, and then C-130s, we've got 8 or 9 out of 22.
        Mr. Hunter. And then vessels?
        Admiral Butt. The vessels--the FRCs that are coming online
    all have it. Some of the legacy vessels have been transitioned
    to SeaWatch, and I'll have to get that for the record.
        [The information follows:]

            As of 01 August 2013, the following legacy Coast Guard
            vessels have SeaWatch installed:
             LSix 378-foot: Sherman, Mellon, Midgett,
            Morgenthau, Munro, Boutwell
             LOne 270-foot: Legare

        Mr. Hunter. FRCs come out of Bollinger with this in them?
        Admiral Butt. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Hunter. Gotcha. So they actually install this at the
    shipyard?
        Admiral Butt. Yes, sir. It's part of the FRC architecture.
        Mr. Hunter. Gotcha. OK.
        Mr. Garamendi has arrived. I will yield to him for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Chairman, thank you for starting the
    meeting. As I think you know and perhaps the audience does not,
    the Democratic Caucus just concluded a meeting with the
    President, and it's not good to walk out on the President.
        But it's not good to delay getting here, but among the
    choices, Admiral and Mr. Caldwell, my apologies for not being
    here early on.
        Mr. Chairman, there's a statement I'd like to submit to the
    record from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
    Without unanimous consent, I will take it up when he gets back.
        My own statement, I won't read it, but I'll ask consent to
    get that in the record also for the record.
        I'm trying desperately to catch up here with the questions
    of--there are some questions that my very capable staff has
    prepared, and I'll go with those. If they've been asked and
    answered, then let's not proceed with those.
        This one deviates--the Coast Guard deviation from internal
    acquisition guidance. I think, Mr. Caldwell, you've raised this
    issue. The GAO has criticized the Coast Guard from--for
    common--deviating from his own internal acquisition guidance
    for the development of the program requirements for the new
    C4ISR assets to improve its MDA capabilities.
        Admiral, do you agree with the critique that has been given
    by the GAO?
        Admiral Butt. Sir, in general, I agree with it. The
    criticism on the documents and the sequencing, there are
    definitely reasons as we're trying to push forward that would
    allow documents to go out of sequence, and I'm not so sure that
    the process actually calls for that, but in general, I agree
    with the critique.
        Mr. Garamendi. And that--how about the software systems?
    Are they moving forward appropriately?
        Admiral Butt. The software systems----
        Mr. Garamendi. Coast Guard One View software.
        Admiral Butt. Yes, sir. Coast Guard One View we're moving
    forward with, and we're getting the documentation in place. The
    current plan would be to start fielding it at the end of 2014.
        Mr. Garamendi. Next question that was developed was the
    viability of the systems--system of systems concept. The former
    Deepwater acquisition program was sold to Congress on the idea
    that it would be--would provide the Coast Guard with a new
    system of systems capability, that this new capability would
    allow greatly enhanced ability of the Coast Guard to
    communicate and function. I think this may have been a question
    that was just taken up by the Chair.
        If not, my question then is: Admiral, what is the official
    position of the Coast Guard with respect to the system of
    systems concept? Apparently, that was not asked.
        Admiral Butt. Sir, the system of systems concept we're
    still going forward with, but over the last 10 years, the
    technology has changed, so the architecture of that system of
    systems is evolving. So our goal is to come up with an open
    architecture system that's going to be able to be moved forward
    to the future where we can do technology upgrades to it and not
    be tied to any one vendor so that we can take different inputs
    both from databases as well as sensors and be able--give that
    to the decisionmaker.
        Mr. Garamendi. This has been put off to be worked on in the
    future. Given the budgets that seem to be present in the
    foreseeable future, what effect would this have on the domain
    awareness--maritime domain awareness?
        Admiral Butt. Well, right now, the systems we're putting in
    place have been continuing to improve our maritime domain
    awareness, and for an example I can give you, my daughter is a
    watch scanner down at Sector New Orleans, and she was there
    during Deepwater Horizon, and she's still down there when we
    had that oil well that--or that gas well that we had the
    problems with last week.
        So in discussing, there's a night and day difference of
    sector New Orleans MDA capability for those watch standards
    between this last week event which is very akin to Deepwater
    Horizon, although it wasn't near as catastrophic. So what
    feedback we're getting is it's improving, and we're going to
    continue to keep improving it. The advantage of going to open
    architecture and following the industry standards is I think we
    can do it much, much cheaper than what the original estimates
    were.
        Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Caldwell, what's your view of all of
    this?
        Mr. Caldwell. Well, with the C4ISR, it's a very large
    problem. Part of it is the management of the acquisition, and
    part of it is just keeping up with the speed of technology.
    That program--if you look at the baseline for when it was
    created--shows the costs have gone up 86 percent from the
    baseline, and completion slipped from 2014 to 2027 in the
    revised baseline.
        There's issues managing that acquisition, but the bigger
    challenge to talk about at the higher level, it's keeping up
    with the speed of technology, at the same time complying with
    the acquisition regs, which is not an easy thing to do.
    Obviously it's even more difficult doing within the constraints
    of the current budget environment which is lower than it has
    been traditionally.
        Mr. Garamendi. So they'll need flexibility? Is that what I
    heard you say?
        Mr. Caldwell. They will, and in terms of the Coast Guard
    One View, which is the newest viewer we looked at, we wouldn't
    have had an issue if the Coast Guard upfront had said, ``We're
    going to deviate from certain parts of the acquisition process
    for these reasons.'' But those justifications weren't developed
    and documented until more than a year after the program
    decisions had already been made.
        Mr. Garamendi. OK. I'll yield back, and then when our
    colleague finishes, I'll come back for another round of
    questions.
        Mr. Hunter. Mr. Meehan is recognized.
        Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me thank you,
    Admiral, for your service to our country and in uniform and
    those of your colleagues who are here, and I appreciate the
    tremendous challenges that are faced in securing our homeland,
    particularly on its borders.
        One of the areas that frustrates me frequently, though, in
    my capacity in homeland security as well is the myriad efforts
    that we have to sort of integrate State and local and our
    partners in a way that effectively works, not only that we
    integrate them so that they effectively communicate among each
    other, but that we're actually funding missions in which
    there's desired information that's being put to use.
        We're having great frustration in dealing with this whole
    concept of fusion centers in which we are supposed to be
    collocating Federal, State, and local assets, and they're
    supposed to be discussing things among each other, but it's a
    hard time getting a commonality of agreement about what the
    real purpose is, what the mission is.
        And yet we go back, unfortunately--I participated in the
    hearings on homeland in which we dissected the failure to
    communicate about certain bits of information, which caused
    many people to believe that some of the issues in Boston
    recently may have been able to have been maybe addressed
    perhaps if we had better communication.
        So I'm really asking you just about the WatchKeeper
    program. Now my own port of Philadelphia--when I was the U.S.
    attorney, we had a great relationship with the Coast Guard,
    they were there, they were partners in a variety of different
    things, but I don't know how you're operating today with the
    fusion center, which if I'm correct is probably just a few
    blocks away if you known about what's going on in Philadelphia.
    What's your experience overall with the ability of State and
    locals to become partners with your WatchKeeper program and it
    isn't giving them information that people are finding necessary
    and relevant to their missions?
        Admiral Butt. Sir, it's a great question, and Philadelphia
    and the whole sector, Delaware Bay layout is very interesting,
    because you have the tri-State region, so it's probably one of
    our hardest AORs to actually go and try to figure out the
    fusion.
        What WatchKeeper has done for us, again, is to put the
    backbone in place so that we can pull sources from sensors and
    from databases to be able to provide the users. So that's--the
    baseline WatchKeeper is in place and starting to do that. Now
    the front end of that, to give the users the ability to be able
    to use that information, is what we're working on with CG1
    View, because the viewer for WatchKeeper, as it was delivered,
    as my daughter puts it, is clunky. So this was--gives us the
    ability to actually gets toward that information better.
        Now the other----
        Mr. Meehan. What is it that you're trying to bring, though,
    to the attention of, say, a local fusion center? That's what
    I'm looking at. We know--is it the nature of the type of cargo
    that's coming up the port or----
        Admiral Butt. It can be that. It's basically anomaly
    detection is what you're looking for. Do you have boats that
    are in places they shouldn't be? Do you have cargoes or
    passenger manifests or people coming in that it doesn't make
    sense and being able to then get that information, raise those
    flags, and get that information to the decisionmakers that can
    do something about it. That's really the circle that we're
    talking about here.
        Mr. Meehan. But what it seemed to me--I mean we're talking
    about, as you stated, the tri-State region in which you're--you
    could spend as much time sending that information, trying to
    have somebody figure out what it means as it would be you would
    be you would scramble your own asset out there to do a visual
    inspection and look at it if you saw an anomaly, right?
        Admiral Butt. And that would definitely be one of the tools
    the operational commander could use depending on the anomaly,
    yes, sir. So what we're trying to do is to get that so we can
    fuse it. Now with WatchKeeper, we put the baseline capability
    out. Now I need to back, and we need to talk to our partners
    across the board, capture their needs, and be able to get it so
    we can get that data fused.
        We have a program up in Seattle right now that we're
    working with DHS S&T on through the university programs and the
    Port of Seattle to do just that, is to find the other partners'
    needs up in the Seattle area and expand it out. The other thing
    we've put into place Coast Guard-wise is using a COPs tool--is
    the ability to capture that information and prioritize it.
        We didn't have that business process in place till
    recently. So now I have a mechanism for going out through DHS
    S&T to start capturing our port partner needs, and we have a
    tool for tracking and prioritizing the incorporation of those
    needs----
        Mr. Meehan. In other words, you would work with the other
    participants in the activity of that port to ask what it is
    that they would be looking for in the form of specific
    information?
        Admiral Butt. Specific information or from the databases or
    sensor information from the cameras and radars, yes, sir.
        Mr. Meehan. OK. Well, I'm--maybe Mr. Caldwell--my time is
    up, but you've looked at this issue from GAO, and it points
    to--I mean I don't think it's a lack of effort on the part of
    the Coast Guard. I think it's a lack of the ability for some
    kind of fusion to take place in which information is being
    developed that pertinent and relevant to what the State and
    locals are supposed to be generating, and we're--it's as much a
    problem on the State and local side. I'm looking for them to
    define what we're trying to accomplish. In the end, what is it
    that we are doing? Can you tell me what you found by your
    review with the GAO in this issue?
        Mr. Caldwell. Yes. In the port environment, the fusion
    centers are generally called interagency operation centers, and
    there's some very impressive ones out there made of brick and
    mortar. The money ran out, so they went to a more virtual
    model. But if you went to one of the earlier, more successful
    ones like SeaHawk in Charleston, it was relatively expensive to
    build and operate.
        There was a lot of money put into it as a prototype, and
    those funds actually included some operating costs to get State
    and locals in there 24/7. You had a very healthy kind of 24/7
    environment. Moving forward, we're no longer funding State and
    locals to actually participate in these things in terms of
    those salaries, so you get a little bit of a drop in----
        Mr. Meehan. They dropped off? Did you see a big drop-off
    from State and locals?
        Mr. Caldwell. We didn't track that in actual numbers, but
    just as a general trend, I think we are seeing less
    involvement. We were just in San Diego, for example, about a
    month ago doing some of our audit work on the small vessel
    threat.
        And one of the issues there is that State and locals are
    not there as often as they used to be. They do have enough room
    in that interagency operating center that they can ramp up and
    they can surge and they can add places for other Federal
    agencies like the Navy or FBI or the Port of San Diego Harbor
    Police to come in there. We did still find there was a healthy
    relationship out there, but in terms of the actual using the
    WatchKeeper software to share information, we did not find
    that.
        The good news about WatchKeeper is it will standardize some
    of the command and control systems throughout the Coast Guard
    sectors, because the plan is to get it out to all 35 Coast
    Guard sectors. The jury is still out on whether there will ever
    be the interagency Federal, State, local that they were
    intended to be. There were 233 port partners who had access to
    the WatchKeeper system; 192 of those had never even logged onto
    the system----
        Mr. Meehan. And that goes into the point that I was making
    earlier about we're generating information, but it isn't
    relevant to--and in a time in which we're already sort of
    collocating facilities, the cost associated to the placement of
    those is a precious item, and that's why I used the example.
    And Admiral, I would appreciate it if you would just look into
    how the fusion center and your Philadelphia-based efforts are
    collaborating.
        I mean one--the idea of getting people from these assets to
    collocate in your facility when right down the street you have
    a fusion center which may or may not be getting the full
    complement of State and locals that they need, seems to me that
    this is the problem that we have, and I don't blame the Coast
    Guard; I blame the totality.
        There's always a competition that's taking place among data
    systems that say, OK, we've got this great data, use our
    system, and people aren't trading information. And most of the
    time, it's not an issue, and we may have that one occasion
    where somebody looks back and says, hey, this information was
    contained in the data system, and had it been appropriately
    communicated, it could have sent a signal to us that we should
    have looked into something, and it's only in the aftermath of
    an incident like Boston that those things make sense.
        So I know there's value, and I appreciate your efforts, but
    I think this is an issue we've got to continue to look at.
    Thank you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank the gentleman.
        I've got a question. I was out in Palo Alto a few months
    ago, and I saw--in fact, our next panel has some folks from
    Liquid Robotics, and they have these surfboards that--they're
    in the ocean, they have sensors on them, and we stood there,
    and I almost got to meet the guy that invented Java which was
    pretty interesting for a computer science guy. The guy that
    literally invented the programming language called Java was
    at--works there.
        So he was there. He was gone by the time we got done with
    our little tour, but you can look up at the flat-screen TVs and
    you can see and monitor every single one of their floating
    vehicles. You can see them all, literally, at any given time on
    the screen floating around the world. So this--and these aren't
    expensive. It's not crazy to do. In fact, they're extremely
    inexpensive. They can test the water, they have cameras on
    them, they can look at the water, they can see sheen--an oil
    sheen or any other kind of spill on the water.
        They can test the water, they can test weather, they can do
    a lot of different things, and it takes no people whatsoever to
    do those. And you can literally have a thousand of them on the
    ocean at a time or 10,000, however many you may think that you
    need. My question is this: If you were a big corporation and
    your job was to take care of the oceans and to take care of the
    American waters and you had shareholders, what kind of software
    system would you get to do this? Who would you get?
        You might not go to--and Mr. Caldwell, I'd like to ask you
    first. You wouldn't necessarily go to a number of great
    contractors who I will not mention here that a lot of folks
    around here use and are great people. But as a corporation you
    might go to people in industry and get maybe a different look
    at this and a different product. So my question is then: If you
    were in real life and not Government with an infinite supply of
    money and you could go over deadline over and over, and over
    budget over and over and over, but if you were in real life,
    what would you do here?
        Mr. Caldwell. I'm not one of our IT experts within GAO, but
    you're going to need an open architecture so that as things
    change, they can work new systems in and out of it, Web-based,
    cloud-based. But then obviously you've got to ensure a secure
    site if you are doing law enforcement and military missions.
        Mr. Hunter. Admiral.
        Admiral Butt. Sir, specifically when you're talking
    autonomous surface and underwater vehicles, my major concern
    right now as we're trying to figure out how to incorporate this
    into our CONOP is the fact that like with the UASs and the
    national airspace, the technology has gotten way ahead of the
    laws for governing vessels. So what these things are and how
    they can be utilized is still open in a lot of ways. So we're
    not even sure what they constitute right now as far as what
    type of vessel if they're a vessel.
        Mr. Hunter. I'm not talking about you learning how to
    regulate a new and amazing technology. What I'm saying is why
    don't you put it to use.
        Admiral Butt. Well, the question is, sir: If--what it is
    then determines how it can be used. What I'm getting at is the
    first lawyer answer I got on this stuff because it doesn't
    carry cargo and it's not manned is it's sea debris. So now to
    take that a step further, sea debris--I put it in the----
        Mr. Hunter. We are deep in Government time right now.
    That's what that means. You really call it sea debris because
    there's no other nomenclature for it?
        Admiral Butt. That was the legal definition we got back.
    That creates a whole lot of questions when you go that
    direction. So we're in a place where----
        Mr. Hunter. The Government is ridiculous. It really is.
    That is insane, but go ahead. OK.
        Admiral Butt. So figuring out what this stuff is and how it
    can be used comes into play before we actually start utilizing.
    Now can it give me a potential? You betcha, because I see those
    things as potentially being the same----
        Mr. Hunter. Let me ask you. I don't understand. I don't
    understand. Just because we work for the Government--I work for
    the people, you indirectly work for the people--that doesn't
    mean we can't use common sense. So the fact that we don't have
    a definition for something right now that exists in our
    guidebooks that we have to look at to know what things are
    doesn't mean that the Coast Guard shouldn't be jumping on this
    thing before anybody else does.
        The Coast Guard should be the ones who experiment with this
    type of technology, who put it to use, who save a lot of money
    doing it in the beginning. It doesn't have to go through any
    Government contractors at all because it's just out there
    sitting, waiting for you to buy it. You don't have to
    necessarily know what to call it to know that it could save you
    lots of money, make you very efficient and more effective on
    the oceans, right?
        Admiral Butt. Yes, sir. And----
        Mr. Hunter. Because we don't----
        Admiral Butt. Now you're at the R&D phase, and we are
    working with NOA on this program.
        Mr. Hunter. So what----
        Admiral Butt. Because we're trying to define it.
        Mr. Hunter. What I'm getting at, Admiral, is it's too easy,
    meaning you don't necessarily need NOA either. If the Coast
    Guard would just go and get these like other organizations have
    and says let's just use them, you don't necessarily know--have
    to know what to name it yet in the Coast Guard dictionary,
    right? It's obviously not sea debris, right?
        Admiral Butt. That's true.
        Mr. Hunter. It's an unmanned floating vessel, whatever you
    want to call it. I'm sure they'll have a cool name for it. The
    point, though, is that you should be on the cutting edge. These
    things are cheap, it doesn't take any defense contracting to do
    it, you don't have to do anything crazy to bring these onboard,
    to be able to track them on a wall screen. Literally, right
    here if we had a laptop hooked up, we could watch them, watch
    these things float about the ocean.
        My point is this: Working for Government has made everybody
    slow and almost unable--there's no way we can keep up with the
    technology that's out there. So I think the most important
    thing for this entire system is that it's open architecture. It
    has to be open so that anybody over the next 50 years can plug
    in whatever they want to into this, and you can use these
    unmanned floating vessels--there, I just got--UFVs, how about
    that? Unmanned floating vessels. You can use those--you can do
    a lot of different things. Just don't do what the other
    services did. Otherwise you're going to sink billions and
    billions of dollars and have something that does not work,
    because this is hard what you're trying to do, but it's not too
    hard. I mean companies do this all the time.
        Admiral Butt. Yes, sir, and that's why we're working with
    NOA on it to be able to start to understand that what we don't
    have----
        Mr. Hunter. It's not too complicated. I can tell you it's a
    floating surfboard with wings under it that has sensors on top.
    That's all it is. It's not crazy. They can tell you how hot or
    cold the water is and take pictures. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to
    tell you how to use it or implement it, right? It's not that
    hard.
        Admiral Butt. It's not that hard to actually get the stuff
    and have it sensing. The challenge becomes right now in our
    most threat environment, how do I distinguish--if I'm using,
    for instance, sonar data from them, how do I distinguish the
    sound of a fishing vessel that's engaged in legitimate fishing
    versus a fishing vessel that's engaged in trafficking. I know
    there's a fishing vessel there. It triggers that, but it
    doesn't do much than that at this point in time.
        So trying to figure out how that plays in the overall
    scheme of accomplishing the mission is what we're still
    wrestling with. The beauty of it is we're working with NOA to
    get an understanding of the capabilities of these, and then as
    we learn that, we can figure out how to incorporate it into the
    mission set. So I'm not saying that we don't have an intention
    of doing that in the future, but right now we don't have a
    vision of how it helps us accomplish the mission.
        Mr. Hunter. OK. Well, I'd be happy to help you with that.
        Admiral Butt. There's a lot of people, sir, that are--
    really want to help us with that.
        Mr. Hunter. I recognize Ms. Hahn if you're ready. If not, I
    can recognize Mr. Garamendi.
        Ms. Hahn. I was born ready.
        Mr. Hunter. Good.
        Ms. Hahn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        So I obviously believe that this security of port should be
    our top priority. Our PORT Caucus, which is now about--actually
    about 90 members strong, Republicans and Democrats who have
    joined together just to focus on our ports. Security is a big
    issue. I represent the Port of Los Angeles, America's port, but
    I also believe that the First Amendment rights of our port and
    maritime workers must be respected, and I was concerned when I
    learned that the Coast Guard issued this new rule expanding
    safety zones around grain vessels in the Pacific Northwest.
        So I'd like to know from you what data that you can provide
    that points to major safety or security issues that have
    surface that would necessitate an expansion of these safety
    zones. And how is the Coast Guard working with ILWU to ensure
    that their First Amendment rights are not infringed upon,
    particularly their need every once in a while to engage in
    water picketing?
        Admiral Butt. Ma'am, I'm going to have to get back to you
    on the record for that. I wasn't prepared to go there.
        Ms. Hahn. On both those questions?
        Admiral Butt. Yes, ma'am. I wasn't ready to go there.
        Ms. Hahn. OK. So you asked the wrong person who was ready.
        Mr. Hunter. Is that it, Ms. Hahn?
        Ms. Hahn. That's it.
        Mr. Hunter. Mr. Garamendi is recognized.
        Mr. Garamendi. I was going to ask a similar question. For
    the record, I will submit the question to you. It has to do
    with the new rule of how close picketers can get to ships that
    are coming in and out of ports, particularly in the Northwest,
    a very, very important question that we would like to have
    answers for. I see your staff behind you writing down
    questions. I'll just hand you the paper, and I'd expect you to
    get back to us forthwith like this week.
        Admiral Butt. I certainly will do that.
        [The information follows:]

            Response to Part 1

            There is some misunderstanding regarding the Coast
            Guard's recently reissued grain-shipment safety zones
            in the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. The Coast
            Guard's temporary interim rule (IR) published on June
            4, 2013, did not ``expand'' the area of the vessel
            safety zones promulgated in January 2013. The safety
            zone distances for grain-shipment vessels remain
            unchanged (500 yards ahead of the vessel, and 200 yards
            abeam and astern). Instead, the June 4, 2013, IR carved
            out a smaller class of vessels--``grain-shipment assist
            vessels''--from the definition of the larger group of
            grain-shipment vessels. Shorter safety zone distances
            were assigned to these smaller vessels (100 yards
            ahead, 50 yards abeam and astern). The Coast Guard made
            this change because the existing 500/200 yard safety
            zone was disproportionately large for these smaller
            vessels, and it was not the intent of the Coast Guard
            to enforce that size safety zone around them. Under the
            June 2013 IR, protestors may come closer to grain-
            shipment assist vessels than under the rule published
            in January 2013. Unfortunately, the optics of
            establishing a new category of vessels in the
            regulation text, along with new enforcement of the
            grain-shipment assist vessel safety zones, gave the
            appearance of ``expanding'' the safety zone
            applicability when that was not the case.

            Coast Guard on-water observations of navigational risks
            support the Coast Guard's decision to keep grain-
            shipment assist vessels within the safety zone, to
            reduce the risk of collision. River and bar pilots have
            raised safety concerns with navigating near vessels
            involved in protest activity. The pilots are extremely
            knowledgeable about the unique hazards of navigating on
            the river and the maneuvering characteristics of deep-
            draft bulk carriers and assist vessels such as towing
            vessels and pilot boats. Additionally, there have been
            two cases where vessel operators failed to heed
            multiple warnings and violated the safety zone by
            maneuvering in front of grain-shipment vessels, placing
            themselves, and potentially the grain-shipment vessels,
            in danger.

            The IR is intended to ensure that members of the
            maritime public, those participating in protest
            activities on the water, law enforcement personnel, and
            vessel crews are not injured. Recreational boating,
            fishing, and protest activity afloat in these safety
            zones is particularly hazardous because of the effects
            of strong river currents, the maneuvering
            characteristics of grain-shipment vessels, and the
            safety sensitive mid-stream personnel transfers
            conducted by grain-shipment assist vessels with which
            recreational boaters and protesters may be unfamiliar.
            Both grain-shipment vessels and grain-shipment assist
            vessels require sufficient room for maneuverability, to
            avoid collisions and minimize and mitigate other
            navigational risks. These vessels cannot stop
            immediately or make the sharp course adjustments that
            smaller motor vessels--such as recreational boats--can
            make.

            Response to Part 2

            The Coast Guard respects the First Amendment rights of
            protesters. In preparing this temporary rule, the Coast
            Guard carefully considered the rights of lawful
            protestors. The safety zones created by this rule do
            not prohibit members of the public from assembling on
            shore or expressing their points of view from locations
            on shore. On the water, protestors may assemble in
            locations other than the established safety zones. In
            addition, the Captain of the Port has, in coordination
            with protestors, identified waters in the vicinity of
            these safety zones where those desiring to do so can
            assemble and convey their messages to their intended
            audience (including incoming grain-shipment vessels and
            grain-shipment assist vessels) without compromising
            navigational safety. The temporary interim rule
            identifies a point of contact for protestors to
            coordinate protest activities so that their message can
            be received without jeopardizing the safety or security
            of people or property in the area. Furthermore, the
            safety zones are only enforced when grain-shipment and
            grain-shipment assist vessels are actively maneuvering.

            Response to Part 3

            The safety zone extends to waters 500 yards ahead and
            200 yards abeam and astern of a grain-shipment vessel.
            For grain-shipment assist vessels, the safety zone
            extends to waters 100 yards ahead and 50 yards abeam
            and astern of the vessel. The public cannot enter into
            these safety zones without prior Captain of the Port
            authorization, in accordance with the process set forth
            in 33 CFR Sec. 165.T13-239.

        Mr. Garamendi. OK. I want to pick up where Mr. Hunter had
    taken this--Chairman Hunter had taken this question, which is
    new technologies that are available--readily available today.
    The U.S. Navy has spent a great deal of time, money developing
    not only the surface programs that Mr. Hunter talked about, but
    also underwater, unpersoned vehicles--we don't want to be
    sexist here, so we'll call them unpersoned vehicles--so that
    they might be available to be used for a variety of purposes.
        Not wanting to plow the same field twice, but I would
    really like to see a further discussion--not necessarily a
    hearing, but a further discussion with the top command at the
    Coast Guard about how it can be flexible enough in its thinking
    about the ways in which you can accomplish your goals. Mr.
    Hunter was talking about surface observation. You said you
    would know whether there is a fishing boat nearby.
        Underwater vehicles can also give you valuable information.
    You may not know whether it is a fishing boat or somebody
    intent upon bringing in contraband, but at least you know where
    it is, and you might be able to target it. So there's a whole
    series of issues that have to do with these new unpersoned
    vehicles, both surface and underwater and air. So further
    discussion should be forthcoming if you could take that into
    submission and get back to us on that, perhaps we'll call a
    hearing or at least an informal discussion about it.
        Secondly, a similar question has to do with the U.S. Navy's
    use of unmanned drones--aerial drones. We'll call them
    unpersoned aerial drones. They are--will very soon be fielding
    a Global Hawk Naval version, which they call BAM, B-A-M. It has
    extraordinary capability to do many of the things that the Navy
    has set out to--excuse me--the Coast Guard has set out to do on
    its own. And the question I would ask without expecting an
    answer today is: What is the Navy and the Coast Guard doing
    together to utilize unmanned, unpersoned vehicles both
    floating, underwater, and aerial to fully comprehend the
    mission awareness situation.
        Admiral Butt. Well, sir, actually when it comes to the
    UASs, that does fall under my portfolio, so I'm able to discuss
    that. We are currently working with the Navy. We have liaison
    officers at Pax River embedded with their programs to go and
    work with them to see how we can utilize it with the Coast
    Guard.
        But post-9/11, because of the advances in the intelligence
    community, for a lot of these assets out there, we already have
    access to the information. We don't have to actually field the
    assets ourselves to get access there. So as we're going
    forward, there may be several ways I can figure out if there's
    a fishing boat at this point in space, and it doesn't
    necessarily have to be any one asset that the Coast Guard
    fields.
        Mr. Garamendi. I would like a further discussion with you
    about the integration of the Coast Guard and the Navy with
    regard to their unpersoned vehicles.
        Admiral Butt. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Garamendi. Aerial and otherwise.
        Admiral Butt. We'd be happy to do that.
        Mr. Garamendi. Thank you.
        Yield back.
        Mr. Hunter. Ms. Hahn is ready again--is recognized.
        Ms. Hahn. Mr. Caldwell, you've done a report on port
    security, and one of the things I--as I said earlier, I'm still
    very concerned about--is the security at our Nation's ports. I
    think our ports are some of the most vulnerable entryways into
    this country, and since 9/11 it seems like most of our
    attention has been focused on airport security and not so much
    port security.
        Could you maybe just touch on where you think we still have
    some gaps in port security and if it's something that Congress
    should address going forward?
        Mr. Caldwell. I testified for this committee last year on
    the 10 years since MTSA came into place. If I could just give
    some high-level comments, I think that part of the challenge
    now is sustainment. So we spend a lot of money to put programs
    out there, but maintaining them and keeping them, that's an
    issue.
        It's an issue with the private sector and port authorities
    as well. As you know, they've got port security grants to put
    security improvements in place, but the moneys generally aren't
    used to maintain those and keep them up. So just maintaining
    Coast Guard security operations is a challenge. They're not
    necessarily based on actual threats as much as deterrence and
    improving maritime domain awareness, for example, escorting
    certain vessels and things like that.
        And right now the Coast Guard's pretty pressed to keep up
    the level of effort it had a couple years ago, particularly
    with small boat escorts. We've seen some positive things. When
    I was just in San Diego, CBP and Coast Guard were doing joint
    patrols just to try to save resources and maintain both of
    their efforts. But it's critical for sustaining the efforts we
    have and keeping some kind of surge capacity.
        So we're operating on a lower level, which we have to do
    with the budgets we have now. But it's important to maintain
    the ability to surge if we have a reason, like we actually get
    actionable intelligence on a threat or we have some kind of
    incident.
        Ms. Hahn. Thank you.
        Did you have a comment on that?
        Admiral Butt. Well, ma'am, one of the things we're doing to
    try to help with the coverage because of the budget pressures
    and the number of patrols is we're working with the university
    programs from DHA S&T and with the University of Southern
    California to utilize game theory as a way of optimizing and
    scheduling our patrols that make it look entirely random and
    shows--makes it harder for somebody to anticipate where the
    patrols will be.
        So even though we're having to slide back operations a bit,
    what we're working on is ideas that will allow scheduling that
    gives the appearance that we're out there a lot more than what
    we are, because it puts the boat in the right place.
        Ms. Hahn. And of course, Brookings Institute released a
    report last week or the week before that highlighted
    cybersecurity as being a big weakness at our ports and another
    area of vulnerability. So I introduced a bill last year that
    passed the House and got stalled in the Senate, and I'm
    reintroducing it this year to ask our Department of Homeland
    Security to take another look at our parts some 11 years after
    9/11, reassess, and see if there might be some gaps in our
    security that Congress could take another look at.
        I know because of resources we're cutting back. I know
    Congress after 9/11, one of the first laws they passed was 100
    percent container screening, which was clear this
    administration under Janet Napolitano pretty much told us it
    wasn't going to happen, it wasn't reasonable, not something
    they were even going to attempt to do, and again, the smarter
    approach, the layered approach, direct-based point of origin
    philosophy.
        But I still think all of these have some vulnerabilities. I
    feel like those could be overcome, and I would like to see us--
    I think the technology exists, frankly, to screen containers
    much more than 2 or 3 percent, and I think we could do it
    without slowing commerce, and I think we could do it in a way
    that would make more sense.
        Because one dirty bomb coming in a container in the Port of
    Los Angeles and Long Beach could cripple our national economy,
    could kill--we have 5,000 men and women that work on the docks
    every single day at least, and we have these--some of these
    ports are in residential neighborhoods. I think it's still a
    real concern and threat.
        I know it's something that keeps me awake at night as I
    also live within a stone's throw of the Port of Los Angeles. So
    just want to know that I'm moving forward, continuing to push
    on another assessment, another look at port security and
    whether or not there are gaps that we could be told about in a
    classified situation and we could move to address that.
        Admiral Butt. Aye, ma'am. I'll take that back. And with
    regard to cyber, one of the things that affected our schedule
    in deploying these C4ISR systems is since 2004 the threat has
    become real, and so we've incorporated cyber defense into
    WatchKeeper and the other systems we're putting there.
        So one of the things I think that's going--drive port
    partners into playing more with WatchKeeper is the fact--as the
    recognition of cyber issues becomes more prevalent through the
    agencies, and we've already got a system in place that we've
    got the defenses in place. I think that will help bring he port
    partners to our standards.
        Mr. Caldwell. Ms. Hahn, if I could add something, GAO,
    based on a request we got from the Senate Commerce Committee,
    is looking at cybersecurity issues within a port. We've been in
    touch with Los Angeles and other ports, so we'll be talking to
    them about that.
        I also wanted to make a linkage between the topic of
    today's hearing which is MDA and some of the port security
    issues and some of the capability limitations we've talked
    about. We may get in a situation, whether it's with robotic
    surfboards or satellite or buoys or all kinds of other things
    that help us with our MDA that we're aware of a lot of things.
    But we don't have the capabilities necessary to do anything
    about it.
        Again, I learned a lot from this trip to San Diego. You
    have the Mexican pangas coming up, running the drugs and
    trafficking people. There's an awareness that they're out
    there, but part of the problem is when they've got four 200-
    horsepower engines on their boat, even if Coast Guard was
    pretty close to them, can't catch them unless they had air
    assets right there and had authorized use of force. So we could
    get in a situation where we're going to maybe know more with
    advances in MDA than we can actually address or deal with.
        Ms. Hahn. Thank you. But--and I agree, and the panga boats
    are a real concern to me as well. I mean one of them came
    onshore just a couple miles from my house, actually made shore
    with about 19 people who came ashore. So yeah, I'm very
    concerned about that for a number of reasons, so I just think
    it--I still want to know where our gaps are so that at least we
    have that information and we could make decisions in Congress
    about whether or not we want to address gaps in our port
    security.
        Thank you. I yield back.
        Mr. Hunter. I thank my colleague from California, and we're
    almost done here. We have, probably, 5 minutes, Admiral. Our
    next panel is, I think, the CEO from Liquid Robotics.
        We have Liquid Robotics here. If you could leave somebody
    here, that would be great. I mean we don't have to go through
    NOAA to figure out what their stuff does. But if you could
    leave somebody here, maybe they could just listen in. A couple
    of questions. The first, without objection, we want to accept
    the testimony from the International Longshore and Warehouse
    Union without objection, and here is the basic question I have
    here, finishing up.
        Right now, you're in a major acquisition. You are in the
    middle of major acquisitions for all, for the OPCs, the FRCs,
    the National Security Cutters, because you spend hundreds of
    millions of dollars, rightly so, this time, trying to
    recapitalize the fleet. How do you know what your conduct of
    operations are, your ConOps, as you would say.
        Admiral Butt. Right.
        Mr. Hunter. How do you know what those really are if you
    don't know what technology is like unpersoned floating
    vehicles, or whatever you want to call them, that will help you
    determine how many vessels you would need in order to make sure
    places aren't being fished out, to see if there's vessels in
    the water in certain areas.
        Your conduct of operations will be impacted greatly by the
    technology that's out there. So if you don't have the
    technology in place yet, and you're going to begin, let's just
    say within the next decade, how do you even know how many ships
    you need? Because you don't know how you're going to operate or
    what you'll need to do it, if you don't really know what
    technologies are going to impact that.
        So you're kind of working blind on the one side, on the
    recapitalization, and we're doing the technology stuff too, but
    those things should interact with each other and have major
    impacts on how many ships you have to buy and on what kind of
    technologies that you use.
        Admiral Butt. Well, sir, that assumption would be good if
    we didn't have so few vessels to actually do it. If you think
    of the interdiction as a three-legged stool, you need cuing,
    and that's what we are talking about the technologies for. You
    need Maritime Patrol Aircraft actually go in and figure out if
    that's a bad boat or not, and then you need the end game to
    actually do the interdiction and in effect the purpose. Right
    now, the strongest leg of the stool the Coast Guard has is in
    my MDA side.
        Mr. Hunter. Say that again, Admiral. I am sorry.
        Admiral Butt. The three stools are MDA, which is the cuing,
    so I know where to send an aircraft or an UAS out to take a
    look to see and identify what the target is. And then once I
    know the target is something I'm interested in, I need end
    game, either a cutter or a boat, depending on where it is at.
    If it is a cutter, usually, with an armed helo to be able to
    slow it down. So I need those three pieces to actually affect
    the interdiction.
        So, right now, the problem the Coast Guard is having is I
    have more MDA than I have aircraft to send out to identify it
    and figure out if it's bad. And I have more aircraft hours than
    I have ships available to actually go out and effect the
    interdiction. So the longest leg of the stool right now is MDA,
    and I have the MDA, not only from our sensors, but through DOD.
        The first priority is we need more ships to be able to
    effect the interdiction. Then the next driver will be we are
    going to need more aircraft or UASs to help with the cuing, and
    then we are looking at being able to go to a wider area to
    actually get it.
        Mr. Hunter. So I understand you are in such dire straits,
    you just need ships. It wouldn't matter whether you had censors
    or not at this point, because you're not at the level to be
    able to pull ships back----
        Admiral Butt. Correct.
        Mr. Hunter [continuing]. If you didn't need them anymore.
        Admiral Butt. Yes, sir. So that's where we're putting our
    priority with our budget.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you both for your time, and I have got
    one last question that is totally off the subject, but because
    you are the capabilities guru, we are going to ask you anyway.
    Does the Coast Guard still intend to select three OPC
    candidates for full-blown design, or will budget constraints
    result in a withdrawal of the current documented requirements
    and rescoping of the OPC requirements? Did you get that, or do
    you want me to ask it again? Did you understand the question?
        Admiral Butt. You're asking if we are going forward with
    the program of record or making adjustments. Right now, the
    plan is to go forward with the acquisition plan for the OPC.
        Mr. Hunter. And you have to get three finalists to the OPC.
    Right?
        Admiral Butt. That's the current acquisition plan, sir,
    yes.
        Mr. Hunter. And when is that going to happen?
        Admiral Butt. You've got eight in right now, and then
    select three.
        Mr. Hunter. Right. You have to pick three. When are you
    going to select three?
        Admiral Butt. I'll get back to you with that one, sir.
        Mr. Hunter. Roughly. Give me like this year, next year,
    next month, this month, next week?
        Admiral Butt. I actually have lost track of it.
        Mr. Hunter. OK. Anybody behind you know that?
        Admiral Butt. It's scheduled for the end of the fiscal
    year, so.
        Mr. Hunter. The end of the fiscal year. OK.
        Admiral Butt. Was to make the announcement by the end of
    the fiscal year.
        Mr. Hunter. OK. Great. And thank you both for your time,
    and hopefully we can just stay on this and do it right the
    first time, and be different from everybody else that's doing
    the same thing. Thank you both. Appreciate it.
        Admiral Butt. Thank you.
        Mr. Hunter. OK. We have a second panel coming up, so please
    take your time. We are going to have a lot more people arrive
    here, I am sure. I just feel bad when there is nobody here.
        [Pause.]
        Mr. Hunter. All right. Good morning, gentlemen and lady.
    Our second panel of witnesses includes Mr. Bill Vass, CEO of
    Liquid Robotics, which we talked about quite a bit here; Mr.
    Steve Morrow, president and CEO, Insitu, appearing today on
    behalf of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems
    International; Ms. Lisa Hazard, our operations manager of the
    Coastal Observing Research and Development Center at Scripps
    Institute of Oceanography; and Dr. Newell Garfield, director of
    the Romberg Tiburon Center at San Francisco State University.
        I would like to welcome you all. You all heard the first
    exchange. I understand, Mr. Vass, you have to leave by 1300,
    1:00. Right? So please open your statements. Keep them as short
    as possible, and we can get around to answering questions.
    Thank you for being here. Mr. Vass, you are recognized.

      TESTIMONY OF BILL VASS, CEO, LIQUID ROBOTICS; STEVE MORROW,
      PRESIDENT AND CEO, INSITU, ON BEHALF OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR
    UNMANNED VEHICLE SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL; LISA HAZARD, OPERATIONS
      MANAGER, COASTAL OBSERVING RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER,
    SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
     SAN DIEGO; AND NEWELL GARFIELD, III, PH.D., DIRECTOR, ROMBERG
     TIBURON CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, SAN FRANCISCO STATE
                               UNIVERSITY

        Mr. Vass. Again, thank you very much, Chairman Hunter, and
    the rest of the distinguished members of the subcommittee for
    offering to----
        Mr. Hunter. If you don't mind, please pull the mics. I did
    three tours with artillery. I can't hear anything, seriously.
    Right next to your mouth would be good. Thanks.
        Mr. Vass. Liquid Robotics is a venture-backed, Silicon
    Valley and Hawaii based company. Since 2007 we have been
    providing our customers around the globe with a revolutionary
    new way to observe, monitor and patrol the oceans and
    coastlines. We are doing this through the utilization of a
    platform called, ``The Wave Glider.'' It is an unmanned, or I
    guess now we are saying ``unpersoned'' ocean vehicle, capable
    of precise navigation that can stay at sea for a year at a time
    without the need of fuel, without polluting, without putting
    human lives at risk.
        By the end of my testimony, I will convey how this
    innovative wave and solar-powered platform can help the Coast
    Guard, exponentially, increase its patrol area coverage,
    increase operational effectiveness at a fraction of the cost
    and environmental impact of ships. In 2009 before this
    subcommittee, Coast Guard Admiral Salerno said, ``Awareness is
    essential to everything the Coast Guard does.'' Matching people
    to their spills, tracking ships, all of those kinds of things
    are extremely difficult to achieve, unless you have a strong
    domain awareness in the ocean. To do this, you need to be at
    sea 24/7, 365, through the harshest weather, gathering and
    processing data, monitoring marine conditions and traffic, and
    communicating this information to key stakeholders.
        Historically, maintaining a long duration present at sea
    has been cost prohibitive. Sending ships out for long duration
    missions of 6 to 12 months can cost millions of dollars, put
    human lives at risk and pollute the environment significantly.
    Aerial assets have the same time, weather and cost limitations.
    With the advent of the wave-glider, the world's first, unmanned
    ocean vehicle powered solely by the Earth's national resources,
    we have broken through the barrier of long duration operations
    by solving the energy problem of having it generate its own
    energy while its at sea.
        The Wave Glider has stayed at sea for years at a time.
    Collectively, our fleet has traveled over 350,000 nautical
    miles, navigating the world's oceans on missions for commercial
    and Government customers. We have collected scientific data
    from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic, to Australia and all the
    world's oceans. We navigated across the Pacific from California
    to Australia, giving us the Guinness World Record for the
    longest distance ever traveled by an autonomous vehicle on the
    surface of the planet, and the first to cross the Pacific
    Ocean. With this long duration, all weather technology, we can
    help the Coast Guard greatly enhance its maritime domain
    awareness and information network, increasing the efficiencies
    of high-value assets for the Coast Guard's missions, such as
    search and rescue, port, waterways, coastal security, drug
    interdiction, border security and EEZ enforcement.
        As noted, the beauty of the Wave Glider is that it can
    safely and economically travel into high-risk locations through
    all weather conditions and capture data that's not before
    really feasible. Oh. And I am going to give you some examples.
    We are working with NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic &
    Meteorological Laboratory to measure the ocean surface
    temperatures during active hurricanes for better hurricane
    intensity prediction; literally, having a better understanding
    of how strong the storm is when it lands--not just where it is
    going.
        As we have seen, preparedness for a tropical storm versus a
    category 4 hurricane is dramatically different and it
    significantly affects people's lives and the economies. And
    many of you on the subcommittee are from coastal towns, like
    myself, and you can't measure the tangible and intangible costs
    of preparing for a hurricane properly. Until the Wave Glider,
    there has not been a viable, safe way to send a mobile surface
    vehicle directly into a hurricane to collect real-time data.
        Aerial drones can often get blown off-target in these kinds
    of situations. Stationary and moored sensors, by definition,
    are not mobile and can't move around in a hurricane, and
    frequently break in those conditions. Satellites that are
    circling 250 miles above the Earth's surface are challenged to
    collect data during those kinds of storm events because of the
    cloud cover. Imagine implementing the Coast Guard Asset that
    can survive a category 4 hurricane, one that can navigate to
    new locations to investigate and patrol, all while continuously
    communicating and computing lifesaving information.
        We can and we have. To date, we have navigated and
    communicated through five hurricanes and three cyclones,
    including Sandy and Isaac, where we continue to operate in our
    oil and gas missions during the storms. Imagine what the Coast
    Guard could do with that type of capability. Our customers are
    anyone who operate in the ocean or move across it. They vary
    from Governments to large oil companies to scientific
    organizations and communications companies.
        You may wonder what kind of data we actually collect on
    these things, and the answer is you can pretty much load any
    sensor out there. It is a pretty broad range of things. Think
    of the Wave Glider as a utility truck. You can load up a bunch
    of sensors on it as well communications and computing
    equipment. It's really very much like a floating computer
    center out there. So it can collect and process the data. You
    can load it up, send it on a mission for 6 to 12 months,
    covering tens of thousands of miles and collect your data,
    operate patrol. You can collect everything from water quality
    measurement, that, as you mentioned, you can collect the
    quality of the water down to two parts per trillion of
    hydrocarbon, or you can load it up with acoustics, radar, video
    and things like that to be used for patrolling.
        I think this kind of long duration platform could have a
    significant impact on the Coast Guard's operations. So, in
    conclusion, around the globe, defense departments, coastal
    defense forces, oil and gas companies are faced with this
    daunting challenge to continuously protect and secure vast
    coverage areas with limited resources and shrinking budgets.
    The ability to have a real-time marine information can make the
    difference between life and death, the difference between
    apprehending the smuggler or not, the difference between
    avoiding an environmental disaster or not.
        The overwhelming barrier has been providing affordable,
    persistent, long duration, multisensing data that can be
    monitored, detected, and is very mobile, and track and manage
    marine targets and provide marine conditions. As Admiral
    Salerno said so eloquently, ``Awareness is essential to
    everything the Coast Guard does.'' To have this level of
    maritime awareness requires a mobile, unmanned resources, at
    the surface of the ocean, collecting data from subsea sensors
    and undersea vehicles, collecting surface data and sharing that
    information among trusted organizations in real time.
        Liquid robotics is in a unique position to provide
    increased marine domain awareness today at a fraction of the
    cost of the alternatives. We would be honored to help the Coast
    Guard increase its maritime advantage. I would like to thank
    you for the opportunity to talk to you today and open it up for
    questions.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Vass.
        Mr. Morrow, you are recognized for 5 minutes; and, if you
    could, keep your testimony at 5, so we can get into the meat of
    this when you are finished.
        Mr. Morrow. I certainly will.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you.
        Mr. Morrow. Thank you, Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member
    Garamendi and members of the subcommittee for inviting me to
    testify. My name is Steve Morrow and I am the president and
    chief executive officer of Insitu, a subsidiary of Boeing. Our
    company designs, develops and manufactures high-performance,
    low-cost, unmanned aircraft systems or UAS.
        I am speaking to you today on behalf of the Association of
    Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, AUVSI, the world's
    largest and oldest nonprofit trade association, representing
    the unmanned systems industry. The use of unmanned aircraft
    systems has grown substantially in recent history, due largely
    to advances in computing technology, but experts all say the
    industry is still in its infancy.
        UASs hold an enormous potential to increase the reach and
    efficiency of current systems while reducing the risk of
    operations. I am here, primarily, to address the benefits of
    UAS in the maritime domain. UASs have the ability to access and
    survey vast expanses of our oceans and rivers to supplement the
    capabilities of unmanned vehicles and other platforms. Their
    critical, situational awareness that UAS provide could support
    search and rescue operations, anti drug or anti smuggling
    operations, environmental protection, antipiracy operations and
    many other missions. In these missions, UASs are capable of
    saving time, saving money, and most importantly saving lives.
        One example was described by Vice Admiral Currier in a
    hearing before this subcommittee on June 26th, which he
    described an evaluation of a small UAS aboard the National
    Security Cutter Bertholf. That UAS, which was launched and
    recovered on the cutter flew 90 hours at sea providing
    substantial awareness beyond the reach of existing systems
    available to the cutter. In one mission, the UAS provided real-
    time monitoring and location information of a suspicious
    vehicle targeting and monitoring the vehicle until other Coast
    Guard assets arrived to interdict and apprehend the vessel's
    crew.
        Seamless transfer between the UAS and manned aircraft
    vessels through regular communications resulted in a successful
    interdiction of over 1200 pounds of cocaine, the first such UAS
    effort by the Coast Guard. And an even more high-profile
    example several years prior, the same UAS provided persistence
    observation for military units during the rescue operation of
    Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama, from Somali
    pirates in 2009.
        In addition to U.S. Government application, commercial
    application of the UAS can benefit environmental monitoring and
    scientific analysis in regions not accessible by manned
    aircraft, or information gathering for commercial enterprises
    along coastal regions. As a Federal Aviation Administration
    finalizes its regulations of UAS in the national airspace, we
    believe that there will be further opportunities for U.S.
    Government agencies, in particular the Coast Guard, to work
    with commercial UASs in furtherance of its missions. The
    information gathered by UAS could be both cost-effective and
    timely, allowing all maritime operators the ability to do their
    jobs more economically, effectively and efficiently. There
    should be no doubt that the future of maritime domain awareness
    should include unmanned aircraft.
        Mr. Chairman, the UAS industry holds the potential of being
    an engine of economic growth for our Nation as well. A study by
    AUVSI finds that the unmanned aircraft industry is poised to
    create more than 70,000 jobs in the first three years following
    integration of UAS into national airspace. By 2025 that number
    is estimated to rise to 103,00 new jobs with an economic impact
    of more than $82 billion over that period.
        I thank you again for the opportunity to testify today and
    look forward to answering your questions.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Morrow.
        Ms. Hazard, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
        Ms. Hazard. Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member Garamendi and
    members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to
    appear before you today.
        I would like to start by taking the opportunity to thank
    Congress and Federal agencies for investing in ocean
    observations and encouraging a broad distribution of those
    data. I was recently made aware that the U.S. Coast Guard is
    able to reply on publicly available weather and ocean
    information from the Navy, NOAA, and research academic
    institutions; whereas, in other countries, a large portion of
    the Coast Guard budget goes to payment of environmental data.
    Public distribution of data would not be possible without the
    support of Congress. So thank you.
        Prior to this hearing, I had the opportunity to review the
    Government Accountability Office or GAO report on ``Coast Guard
    Guidance for the Common Operational Picture,'' or COP. I have
    based my recommendations on what I believe to be concerns
    addressed within the report. My experiences in working with
    operational applications for the U.S. Marine Corps and for
    search and rescue and oil spill response, as well as data
    management for the integrated ocean observing system, or IOOS,
    have shaped many of my views.
        Many of my recommendations I discuss are based on my
    experience and do not necessarily reflect the position of
    Scripps. After reviewing the GAO report, it seems to me there
    was significant investment of time, funds and process
    documentation, as was required for a full-scale analysis of
    developing technologies for the Coast Guard. Conducting smaller
    scale demonstrations of developing technologies in partnership
    with agencies, such as Naval research, to test conceptive
    operations of new technologies could help significantly in
    determining worthy ventures.
        Depending on the success of the demonstration, results
    could provide input to help the Coast Guard define analysis of
    risk, operational costs, manning requirements and transition to
    the fleet. Successful demonstrations can be scaled to support
    operations, while unsuccessful demonstrations provide valuable
    lessons learned and saved significantly on what would have been
    a full scale guidance procedure.
        Additionally, I'd like to touch upon the concept of
    building operations for watch standards who need to make
    operational decisions based on the information that they have
    at hand. The GAO report references a system of systems, which
    in my definition includes not only a back end of data feeds,
    but also a front-end user interface. It seems as though there's
    been some frustration in designing a system that suits all
    needs, and such a system can be overly complex to the watch
    stander and not supported on existing hardware.
        One approach that could prove useful in alleviating these
    challenges would be to build a modular applications. These
    applications can reuse the back end infrastructure, or building
    blocks, if you will, but would have different interactive front
    ends or user interfaces. An excellent Coast Guard example of a
    mission driven development is the search and rescue optimal
    planning system or SAROPS. The design team for SAROPS included
    subject matter experts, programmers and users to ensure the
    application built was useful, accurate and functional.
        Separate but compatible tools could be designed for
    tracking submerged oil leaks, monitoring fishing areas or
    maintaining vessel awareness. In my own experience with IOOS,
    we worked closely with pilots, harbor patrol and emergency
    managers on an interactive Web display with overlays of
    navigational charts, shipping channels, waves, winds and
    surface currents for the Port of L.A.--Long Beach, actually.
        The users did not want us to use pop-ups for measurements
    as they blocked the underlying models. We did end up putting
    data in the text box in the upper left-hand panel of the page,
    ensuring they could see the whole picture. We would never have
    known that pop-ups would prove to be distracting if we weren't
    working with both COP developers and COP users in a build-test-
    build development cycle. We've been able to create modular
    problem and user driven applications while reusing our common
    data feeds in infrastructure. This allows us to be flexible
    without redesigning the whole system.
        From my final comments, I'll touch base on HF radar, one
    emerging technology that is applicable to Coast Guard missions
    and maritime domain awareness. High-frequency radar systems are
    installed on land and can measure ocean circulations through
    receipt of radio signals. A national HF radar network or
    HFRNet, supported through NOAA with close to 130 systems, has
    been established to measure surface currents in near real-time
    and is currently used in multiple operational applications and
    distributed for Web services.
        I previously mentioned the Coast Guard SAROPS tool. One of
    its primary data feeds is a short-term prediction system to
    show where a drifting person or vessel would be. The prediction
    model receives numerous environmental inputs with the recent
    addition of near real-time, HF radar surface currents. HF radar
    is also being developed for ship tracking and will extend over-
    the-horizon view of vessels, which is directly applicable to
    MDA.
        Again, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity and happy
    to answer any questions.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you very much. Do you actually work at
    the Scripps down by La Jolla Shores?
        Ms. Hazard. Yes, I do.
        Mr. Hunter. That's great. That's a great place to work. I
    grew up surfing there at the pier in back.
        Ms. Hazard. Pretty nice.
        Mr. Hunter. Well, thank you, Ms. Hazard.
        Dr. Garfield, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
        Dr. Garfield. Thank you, Chairman, and Ranking Member
    Garamendi for this opportunity to testify.
        I am an observational physical oceanographer from San
    Francisco State University and a founding member of the Central
    and Northern California Ocean Observing System or CeNCOOS, one
    of the 11 regional observing systems within the U.S. integrated
    ocean observing system.
        My testimony actually corroborates very much with Ms.
    Hazard's. The ocean is critical for both the prosperity and
    safety of our citizens. Knowledge of the ocean environment is
    essential to this country. My testimony today is that thanks to
    the innovative approach that IOOS is taking, real-time
    environmental data are now readily accessible to the Coast
    Guard, and the Coast Guard is successfully utilizing these
    data.
        In 2009 the U.S. IOOS was created by Congress as a Federal,
    regional partnership, charged with providing real-time and
    sustained observations on our coast, oceans and Great Lakes.
    NOAA is the IOOS lead of the 17 Federal agencies including the
    U.S. Coast Guard that are working together with local interest
    to provide seamless access to coastal data. Today, over 50
    percent of the data provided to the global telecommunications
    system by NOAA's national data buoy center comes to NOAA from
    non-Federal sources, most of which are supported by the
    regional associations. In the past, numerical models was one of
    the primary ways to estimate circulation. Now with HF radar we
    actually have measurements and that greatly improves the
    ability to respond and determine trajectories.
        My written testimony has three examples that I'll quickly
    summarize to illustrate how access to IOOS real-time
    observation data has improved the Coast Guard's marine domain
    awareness. In 2002, California voters invested $21 million to
    install an array of 43 shore-based instruments, the HF radars
    that measure the ocean's surface currents in real time from the
    shore out of distance 130 kilometers, with a spatial resolution
    of 6 kilometers and updated hourly.
        The 2005 interagency ``Safe Seas'' spill response exercise
    off San Francisco demonstrated the huge benefit of having
    access to real-time surface currents, causing one Coast Guard
    officer to explain ``I love HF radar,'' and I believe she did
    that right in front of Admiral Lautenbacher. The same array was
    accessed during the subsequent 2007 Cosco Busan fuel spill, and
    this led NOAA to include HF radar data in the NOAA spill
    trajectory model used to provide environmental conditions to
    the Coast Guard.
        The 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident was the first time that
    Federal responders had routine access to non-Federal
    information, which was enabled by the protocols developed by
    the IOOS data management system. In all three incidents, access
    to real-time currents improved response operations. And I think
    Rear Admiral Butt just said that's continuing to improve in the
    Gulf area.
        Secondly, it has been shown that when HF radar data are
    available, the knowledge of currents can reduce the time of
    search and rescue patterns by up to two-thirds from model data
    alone, because the search area can be significantly
    constrained.
        And the third example is the IOOS collaboration with the
    U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Data Information Program,
    CDIP, to deploy buoys that accurately measure both waves and
    swell at critical locations. In the San Francisco area, the
    National Weather Service, the Coast Guard and the commercial
    tugboat operators requested that one of these buoys be placed
    on the San Francisco bar entrance. The number of Coast Guard
    responses in that area dropped from nearly 80 in 2005 before
    the buoy was deployed to less than 20 in 2009. A similar buoy
    at the Columbia River bar is monitored 24/7 by the Coast Guard
    to determine when conditions are too rough for safe passage
    through the bar.
        It is important to emphasize that the data are obtained
    from many different sources instead of being restricted to a
    particular vendor or agency. It is also important to understand
    that these data are all available in open formats. No
    proprietary formats are involved. This will allow the SAROPS
    environmental data server to host over 50 different
    environmental products, and the IOOS structure allows many
    different users access to the data.
        In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that the
    development of the IOOS system gives the Coast Guard
    unprecedented access to real-time environmental data. The Coast
    Guard, particularly SAROPS group and the unified area command
    group are commended for ensuring that agency has access to the
    environmental data essential for good maritime domain
    awareness.
        The distributed observing infrastructure being developed by
    IOOS is as critical to the Coast Guard's functions as are its
    boats, aircrafts, piers and other infrastructure. This asset is
    needed by the Coast Guard and it needs Coast Guard support. I
    recommend that the Coast Guard commit to supporting IOOS and
    strive to utilize all nonclassified, environmental data
    available through the IOOS servers and ensure that the
    different divisions within the Coast Guard utilized common
    protocols to access the data.
        I also urge the divisions of the Coast Guard to become
    members of their respective regional associations. Membership
    strengthens the collaboration between the organizations and
    provides a more effective mechanism to create operational
    applications in support of the Coast Guard mission. In fact,
    last year, CeNCOOS had their annual meeting at Liquid Robotics,
    and so right there we had that integration of different
    resources. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Dr. Garfield. Thank you panel for
    being here.
        I have got a quick question, really quick about the HF. Is
    that like synthetic aperture radar, or is it totally different?
        Dr. Garfield. Totally different.
        Mr. Hunter. Totally different. How far does it go off
    shore?
        Dr. Garfield. It depends on the frequency. The lowest
    frequency we use has a range of 130 kilometers offshore.
        Mr. Hunter. And how big is it? It's an antenna, I would
    guess.
        Dr. Garfield. It's just an antenna, that's a vertical
    antenna, and basically invisible.
        Mr. Hunter. Is it big?
        Dr. Garfield. No, it's a whip antenna.
        Mr. Hunter. So you could put it on a surfboard and float
    it?
        Dr. Garfield. You could.
        Mr. Hunter. Can it move? Like can you move it, or does it
    have to stay still?
        Dr. Garfield. You could. In fact, the Navy has done tests
    about putting HF radar on ships. The problem is that the
    technology relies on the Doppler shift that's being reflected
    off ocean waves. So if you're also on a moving vehicle, it's a
    lot more difficult.
        Mr. Hunter. You have to account for your movement as well
    as the ocean.
        Dr. Garfield. Correct.
        Mr. Hunter. And the reason you use HF, that's what we use
    when we're talking to airplanes. Because as long as there is
    nothing blocking your line of sight, it can go forever for the
    most part. I mean we use HF to talk to planes. We use VH to
    talk to ground.
        Dr. Garfield. Yeah. HF is down near FM radio frequencies,
    and there was a gap there where we could do some scientific
    work.
        Mr. Hunter. Gotcha. Dr. Hazard--Ms. Hazard--so what you
    would do is if a ship wasn't pinging, you could, basically,
    like we do with space, see where the holes are. So you could
    see what's out there, and you know if the ship is pinging. And
    if there's nothing pinging, but you see it on the radar, that's
    when you know that you have somebody who's not pinging from
    their ship, right, from the AIS or whatever system they are
    using.
        Ms. Hazard. But, sir, it's not actually using the AIS feed,
    but the radar----
        Mr. Hunter. What I'm saying is the Coast Guard, using the
    AIS and using the HF at the same time can see that there's no
    pinging from the AIS from a ship that exists that they see from
    your HF radar. Right?
        Ms. Hazard. That's correct.
        Dr. Garfield. One clarification: It's not really radar. It
    is radio waves, and so the technology is not like a ship's X
    band radar at all. If you're familiar with radars, most people
    tune their radar not to see the ocean waves. What we're trying
    to do is capture the scatter off the ocean waves, and that's
    how you determine what the currents are. But a ship will give a
    solid signal. It will give a very strong return signal, but you
    won't know its location immediately.
        Mr. Hunter. Let me ask you this, too. What's the order of
    magnitude of difficulty? And this is for everybody, actually.
    What's the order of magnitude of more difficulty? Is it to do
    this stuff on the water as opposed to land? Like we were
    talking about unmanned systems. I would guess the Coast Guard
    would just hopefully piggy-back with the Navy. It's way ahead
    on this stuff. And, once the Navy gets it down, because it's
    harder that they would just take what the Navy has, right.
        And on the other side of it, you can't communicate under
    water with underwater systems. It's really hard, because to
    make waves travel through water, almost every single underwater
    platform is tethered to something so you can tell it what to
    do, or at least tell it and then let it go again, and then tell
    it later, once it surfaces, if you can communicate again.
    Right? So my question is this. How much harder is it. Why is it
    so much harder?
        I think I just went through a few of those, and if you were
    to have your way and create a CON OPS for the Coast Guard, say
    here's how you use our stuff, I mean we're talking about the
    Coast Guard right now, and that previous panel said that they
    don't even know. They wouldn't know how to use it because it's
    not in their dictionary yet. It's called floating debris.
        That's your Government answer, right, because they
    literally call it floating debris; therefore, we don't even
    want to look at what it does or how to use it until we can see
    it written on paper with a colon and a description of it.
    Right? So they are probably 20 years back. My question is if
    you were to tell us how to employ what you are doing and bring
    it all together to make it more effective and efficient, and
    save money for the Coast Guard, kind of what would that be.
    What do you envision? Mr. Vass, please?
        Mr. Vass. Well, I would envision an integrated system.
        Mr. Hunter. Turn your microphone on, if you could. Is it
    on?
        Mr. Vass. I believe it's on. The green light's on, anyway.
        Mr. Hunter. OK. That's great.
        Mr. Vass. All right. I would envision an integrated system.
    We communicate to undersea vehicles all the time now with our
    Wave Glider, and then transmit that to satellite or to radar.
    We do that acoustically. Sound travels 10 times faster under
    water than it does through land, so we can communicate things
    down 6 kilometers down under the ocean pretty effectively,
    along with giving it positional information.
        So what you really want is something like what we did in
    the harmony demo with Lockheed Martin where you have undersea
    vehicles communicating to these long duration surface vehicles,
    communicating to aerial vehicles, communicating to space
    assets. So you basically have ISR from the ocean floor to space
    in these environments, all autonomous sort of end to end. So
    the advantage of the Wave Gliders, we can stay out all year,
    and not many things can do that. We can navigate very
    accurately.
        We are unpredictable as far as patrolling goes, because you
    can move us around and navigate, and control that both
    autonomously or semi autonomously from sure. And then we can
    receive signals from undersea assets, tip and cue aerial assets
    or aerial assets can tip and cue us, or the same thing with
    spatial assets. So you sort of get this continuous ISR at a
    much lower cost and much longer duration.
        So, for example, aerial drones are going to stay up a
    series of hours, perhaps a series of days. We are out there all
    year. We can direct them. When we detect something, they can
    confirm an asset before an interdiction goes out. I mean it's
    very expensive to do an interdiction, so you'd save those high-
    value assets for interdiction; use the lower cost assets--like
    aerial drones and undersea drones and surface drones--for your
    monitoring a long duration monitoring.
        I thought Mr. Morrow gave a great example of we could show
    where something was. Aerial drone comes over. It tracks it
    continuously, and then air assets and sea assets can interdict.
        Mr. Hunter. Like the admiral said, Admiral Butt said, that
    you have to cue. Cuing is a main part of maritime domain
    awareness, right?
        Mr. Vass. Right.
        Mr. Hunter. So cuing, you can get people there quickly.
        Mr. Vass. Right.
        Mr. Hunter. It's a big part of knowing what's going on.
        Mr. Vass. Right. And part of our design criteria for the
    Wave Glider; it's actually a high-performance computing center.
    We have many cores of onboard processing. I know you have an IT
    background, so you understand some of that. It is a 24-socket,
    multicore processing system on board running Linux and Java, so
    we can run a lot of the cuing and tipping algorithms on board,
    along with sensor fusion and data reduction in situ when we
    collect the data. And that allows us to be this sort of long
    duration platform, so we can collect huge amounts of data. You
    don't really want to send home--you know--365 days of waves in
    the ocean. You want to process the data onboard, and send home
    when you see a ship, or when you see a whale or you see things
    that are interesting, and we have the ability to do that with
    our platform.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Vass.
        Mr. Morrow. To speak more generally to the admiral's
    dilemma of writing requirements for this new technology, our
    lessons learned from Afghanistan and Iraq was that until the
    war fighter actually got his hands on the system, he didn't
    really know how to use it. He had a notional idea how he would
    use it, but that radically changed. When we first got to
    Fallujah, again, they had a general idea. A couple months of
    using the system, they found it used in a totally different
    way, and that's what's involved----
        Mr. Hunter. You know. I was one of the first forward
    observers to shoot artillery off of an unmanned system with a
    corporal with a laptop on his back in Fallujah in 2004. Yeah.
    That hadn't been done a whole lot yet at that point.
        Mr. Morrow. Correct.
        Mr. Vass. Did you hit the targets?
        Mr. Hunter. We did hit the targets, a lot of them. Yeah.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Vass. Just checking.
        Mr. Hunter. It was fulfilling.
        Mr. Morrow. So until the Coast Guard actually gets the
    systems deployed, I think they won't have a full appreciation
    of what they can do with them.
        Mr. Hunter. Well, that's not good that they won't know how
    to integrate them into their operations until they have them in
    their hands?
        Mr. Morrow. Right. From an acquisition standpoint, it is a
    dilemma. It's an issue.
        Mr. Vass. Yeah. And I think the platforms don't evolve
    properly until they have them in operation, as well. So until
    you've been using them and you get feedback from the end user
    who's relying on it every day and what needs to be changed,
    what the performance characteristics are, what kind of data is
    most useful, all of that requires piloting and demonstrations,
    and test processes, which of course we're doing right now with
    the Navy.
        Mr. Morrow. Right. Our technology refresh rate is occurring
    well inside the do-loop of the acquisition procurement cycle.
        Mr. Hunter. Ms. Hazard?
        Ms. Hazard. I'll just make two points in addition to what's
    been said. The HF radar technology is nice, because it is land-
    based and fixed. And so not out in the water where systems can
    require significantly more maintenance. So the maintenance of
    the system is easier. The Coast Guard needs all those
    applications together. And, also, just in regards to the Coast
    Guard, where there is a lot of the turnover. Someone becomes
    familiar with the technology, and then you get an expert user.
    And then they're gone a year later. Scripps staff retain the
    technology expertise and can train users.
        For example, we have been working with special warfare,
    showing them how to use the unpersoned autonomous vehicles and
    then maintaining that technical expertise and continuing to
    work with them as that turnover continues. So we maintain the
    knowledge base and can get folks up to speed very rapidly so
    that they are ready to go at the start of their service.
        Mr. Hunter. And I would guess too if you're doing port
    security you don't need more than 130 kilometers offshore.
    That's well within what you would need. How many miles is that?
        Dr. Garfield. It's a little over 100 miles. It's about 100
    miles, nautical miles.
        Mr. Hunter. Nautical miles. And so that's well outside of a
    nuclear yield or something like that, and dipping in the wind
    and stuff like that.
        Mr. Vass. I think one thing that's important to point out,
    in the commercial world where we operate, we generally operate
    these as a service, and in some cases for the Department of
    Defense we do as well. And I think that's one way to stay in
    situ, if you like the do-loop of procurement, is just say we
    want this much information and we want this level of
    availability and make it our problem in commercial industry,
    solve that problem. I know Insitu does the same thing. They
    operate it as a service.
        Mr. Hunter. You don't think that the Coast Guard should try
    to make this on their own?
        Mr. Vass. No. I believe even operating it it would make
    sense they would put mission requirements in place and say
    ``Here is the data we need.'' Here is the availability we
    need--those kinds of things--and then let commercial enterprise
    do the day-to-day operations and operate it as a service for
    them.
        Mr. Hunter. Dr. Garfield?
        Dr. Garfield. Yeah. Chairman Hunter, I would just add one
    thing. I think the three other speakers covered it very well,
    but as I mentioned in my closing remarks, the IOOS regional
    associations are really a valuable asset for the Coast Guard to
    take advantage of; and, if the different divisions were in the
    Coast Guard, actually partnered and joined in on these meetings
    and participated, they would know exactly what Liquid Robotics
    could do. They would know exactly what the assets are in their
    area.
        The other is I have been able to go into the Coast Guard
    Search and Rescue there on Yerba Buena Island. I have a much
    better idea of what their needs and what their capabilities
    are, which has helped us sort of tune some of the data, some of
    the information, to make it more beneficial to their needs. So
    that give and take, outside of some purchasing requirement,
    would really help define their mission and show them what is
    available to be successful in their mission.
        Mr. Vass. Right. I think it's interesting to point out we
    work very closely with the Coast Guard as a user of Coast Guard
    services, because we file a Notice to Mariners in all our
    operations. The Coast Guard has given us input on how we should
    flag the vehicle; what kind of AIS we should transmit; what
    kind of marine radio we should use, and what kind of lighting
    we should use what are the COP regs, all those kinds of things.
    They've been tremendously helpful and very active as a service
    provider to us. And I just want to make sure that's noticed.
        So the folks on the ground are very familiar with the Wave
    Glider, because we are operating in all their areas all the
    time, and they are always taking this into account. They're
    just not a user of our service. So it's interesting from that
    aspect for us, but they've been tremendously supportive. And I
    think that's important to point out. They really do tremendous
    work for us in ensuring how we operate and where we operate,
    and that we do it with maximum safety and maximum capability as
    well.
        Mr. Hunter. Thank you. Mr. Garamendi, you're recognized for
    as long as you like.
        Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for this
    very, very important hearing. Mr. Garfield, it's good to be
    working with you once again. I notice when I was reading
    through the testimony and looking at what you had done since I
    left the Lieutenant Governor's office, you've come a long way.
    Most of the things I really wanted to get into have been
    covered, which is a description of what you're doing; but, we
    don't have.
        And I'm sorry the admiral left, because I thought he'd be
    sticking around and we could put him back up here and ask him
    some questions. Apparently, your floating devices, Mr. Vass,
    are not sea debris.
        Mr. Vass. No. They are not. They're a very controlled
    navigation devices that communicate and make their own
    decision.
        Mr. Garamendi. Apparently, from your last comments, the
    Coast Guard recognizes there's something more than debris.
        Mr. Vass. They do, but they don't have a legal definition.
    So they really have. That is a challenge for us.
        Mr. Garamendi. The Chairman came up with a definition,
    ``unpersoned floating vessel.''
        Mr. Vass. Unpersoned floating vessel, yeah. We usually
    refer to it as an unmanned surface vehicle. But, now----
        Mr. Garamendi. It's very sexist?
        Mr. Vass [continuing]. Yeah, very sexist. So I guess it
    will be unpersoned surface vehicle from now on.
        Mr. Garamendi. I think where I'd like to take this is to
    where you're talking about the integration of your technologies
    into the Coast Guard's operations.
        Mr. Vass. Yeah.
        Mr. Garamendi. The Chairman correctly pointed out that the
    Coast Guard really isn't well-suited to develop the technology,
    but rather to use it and adapt it. And I think what I'd like,
    to make a statement or statements, and then have some response.
    It seems to me we ought to encourage the Coast Guard to work
    with your systems, and you have four or five different systems
    here, to acquire the knowledge to determine how best to use the
    systems that you have to inform their normal work.
        Mr. Vass. Yes.
        Mr. Garamendi. This also involves the Navy. And I just
    stepped out during the early parts of your testimony to take to
    the Air Force about their ISRS, some of which are applicable
    here. So I think what I'd like to do is how would you, if the
    Coast Guard was still here, if Admiral Butt was still here, I'd
    ask how would you integrate. How would you capture the
    information? How would you see the Coast Guard doing that?
    Let's start this way. We'll go left to right, or right to left.
    Mr. Vass, if you would?
        Mr. Vass. As I mentioned before, I would look at an
    integrated platform from undersea assets, surface assets,
    aerial assets and satellite assets. The nice thing about our
    platform is it patrols like a vessel patrols. So someone trying
    to interdict your coastline.
        Mr. Garamendi. Excuse me. I'm more interested in the
    organization. How would you want them to work with you? How
    would you want the Coast Guard to work with you?
        Mr. Vass. So, for us, specifically, would be to basically
    hire us as a service to provide information to them where
    they're most interested and where they have the most critical
    information to gather, and define for us what information needs
    to be gathered on a 24 by 7 basis. Tell us what format they
    want that information that will be most valuable to them, and
    then interact with us to help us improve the information we
    provided them and make our platform better to meet their needs.
        Mr. Morrow. I would second the services approach, however,
    I'd also add that in their system of systems architecture, I
    found it always works best if you define the interface
    standards as close to commercially viable standards as
    possible. That way I'm motivated. I can hire people that know
    those interfaces to remain compatible with their overall
    systems architecture.
        Mr. Garamendi. So put aside the not invented here syndrome
    and go with already is invented.
        Mr. Morrow. Hm-hmm. Correct, yes.
        Mr. Garamendi. But you cover a variety of systems, your
    organization or association does. Has the Coast Guard worked
    with your association in developing knowledge about the various
    types of systems that are out there?
        Mr. Morrow. I don't know that they have. I'm sure they've
    talked. They are investigating small UASs as we speak. We've
    done one demo with them, and we'll do another first quarter of
    next year. So they are beginning that communication process.
        Mr. Garamendi. Ms. Hazard, as you pointed out very
    specifically how they could, if you'd like to go back and
    expand on that I'd be happy to hear it.
        Ms. Hazard. Sure. I made two points. I guess one using
    small scale demonstrations to the scale up to opportunities
    that can provide the analysis, costs and many requirements for
    doing these types of demonstrations. But on the data side for
    integration, within academia there is a whole host of folks
    working on common data formats and inoperability. And so I
    guess for the Coast Guard my recommendation would be to use the
    open geospatial consortium, which is a global group working on
    data standards.
        We are using network common data formats that can integrate
    easily within Google maps, open layers. A lot of the open
    source architecture, and even for a lot of the time series
    data, asking time series and just the basic file structure
    hierarchy works really well for designing and integrating
    these, and we do that within our lab on multiple meteorological
    sensors, autonomous vehicles, HF radar, and so I can understand
    the conflict of having classified and unclassified systems.
        So my recommendation, again, would be using the modular
    approach and only using those data fees that are required for
    your mission so that you're not cluttering your work space for
    these large standards and they're getting the information that
    is needed. And a lot of the open architecture can down-size
    those data feeds, because when you're integrating large,
    satellite images and everything, they can be massive and that
    can bog down a system, because you're transmitting gigabytes
    into your application. But, newer standards are able to
    disseminate that data, and so that the viewer is only looking
    at--your system is only bringing in a small portion of that
    data for your operating picture. And, so, my recommendation
    would be to use those open architecture standards and Web
    services. And then for the classified systems, they might have
    the entire picture. But, for the mission-driven systems, to
    keep it in the unclassed level, just building modular
    applications.
        Mr. Garamendi. Garfield?
        Dr. Garfield. So you let the education professor in me come
    to the forefront. What's really worked for us was actually
    getting into the Coast Guard and talking to people. I mean
    these are very busy people. They don't have much time. What we
    did is we actually went to them, said, look. We're going to
    give you presentations. We're going to give you workshops.
        The lieutenant commander who is in charge of search and
    rescue in San Francisco, she had my phone number. And so when
    there was an incident and they had questions, she knew who to
    contact. She could get information from us, directly. And I
    really think that through the IOOS mechanism and the regional
    associations, building those partnerships is really the
    critical way to go forward with this.
        Mr. Garamendi. Mr. Chairman, it is not clear to me how the
    Coast Guard is learning and using, and certainly integrating
    these technologies. There's some indication that they do some.
    From the earlier testimony today, it appears to be so they are
    thinking about building massive systems of their own, rather
    than using what might already be available.
        I'm not exactly sure how to proceed here until we have a
    conversation with the Coast Guard about how they are accessing
    systems that can be useful to them in gathering and achieving
    their goal on understanding the marine environment. Perhaps we
    ought to ask them that kind of question in detail. And if the
    answer comes back--because I think it might--that it's sort of
    but not much, we may want to develop some sort of a round table
    system or force them to develop it. And sit down with the
    various kinds of systems and technologies that are available
    and learn, rather than trying to invent it themselves and
    develop it themselves, which proves to be difficult and not
    very successful.
        Mr. Hunter. Absolutely. In fact, what we'll do, we'd like
    to follow this up with another hearing or a round table when
    the Coast Guard stays, and you're here at the same time. And
    the Coast Guard captain back there listen to us, but it would
    be great if we could have some interaction and be able to ask
    them, hey, are you using this right now, and exactly how do you
    want to use it to them. And I don't think they are prepared
    right now to answer that question.
        I also don't think they are prepared to talk about how it
    would change their recapitalization efforts; change what type
    of ships they need to build; how many of those ships they need
    to build; where they're going to operate those ships; what
    their conduct of operations. All of that gets impacted as you
    bring technology into the game, and it is going to put pressure
    on different sides of their systems. And you're going to have
    things change. And I think we need to figure out what that is.
        This is not a full hearing. A lot of people did not come,
    but don't let that take away from how important this is and
    what your testimony will be used for going forward. Because
    John is here and I'm here. We had Mr. Meehan and Ms. Hahn, and
    we are going to take this and make sure that they make the
    right decisions using what's available to us right now. We are
    going to make sure of it, because if we don't get involved and
    conduct the oversight, then bad things happen, as we've
    learned.
        So I'd like to thank everybody for being here and with
    that, if Mr. Garamendi has no more questions, the hearing is
    adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]