Coast Guard ready for maritime communications solicitations

Secure and reliable communications — who does not want them? For the Coast Guard, however, a newly-engineered nationwide ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore system will do more than improve response time and coordinate complex maneuvers. It will also, by means of intelligent software built into the system, help officials get a better sense of the country’s maritime traffic. “The speed, course and location data collected by this system from vessels carrying international automatic identification system equipment will be used to form an overarching view of maritime traffic within or near the U.S. and its territorial waters,” said the Coast Guard’s Kurtis Roth. On Thursday the Coast Guard announced that it was ready to move forward with contracting for the $165 million project.

“This is an important milestone for the project as it marks the approval to begin contracting for the initial deployment of this powerful capability,” said Guth, adding that the system would be developed in three phases and in coordination with the Sea Logistics Center. Phase one, providing sixty critical seaports with shore-to-ship communications, is already underway. For Phase two, there will be an open competition contract for design, supply and implementation of a fully integrated system to provide nationwide reception and transmission capabilities — including base station transceivers, antennas, data storage and processing and networking infrastructure. Phase three, for its part, will involve contracts to provide long-range automatic identification system coverage out to 2,000 nautical miles.

A pre-solicitation conference is tentatively scheduled for 18 January in Arlington, Virginia.

-read more in Alice Lipowicz Washington Technology report