Bridging the Policy and Technology Gap : A Process to Instantiate Maritime Domain Awareness

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The twin imperatives of pursuing the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and defending the U.S. Homeland have placed in increasingly strong premium on obtaining a detailed knowledge of the maritime domain, what has come to be known as Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). In a recent speech, the Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard put the importance of MDA in these terms, “Global Maritime Domain Awareness will allow us to detect, surveill, identify, classify, and interdict vessels of interest. Global MDA gives us the cued intel that will provide the situational awareness and clarity necessary to determine if a vessel is friend or foe.” This challenge has been addressed by the United States Government in a number of policy documents, most importantly, the National Strategy for Maritime Security and The National Plan to Improve Maritime Domain Awareness. These documents highlight the importance of MDA both as a challenge and an opportunity. The importance of MDA to homeland defense was highlighted in a public statement by the Assistant Secretary of Defense of Homeland Security who noted, “It seems to me that it is in the maritime domain that we have the greatest potential to substantially improve our homeland defense.” While the policy imperatives of achieving MDA are strong and straightforward and while the concept of operations to put this into effect is already evolving, the technical challenges to achieving the requisite degree of MDA to pursue the GWOT and defend the U.S. Homeland and the homeland territory of other nations are significant.