Sea Control - Sea Control 230 - Coast Guard R&D & Unmanned Systems with Scott Craig & Bert Macesker

Episode Date: March 7, 2021

Links“Leveraging Unmanned Systems for Coast Guard Missions: A Strategic Imperative,” by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine -  Transportation Research Board, (2020). “Coast Guard Begins At-Sea Testing of Unmanned Surface Vehicles to Tackle Illegal Fishing, Crime,” by Megan Eckstein, USNI News (October 15, 2020). “Indonesian fisher finds drone submarine on possible covert mission,” by Helen Davidson, The Guardian (December 31, 2020). “The Coast Guard Needs to Listen – Acoustically,” by Thomas V. Caero, USNI Proceedings (August 2020).

Hey folks, Jared here. One significant note on the podcast feed before I talk about the content of this week's episode. So as we executed our site migration plan, we realized that there are two C-Control feeds out there. The legacy feed is labeled C-Control-SimSec. It's run through something called FeedBurner and we have no control over what is populated in that feed. The current feed is labeled simply C-Control and it includes the phrase Simsex Flagship Podcast in its description. That's the one you want to follow. So I encourage you to follow the current Sea Control feed. If you follow the Legacy feed, you may have noticed that episode 228, Dr. Jerry Hendricks discussing his book to provide and maintain a Navy, had the incorrect

audio attached. Because we have no control over that feed, there's nothing we can do about correcting that. So if you want to listen to that episode, and I strongly recommend it, it's posted correctly on our current feed head over there and check it out again it's listed simply as sea control and includes a phrase simsex flagship podcast in its description thanks for your patience as we clean up the last remnants of our site migration this week we have walker mills hosting and interviewing two team members from the coast guards research and development teams scott craig and burt mckesker they touch on a lot of different topics to include communications challenges in the arctic and a heavy dose of discussion on unmanned systems as always i want

to thank those who have donated to simsec whether during our right fight win holiday campaign or afterwards if you haven't donated yet and you'd like to you can still do it on our website or at us as your preferred non-profit on amazon smile so you can support us while you shop finally i want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the simsec podcast network the bilge pumps you can find alex jamie drock and a pile of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, posted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security.

This week, we're talking with Scott Craig and Bert McKesker. Scott is the Air Domain Lead for the U.S. Coast Guard's Office of Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation. and Bert is the Executive Director of the Coast Guard's Research and Development Center in New London, Connecticut. Today, we're going to be talking about the future of unmanned systems in the Coast Guard. Craig, can you go ahead and introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure. Hi, Walker. How are you? I'm Scott Craig. I've been with the Coast Guard for about 30 years, spent 27 years on active duty where I was a pilot. And for the last three and a half years, I've been working in the Coast Guard's development program as a civilian. Glad to be here.

Bert, can you do the same and give yourself a brief introduction? Absolutely. Good morning and thanks for having us. I serve as the Civilian Executive Director at the Coast Guard's Research and Development Center. I started at the center about 25 years ago, coming from General Dynamics, Electric Boat Division, right across the river. I started in the Ocean Engineering Branch and had the opportunity to work on, as a researcher, a variety of fascinating projects. And in my current role, I've been, I track time now by the number of CEOs. So it's been three commanding officers. Okay.

Wow. We are, we're excited to have you guys here. So thanks for coming on the podcast. And before I start, I'd like to remind our listeners that the opinions presented here are solely our own and should not be taken as representative of any of the institutions that we are associated with or that we represent. Bert, I'd like you to start us off by describing the Coast Guard's Research and Development center generally and kind of the environment that Coast Guard R&D operates in? Because I think some

of our listeners are probably kind of unfamiliar with how it's organized and how it's set up. Thank you for the opportunity to let people know that the Coast Guard has an R&D center. We are, I think, one of the best kept secrets in southeastern Connecticut, whether it's good or bad. But we've been around since 1972. We're located currently in the Coast Guard the city of New London in the former Naval Underwater Worker Center building here at historic Fort Trumbull. We're right next to, I can see on my window, Station New London, and we are a few miles from our service academy, brought in sub-base and across the river from electric boat, and line of sight to where the National Coast Guard Museum is planned in the

not-too-distant future. We are the Coast Guard's only facility with an R&D appropriation for performing research in support of all of its missions. Basically, we're a professional group of civilians and military scientists and engineers that work very closely together with the different program offices at headquarters and with operators to reduce the risk and raise the value of introducing technology into the Coast Guard. So we are not doing basic research. We're a small lab, but we make very heavy use of requests for forces and our relationships with all the operational commanders to be able to try technology out. And in fact, you know, I think trying out technology is what makes this one of the best jobs in the Coast Guard. So we're not big

like other labs in the Northeast, but I'll say we're scrappy and with clear purpose in the sense that each and every one of our 50 plus projects is tied to one of the 11 statutory missions that we support. Bert, could you give us a sense of what the top priorities are? I mean, I'm sure there's several different lines of effort because we know that the Coast Guard has 11 different responsibilities, but maybe there are some top priorities or specific issues or technologies that Commandant's particularly interested in. Yeah, certainly. It's a great question. At the R&D Center, we run a research portfolio, and I mentioned there are 50 or so plus projects, and that's a portfolio that changes every year. Last year, for example, we completed 22 research

projects and delivered 50 products, mostly technical reports to our various stakeholders and customers. But the way we operate here at the center is we have some research focus areas that include Arctic operations, sensor optimization. We do a lot of work with Intel and cyber, waterways management and environmental response, more traditional work that we've been doing, operational performance improvements and modeling, and of course, unmanned systems. So I'll just highlight a couple of those in each of those categories. But Arctic technology, I mean, that's a big deal for the Coast Guard. As you know, there's a lot of talk about getting more icebreakers and having more effective presence in the Arctic.

So we go up there every year, for example, and we are testing technology. Of course, the Arctic is a very compelling case for the use of unmanned systems. And for the last couple of years, for example, we've been going up there doing search and rescue exercises, bringing short range and medium range uas's up there we've been testing some micro auvs and gliders and a few other things but this year we we weren't able to we've had a flex in terms of doing some arctic work we did do some testing off the coast of connor campbell off the west coast of greenland we gave them some technology to evaluate did a little work with the heli and And I currently have a researcher on the Polar Star.

She's still on board conducting experiments for the Army right now. So that's huge. Of course, communications in the Arctic is another significant area of research for us. In terms of sensor optimization, we're working on developing better survival modeling tools for our search and rescue planners. for things like intel and cyber we're developing the next generation automatic information system capabilities navigation tool that that's ubiquitous and out there and we're looking at things like gps interference issues we are working on cyber related things like testing we recently did some testing of virtual programmable logic controllers on a cutter so things like that

are very important. In waterways, we're working on looking at what that next generation of H2 navigation is going to look like. As you can imagine, there's a huge constellation of physical ATON out there. What can we do to improve some of those efficiencies, which could mean things like, you know, looking at composite materials. So that's a big effort. And of course, we're always looking at that next, you know, how to improve our countermeasure response tools for oil spills. A lot of work we've been focusing on right now is looking at the countermeasure of doing in-situ burn where there's an oil spill in the water. You know, it's a very effective way of cleaning it up.

And then for modeling, we've got some significant efforts in developing use of mixed reality tools, augmented reality, virtual reality for training and a variety of other things. But I think a big area of focus right now is going to be big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools and applications. Then there's our unmanned systems focus area. It's been something we've been working on for a while. I can imagine, Walker, that your listeners can all see that a lot of this technology has been really advancing towards more automation and sensing and unmanned technologies. And that for us, that promise of unmanned systems is that it can enhance the missions in the Coast Guard. And over the years, we've done a lot of technology demonstrations with unmanned systems. We've done modeling that have demonstrated mission improvement in a lot of areas.

So, for example, in looking at patrol tactics, definitely see improvements in detections or clearing of traffic. But even so, there is a lot of work that still needs to be done and some challenges we have to overcome. So, for example, in the UAS realm, we are going to need to look at enabling our beyond visualized sight capabilities so that we can really unlock that potential, looking at detect and avoid technology and things like that. So that's another big area that we're working on. Before I shift over to Scott for some follow-on questions about the unmanned systems, I wanted to follow up on something you mentioned briefly about the problems with communications in the Arctic. Because some of our listeners who listened to our interview with Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Schultz, he mentioned that is one of the big difficulties that the Coast Guard also faces in the Arctic is issues with communication. So could you just flesh that out a little bit more for us and maybe describe the problem as to why communications are more difficult in the Arctic and then what some of the projects that we're working on to mitigate those difficulties? One of the challenges is the fact that you're up in the higher latitudes and there's not a lot of persistence in terms of satellite communications because that's one of the modes of communication.

Now, there are other modalities of communication, high frequency, things like that. But I think satellite communications is something that is a challenge. There are things that we are looking at. Last year, we looked at putting CubeSats in space. Actually, the Coast Guard was involved in supporting that. A couple of CubeSats going up there to see if we can detect EPIRB transmissions, for example, from mariners in distress. There are some efforts that we're doing right now on that next generation automatic information system. And that's going to potentially have more channel capability with future satellites that the commercial space industry is going to put up there that will even open up more communication capability.

So there are a lot of different fronts that we are looking at to try to close that gap, given that, you know, we are going to have a lot more presence up there. Awesome. And so now I want to shift over to Scott and kind of drill down on what I think would be the focus of this episode and a little more into the unmanned systems. Scott, do you think you could give us kind of a background on where the Coast Guard is with integrating unmanned systems into operations before we talk a little bit more about research and development? Yeah, I'd be glad to. And I'm going to mostly talk, when I'm thinking about unmanned systems, I'm not thinking so much about the small quadcopter types that they own or that you see everywhere. That's kind of a commercial product now. We certainly use them.

They might help us inspect a tower or look at a local oil spill. But our real efforts are focused on larger systems. So right now, we operate the ScanEagle off of our national security cutters. We started that a couple of years ago, and all of our national security cutters are going to be equipped with a ScanEagle. And that's about a 50-pound UAS, fixed-wing UAS. It launches from the ship, and it's got about a 12-hour endurance. It's got some sensors on board to help us do missions. We also operate the larger MQ-9 jointly with Customs and Border Protection.

The aircraft are owned by Customs and Border Protection, but we provide pilots and sensor operators. And those aircraft are available to do the types of mission that Coast Guard does, primarily counter-drug. So that's where we are right now. And, of course, we're looking to expand the UASs into other realms. Scott, you mentioned the counter-drug mission. And is that most of what the Coast Guard is using the Scan Eagles and the MQ-9s for, kind of maritime patrol looking for illicit activity at sea? Yes, they are primarily doing counter-drug. We see UASs right now being useful for law enforcement type missions.

So, you know, there's some opportunity that they could do fisheries enforcement or migrant interdiction. But really where they're useful is where you're looking at really large areas of open water that's difficult to always have a manned aircraft or a manned boat or cutter in the area. So those UASs really enhance and expand our capability to patrol large areas of maritime domain. Scott, one of the things that I read recently is that the Coast Guard is getting interested in VTOL, vertical takeoff and landing UAS, and they've started testing with that. Do you think that's something we're going to see more of? I think so. Yeah, we tested one out on a deployment, you know, a six-week deployment, just to see how well it worked off of the back of a Coast Guard cutter. But the nice thing about a VTOL UAS is you don't have to have a lot of launch and recovery equipment to operate it from a ship like you do with a fixed-wing UAS. And they're getting to the point technology-wise where they're stable enough to launch from the back of a ship or Coast Guard cutter. and then they transition to forward flight and they can provide the endurance that you can get

from a strictly a fixed wing UAS. So as that technology matures, we were hoping that, you know, we could expand the use of UASs to other, you know, Coast Guard platforms, whether it's maybe a patrol boat and then even to shore stations for kind of coastal maritime patrols. Again, And that VTOL type of technology would allow you to operate a UAS with pretty significant capability from a smaller platform. And again, on the shore side, it would be easier for a smaller shore station to use a UAS if it didn't require a runway for takeoff and landings or some complicated launch and recovery equipment. Scott, I remember you said earlier that your background in the Coast Guard was a pilot. Do you think that there's a potential for these systems to start replacing some of the Coast Guard's manned aviation assets, not necessarily in the immediate future, but in the in the long term future? Or do you think the Coast Guard will continue to operate manned and unmanned assets for the foreseeable future?

I don't think we'll ever get away from manned assets. Just some of the, especially when you get into search and rescue, it's just so dynamic that I don't see a time when you can do that without people. When you look at going out to a fishing boat where somebody's been injured and having to lower down a rescue swimmer to do some medical treatment, put the person in a litter and get them back up into a helicopter, provide medical care as you're en route to maybe a hospital after that, that's not going to be done. by a UAS in our lifetimes. So there's going to be a role for manned aircraft. But I think you'll see more and more missions that are going to be able to be done by UASs and they'll have an increased role. So I think in the future, you know, you might see where we've lost, we can take a few aircraft out of service and replace them with UASs. But, you know, to a larger extent, it's going to be all a mix, I think, of fixed wing, manned fixed wing, manned helicopters, and UAS

is working together. And that's kind of what I was imagining, perhaps a mix where you have unmanned assets, you know, locating a vessel in distress or something, and then you follow on with a manned asset. And our counter-drug mission, you know, when our fixed wing aircraft are doing that, you know, they're going to remain covert. They're going to use their radar and their camera system to monitor a potential suspect, drug smuggling suspect. That can be done very well with a UAS because, again, you're just relying on sensors to monitor that particular target of interest. So that lends itself very well to an unmanned system doing that. So I was reading recently there was a Coast Guard experiment or test outside of Hawaii with

unmanned surface vessels. Is there anything more you can tell us about that? Yeah, certainly. We've been working on unmanned aerial systems for UAS for a long time now. And as you pointed out, it's on the National Secret Carry Cutters, and it's a part of a program of record, the Skane Eagle, for example. But it's only been in the last few years that we really started to look at unmanned surface vehicles for Coast Guard applications. Unlike Like the small and medium range UAS, the Coast Guard really does not have any unmanned maritime systems requirements yet. However, both the sensor and onboard processing technology has significantly matured since we first did some testing a few years ago with a Navy 11-meter unmanned rib off of South Padre Island. It's making this technology much more attractive.

So, yes, we recently completed, as you mentioned, a 30-day pilot to evaluate low-cost commercially available technology that can enhance maritime domain awareness. And that's where I think we're going to have the biggest benefit with most of these systems is supporting the maritime domain awareness. And so in this case, the focus was demonstrating the capability for prospective operations, say, in Pacific regions with a focus on that growing threat of illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing. So the platforms we looked at last month in this pilot were SIS Watcher and SailDrop. The Watcher system is basically a Coast Guard cutterboat large platform that was converted to an autonomous vessel powered by a diesel outboard and it can hit some 30 knots to be able to detect vessels that had a radar and EOIR payload and was assigned a kind of a 20 square mile of patrol off of Honolulu. sail drones the other system we looked at were involved in this pilot as well and they brought six of them to the table and the test so they could do some picket line evaluations these sail drones are i mean a lot of people have seen them they're pretty they're pretty big they're 23 feet

in size they've got a an airfoil for sale and they're very effective at harvesting the wind and solar energy to be able to be persistent they don't operate very fast they're a little slow and they don't have as much payload capacity to say as the converted cutter boat large that was autonomous. For our pilot, the sail drones were using AIS for their beyond visual line of sight detections. And they had a unique AIS based visual imagery capability to detect and collectively track the targets. And I do think that from when we were doing testing a few years ago, is that the machine learning capability to automatically detect and classify targets is going to be a game changer.

But you look, there's still work to be done. I mean, they're the once in a while false positives. I mean, we don't want to send our assets out to prosecute any errant clouds that might be floating around. So there's some work in progress. And then one last thing we did, we had the opportunity to procure our own 29-foot autonomous research vessel last year and we shipped that out to the hawaii pilot with with our with our guys operating it and this vessel is basically a coast guard response boat small that's currently in

production but configured to be fully autonomous i was not there but i i know these guys had a ton of fun testing out the navigation systems and the you know trying out different search patterns and the collision avoidance capabilities and it was actually uh really cool when you know we're all stuck here in icy cold Connecticut a month ago, we did a virtual all hands and we were able to say hello to our guys in Hawaii, 5,000 miles away. And we were able to drive the boat from 5,000 miles away, basically program it to do certain things while it's underway. So it was just really cool. And we're really excited about that. Wow. If Scott was kind of saying earlier that one of the biggest applications that has come to light so far of the unmanned aerial systems is

counter-narcotics and that type of law enforcement work. Is it fair to say that the surface unmanned vehicles are kind of being targeted a little more at the IUU phishing issue? Well, I think that's definitely one area of application that's of great interest because we don't have assets, enough assets to cover our area of responsibility, particularly in the remote areas. You know, conceivably, you know, as the technology develops and they become more persistent and they have that ability to do onboard processing, because it's very expensive to be sending stuff over satellite, you know, back and forth and streaming information. So the better the onboard processing gets on some of these capabilities, the more attractive they are going to become for some of these missions. And yeah, counter-drug, counter-migrant, living marine resource missions, these are all applications. And in fact, when we were in Hawaii, their patrol area is one of the marine sanctuaries. So, you know, credible opportunities. But again, like you and Scott were talking about earlier, it's just one layer of a toolkit that, you know, we are going to need to take advantage of because there's no one system that's going to do it all. So Bert, then if I understand you correctly, what you're telling me is that watch party that y'all had from Connecticut was super expensive and we should put that in a graph report because it wasn't processed on board and you were sending data all the way out to Hawaii.

Well, that's a good point. I mean, it was for demonstration purposes. I mean, at the end of the day, it's all about getting things back to the command center for the operators to make use of. Now, the reality is, is that for those systems that are going to be, you know, remote, if they can do it on board, that's great because it's going to save some bandwidth. However, you know, for those systems, we might be looking at in some not too distant future to be more closer to port where it's more congestion and we have co-regs to worry about. We may have to have continuous streaming. We may have to have more bandwidth and immediate control of those systems. So, you know, if we're doing high interest vessel escorts or things like that. So, but they're different applications, different payloads and different external communication modalities that we'll have to look into. That makes sense. I'm just giving you a hard time. No, you're putting me on report. I got it. Another question I want to ask is, you mentioned the Navy. Obviously, our listeners would be familiar with, probably more familiar with some of the Navy projects in regards to unmanned systems. And how closely is the Coast Guard working with other research and development centers within the Department of the Navy, whether it be the Office of Naval Research or even something like the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab? Well, thank you. That's a great question. You know, for us, I mean, we're small and we're scrappy, but that only gets you so far.

And as you know, DOD has a research enterprise that is just expansive and with lots of opportunities. So for the last year and a half, we've been participating in a lab sync directors meetings. Our commanding officer sits in on that. We participate in that. So that includes the Navy, the Air Force and the Army. along with that we have the occasional prisoner exchange program where we we have some of their folks and you know i i think that helps a lot and just before the holidays we had set up a briefing with the naval research laboratory and their autonomous systems director they have a huge facility there for admiral mauger and his staff because they're starting to build a or stand up a working group to look at you know what an unmanned systems roadmap could look like for the coast

Guard. Yeah, you mentioned Marine Corps. We're actually going to be briefing members of the Marine Corps Warfare Fighting Lab in a couple of weeks on the work that we did on our low-cost MDA, a pilot. So we have friends in DOD, I'd like to thank. Well, that makes me really excited and happy to hear that y'all are working or going to be working with Marine Corps Warfighting Lab because obviously as a Marine, that's a little closer to my heart. I want to give you a chance to clarify for for the listeners you you are not actually involved in prisoner exchanges with the office of no uh i think i don't mean it that way by any means but uh i just think you know it's a great opportunity the way you you partner with somebody is by having you know being being embedded

you know with the other agencies i i have uh a captain from the national guard you know on board with us now on a year detail, which provides some incredible synergy. He's taking back some innovative ideas back to the adjutant general here, and we are just getting the benefit of what they're doing. So I'd love to see more of that in the future. I think this, call it sea service or naval service or maritime cooperation, I think is really important. And obviously our listeners are probably familiar with the tri-service maritime strategy that was just signed by the Command of the Marine Corps and the Command of the Coast Guard and the Chief of Naval Operations. And so I want to turn it back over to Scott and

ask you from where you sit in D.C., are you seeing similar types of cooperation in the kind of innovation or research and development space between the Navy and the Coast Guard and perhaps even the Marine Corps? Absolutely. We, Walker, we try to stay in touch with, you know, all the other services and what they're working on. Just because, you know, as Bert was saying, we need those synergies. We don't have a lot of our own resources. So anything we can leverage from the other services is great. For instance, we were talking earlier about the VTOL deployment demo that we did on a Coast Guard cutter. And that came to us through the Southern Command. They were testing that technology and thought it would be useful on a Coast Guard cutter.

They funded it for us. So that's an example. And then we're also doing another unmanned maritime system projects down in Mississippi. And one of our partners with that is the Naval Research Lab. So, you know, we always try to find those partnership opportunities. They're very helpful. Something I wanted to ask is, I've seen that some of the UAS on the national security cutters appear to be contractor operated or maybe contractor owned and leased to the Coast Guard. Can you explain a little bit how that relationship works when the Coast Guard may not own the UAS outright? The ScanEagle, for the national security cutter, that is a service contract, the entire thing. We do not own any of them. And the reason that works well is because the

technology's evolving quickly and we didn't want to purchase, acquire a system that could be obsolete in three, four, five years. This way, we're just purchasing a service. As those capabilities increase, you know, we expect that the people that are providing that service to us will provide that increased capability. And it just, again, it lends itself to not getting stuck with a technology that could be obsolete in just a few years. That makes a lot of sense. Do you think that the Coast Guard will reach a place where it wants to acquire these assets and operate them with its own operators? Or is it pretty comfortable using the contractor-owned and operated UAS for the foreseeable future? No, I think we're going to get to the point where we

want to own them. Once they're ubiquitous and you're seeing them everywhere in the Coast Guard and they're doing all sorts of missions, at some point, then it becomes cost prohibitive to pay a third party to be the service contractor. Then it makes sense to take that in-house, you know, up a cadre of people and have our own program where we're owning and operating those UAS. So that'll be the future, but, you know, we're just not quite there yet. Bert, do you know a little bit more about the counter UAS side of things? Yeah, we do have a maritime counter UAS project in our portfolio. Probably can't say too much about it, but, you know, I can say that our researchers have kind of worked very hard to

quickly field some prototype systems to where they were most needed. And very much a, again, and family kind of effort. In this case, the Atlantic Area Commander, Dahlgren, folks like the Air Force Research Laboratory, Army, working with Picatinny right now, Coast Guard Yard, and many others. And this is an area I think we're going to be working in for some time, looking at both kinetic and non-kinetic solutions. So for us, as you know, staying in front of our adversaries that have the same access to the innovation ecosystem that we do is going to keep us all business for a while. When I was doing the prep reading for this episode, I stumbled across that information that the Coast Guard was one of the leads for counter-unmanned systems in the federal

government. So I was just kind of impressed to see that among all the other things that the Coast Guard is working on, that is also in the portfolio. Pivoting a little bit, recently there was an unmanned undersea or underwater vehicle that looks to be Chinese. They call it a sea glider type that was interdicted by either fishermen or the indonesian navy in indonesian waters and uh makes me want to ask are there any underwater or undersea unmanned vehicles or platforms that the coast guard is is looking at i mean we're looking at all of them i mean from things like buoyancy gliders to wave gliders to sea gliders and so on and and these uh uuvs or underwater vehicles i I mean, like the buoyancy gliders are fairly small, a meter to a couple of meters, and they don't present a lot of risk necessarily to traffic.

They're very slow. We're talking like, and you've probably read this, but, you know, one to two knots. We visited some of their facilities. But they're phenomenal collectors of basic oceanographic data and can have that persistent, you know, persistence out there for six months to a year. inexpensive and as we speak there are probably hundreds of these things floating around in the ocean you know while these gliders are are mostly remotely controlled with a little bit of autonomy you know then we have the higher end systems like the navy sea hunter the fully autonomous trimaran i i think down the road our sweet spot is going to be somewhere in between those extreme

capabilities it's going to be a while before we get there but yeah certainly we we've looked at we have our own uh micro our own auvs that we've looked at uh we've deployed some from our ice breakers and some scenario testing and we currently have an interesting ongoing project to develop a long-range autonomous underwater vehicle capability it's been going on a couple years but this is being done uh with sponsorship from the department of homeland security science technology but they're looking at an underwater autonomous vehicle that can that can track detect and track potential oil spills under the ice if it does occur so really interesting i was involved in some testing uh a couple years ago where literally they have the ability with this

autonomous vehicle to map out and track you know where the plume is going so you can imagine the value of something like that to our federal on-seat commanders that have to for example deal with a a very difficult oil spill. No, that's a wicked problem, an oil spill under the Arctic ice. I would not want to be that on-seat commander. Something that's a little more of a personal interest to me working down in South Com are these so-called narco submarines, the semi-submersible vehicles that are often used in illicit trafficking through the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. And they're, I guess, more in the subsurface, subsea domain. So is the Coast Guard working on anything that would provide more awareness under the water, either, I don't know,

acoustically or through other methods? So, yeah, we are looking at some acoustic systems for our unmanned surface and subsurface vehicles. And, you know, partly because these smaller unmanned surface and subsurface vehicles can't handle a radar or a camera system that's very capable, either just because of the size and weight or just the power drawer. So really the primary sensor becomes acoustic. So we are just starting to get into that realm right now. We're working on a project in partnership with DHS Science and Technology to field some systems for testing. And we hope to be out there in 2022 doing some actual testing to see how well they work but you know right now you know the semi-submersibles we are able to pick them up

with our uh you know our uas's or our manned aircraft if it's purely if it's something that's completely submerged it's certainly more difficult to do it with a with an aircraft but you know that's where we we might see more use of a unmanned system a maritime system with an acoustic sensor so we're just starting to get into that that's a good point about the the sensor modalities too is being able to detect something further away. The Coast Guard doesn't have a lot of expertise with sonar, but some of these systems have towed arrays on them that might give us that range beyond the EOIR radar

that we have on capabilities on the surface. And we do have a counter UUV project in our portfolio right now, but this one, an anti-swimmer project. And again, we are not going this alone. This is something we are working very closely with, with the Navy and their technology to see how the Coast Guard operators would fit in, sort of our, maybe our MSRTs, for example. And yeah, I mean, semi-submersibles, I mean, let's face it, the bad guys are getting very creative in terms of some of their designs, and they are going to become more autonomous

as well. Certainly at the low end. I read recently there was a pitch, it was either a Navy officer or a Coast Guard officer writing in the Naval Institute Proceedings magazine that the Coast Guard should get into the business of acoustic detection of submarines. And I don't, you know, which I think would be a big leap in capability, a little bit different than detecting kind of homemade semi-submersibles. But, you know, is that, could that be down the tunnel if the Coast Guard continues to pursue these acoustic detection technologies? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there were rates for that many years ago. Scott might know more about this than I do,

but that would be a big change for the Coast Guard. But I don't think anything is impossible. If it makes sense to support that advantage with the tri-services, I mean, for the Coast Guard to do that, I wouldn't say it's impossible. Scott, do you have anything to add there? Yeah, we haven't really – I haven't heard of conversations along those lines, that's really, yeah, that's kind of a tri-service strategy decision at very high levels. You know, right now we're just focusing on, you know, small acoustic sensors

for small unmanned systems and, you know, strictly sticking to the Coast Guard's traditional law enforcement missions. And I couldn't comment further on, you know, whether we're looking at anything on a national defense level. Scott, I want to ask about some of the potential drawbacks about unmanned systems? I mean, one thing that comes to mind when you're looking at suspects from the air could be privacy, but are there other, I don't want to say risks, but potential issues or potential problems that Coast Guard is kind of discovering as it starts to pursue more unmanned research and development and operationalize these unmanned assets? Sure thing. Yeah. And regarding the privacy issue, so an unmanned aerial system is simply a platform

that you put sensors on. So, you know, they have the same sensors roughly that Armand aircraft have. So they're doing the exact same thing Armand aircraft have been doing for years. You know, I'm no legal expert, so I'm not going to touch on the particulars of privacy, but they're not doing anything new in that regard. I think when people think of privacy, they're sometimes thinking of, you know, a drone hovering outside your window peeking into someone's home. And That's certainly not the Coast Guard's jurisdiction. But in terms of other technology issues with the use of UASs or unmanned systems writ large, airspace continues to be an issue.

There's a lot of controls in space and a lot of limitations to how you can use a drone right now in the airspace. For instance, with our ScanEagle on the National Security Cutter, we have to monitor it with an air search radar to clear the airspace around the drone. Most of our cutters don't have air search radar. So if you're operating from another type of vessel or you're operating from a shore station, how do you clear that airspace? So that's an issue we've got to work out. Another problem, once you get out in the maritime domain, far from shore, there's, you know, that Internet connection and the data transfer, the cell phone connections that we rely on when we're at shore or near shore, you know, they don't exist. So, you know, maintaining control of these U.S. is beyond line of sight, beyond radio line of sight. And then transmitting data is still a problem that needs to be overcome.

So, you know, I think we'll get there in a number of years, especially with these low Earth orbit satellite systems that are being put up that are going to provide Wi-Fi around the world, including remote areas like the maritime domain. I think that'll help, but we're not quite there yet. So those are a couple of issues we've got to overcome. Bert, did you have anything you want to add? No, I agree. I'm glad Scott mentioned the low Earth orbit opportunities, and it's going to be a holistic approach. You know, I think you're going to see space-based technology working together with unmanned systems that are, you know, more terrestrial. Is that in your portfolio, Scott, these low Earth orbit satellites?

It's not in our portfolio in terms of any search type of research and development specific project. But we are aware that it has the ability to maybe solve a lot of our problems. When you talk about connectivity offshore, including, you know, what we were talking about earlier with Arctic communications, you know, it could it could help there. It could help with our dissemination and movement of data, you know, in the maritime environment, our control of unmanned systems and such when we're out there. So we see a lot of potential there. And we're just waiting to see what the reality is once they're in place. You know, they're starting to be in place. SpaceX is launching a system and I think there's one other that are coming online. So we're looking forward to seeing what they can provide to us. And if I could add, we do want to we're looking at in the future and very near future,

create a space based technology research focus area because we know that's growing. The economy is growing. There's a space force. And there is opportunity with the proliferation of these less expensive satellites. But not only that, we have a we have a responsibility with NASA for, you know, when when the vessels come back and land and we have to have contingency plans for research and rescue. But it's a big area. I know I'm co-located here with International Ice Patrol, and they are making transition to using satellites along with artificial intelligence to be able to track the satellite. So there's going to be a little, I don't think they're going to have man, they're going to have fixed wing aircraft for reconnaissance still, but definitely you see in some areas in the Coast Guard that I think space technology is starting to work its way in. no it seems like it could be kind of a an integrator technology that's that touches on all all the different pieces of the coast guard enterprise which which is kind of a segue into my next question bird is how does the coast guard balance the different priorities i mean i think

you mentioned earlier that there's 50 some different projects going on you know 11 statutory missions how do you in the in the coast guard is is it more recent i would say more resource constrained than the other services. How do you pick? How do you prioritize? It is very much a challenge. I do think that we have some great processes for capturing project ideas from across the enterprise and the Coast Guard. I mean, we solicit, and this is what Scott's office, the program office does, they solicit ideas from everybody, from flag officers all the way down to the deck plate level for what their needs are potentially for R&D.

So we do get hundreds of ideas pretty much every year. We do a rack and stack process and then we have a portfolio review and bringing some of our internal and even external leadership come to this panel. But the reality is that we are only able to start a handful of new research projects every year with our $5 million budget.

So, but yeah, so once in a while we get a little bump from Congress. In fact, this year we got a $3 million bump to advance some of our UAS research, incidentally. But look, we're very good at getting creative, particularly with partnering. And I mentioned working with the DOD enterprise. And we have some other tools that we use to work with the private sector when we can. And we can do cooperative agreements and prize competitions when there are particular challenges we can't address internally. So, yeah, it is a challenge, but it's still one of the best jobs in the Coast Guard. And Scott, same question within the air domain research and development.

How do you prioritize and kind of rack and stack your priorities and manage your limited resources? You know, I communicated a lot with the other aviation program offices at Coast Guard headquarters and really try to work with them to figure out, you know, what their priorities are and where they could use some R&D help, you know, with kind of these nascent technologies or just maybe even, you know, they've got something that's obsolete that needs to be replaced. And, you know, we try to just complement their staffs by providing that R&D effort. So it's a fairly straightforward process. You know, our aviation community in the Coast Guard isn't huge. So, you know, I've got three or four staffs I work with to make that happen. And I think we've been pretty successful over the last few years getting the projects that are important to the aviation community funded and out there. Scott, I want to finish off by asking you where you think that Coast Guard unmanned systems are going to be in 10 years or 20 years and kind of give us a glimpse of what you think one future might look like and then finish us off with any other final thoughts or comments that you've got today.

Sure. Well, I think they're going to be, I think UASs or unmanned systems at large are going to be integrated across all of the Coast Guard, all geographic areas, all of our mission sets. So a much more expanded use than you're seeing today. And I think we're going to see a lot more autonomy. You know, today, unmanned systems, you know, people think that, well, hey, there's, you know, it's just out there, you know, doing its thing on its own. But there's a lot of people behind the scenes, you know, keeping that unmanned system in the air. Autonomous systems, you know, really offer the opportunity to decrease costs and allow us to get more systems out there to enhance our capabilities. And I think that autonomy piece, where these systems are just largely operating on their own and have some fairly robust AI and ML capability, I think that's going to be where you see some big changes over the next 10 to 20 years. These technologies will be more and more in use in everyday life, as people are already seeing, and they'll become more important to the Coast Guard and look forward to seeing that future. And Bert, over to you. Same question. Where do you see Coast Guard unmanned systems and even more generally technology and equipment in 10 or 20 years or whatever future you think is more relevant? And then please leave us with any of your final thoughts. sure i think we're gonna see more of it i mean our organization culture is one of being conservative and a little more cautious in terms of moving out i see more a slow integration with for example the tri services that you brought up walker and i'll mention another example where

we've been working with our small boats so for example doing some testing on that we converted one of the rbss to not the one i was talking about earlier but to a optionally manned and unmanned system. And this past year, we were able to participate with that unmanned responsible small and Navy exercises back in January. And now we've taken that vessel, we placed it at one of our stations. Station Kings Point now has the first experimental unmanned vessel in the Coast Guard. We are going to be looking at what some of those potential applications are. And in fact, later this month. The researchers are going to go out there and make the transition from the coxswain in charge, taking the coxswain in charge off the boat and running the vessel from

a base station at Station Kings Point somewhere. So we're going to be taking, it's going to be a crawl, walk, you know, kind of strategy. And then I guess my final thoughts there, we talked a lot about unmanned aerial systems and unmanned maritime vehicles, but I really do think that the Coast Guard is going to benefit from unmanned systems in ways that we really haven't even conceived of yet. There are other niche areas that are going to be huge. An example of a project that we're doing this year is we're buying a robotic inland brush cutter. So we're going to be providing this to a buoy tender. So the operator does not have to get out potentially and get snake bit, you know, get poison ivy being taken out of action. It's all about that promise of

unmanned systems and supporting these, you know, routine, dirty and dangerous jobs. And I think there's a lot of opportunity out there. And on the flip side of that, as researchers, we were all so careful about, you know, not necessarily going after those applications that were those costs, those true costs of those unmanned systems outweigh mission benefits. So it's always a balance. So it's coming, but it's not going to be overnight. Okay. And I promise this will be the last question, but is there going to be a strategy document or a roadmap or a strategic vision or plan for Coast Guard unmanned systems coming out anytime in the future? Yes, there is. So the Coast Guard recently commissioned a study on unmanned systems with the National Academy of

sciences. And one of the outcomes of that is the need to develop a strategy. So the Coast Guard is just starting that effort. And we have a good idea of where we want to be, but, you know, it just hasn't been documented and publicized as much as we need it to be. So we're developing that strategy and that roadmap right now. And we're going to use that as our template moving forward. Okay. Well, we'll have to bring you guys back when that comes out and we can discuss it again. I'd like to thank my guests, Scott Craig and Bert McKesker. Scott is the Air Domain Lead for the U.S. Coast Guard's Office of Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation.

Bert is the Executive Director of the Coast Guard's Research and Development Center. Thanks again for coming on, and it was a good chat with you guys. Thank you. Thank you, Walker. Thank you again for joining me and to our listeners. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next week. Thank you. So help me, Bob, I'm pulling in the alley.

Why am I pulling in the alley? Help me, Bob, I'm pulling in the alley. Pulling out the shimbo now.