The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking at having common solutions between its two air forces, the Coast Guard and the Office of Air and Marine (AMO) within Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an AMO official said this week.
The Executive Aviation Working Group is looking for “common solutions to air platforms and sensors,” Doug Koupash, executive director of Mission Support within AMO, said at a CBP industry event on Tuesday. The Coast Guard and AMO both operate fixed and rotary-wing aircraft with the greatest overlap in medium and long-range assets.
Both agencies also operate variants of the venerable UH-60 Blawk Hawk helicopter that is widely deployed with the United States Army and to a lesser degree with the Navy. The UH-60 is built by the Sikorsky Aircraft division of United Technologies Corp. [UTX].
“Right now one of the things that is on the table in the future, I’m talking a few years from now, right now we don’t have the resources to do it is some form of twin-engine National Security Helicopter (NSH),” Koupash said at an industry day hosted by CBP’s Office of Technology Innovation and Acquisition. The helicopter would be common to the Coast Guard and CBP and “could be multi-mission” and “could be” used in both the land and maritime environments and satisfy most of the needs of the Coast Guard and CBP, he said.
Plans for a common long-range aircraft are probably a “decade away,” Koupash said, but we’re beginning to think in those terms now because if we’re going to have a replacement for the [CBP] P-3, whether it’s some sort of enhanced version of the C-130 or some combination of capabilities we have to start thinking of that now.”
He said that CBP and the Coast Guard are beginning to assess future alternatives for long-range maritime capability to be used in “some sort” of joint fashion by the two agencies.
CBP’s long-range surveillance plane is the Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built P-3 Orion, of which it operates two variants, one for aerial surveillance and the other for maritime surveillance. The Coast Guard’s long-range surveillance aircraft is the Lockheed Martin-built HC-130 aircraft.
So we’re discussing with the Coast Guard assessments of future alternatives for long-range maritime capability to be used in some sort of joint fashion by CBP and the Coast Guard.
The DHS Executive Aviation Group was established by the Deputy Secretary and brings together Coast Guard and CBP officials, Koupash said.
Koupash said that AMO currently faces a gap in its twin-engine helicopter needs for meeting demand for border security operations. The service is in the midst of an upgrade of its UH-60s medium-lift helicopters, although the program is proceeding slower than AMO “would like” with just five of the 16 aircraft fleet in overhaul so far, he said. The ongoing work should extend the usefulness of the aircraft until 2025, he said.
To help close the twin-engine helicopter gap, CBP is working with the Marine Corps on the transfer of some of the military service’s UH-1N medium-lift aircraft, a twin-engine version of the Huey helicopter that has been flying since the 1960s. Some of the twin-engine Hueys that CBP would get from the Marine Corps are currently overseas and the agency would overhaul them to meet AMO’s needs before entering them into border security service, Koupash said. The UH-1 is built by Textron Inc.’s [TXT] Bell Helicopter division.
AMO recently received several S-76 twin-engine helicopters from the Drug Enforcement Agency that are being prepared specifically for CBP operations. The S-76 is also built by Sikorsky.
Koupash said that even though the sensors used on AMO’s aircraft assets have been improving, the demand exists for continuous improvements. He pointed to increased use by drug cartels of submarines to smuggle tons of drugs that find their way into the United States.
While these subs are “primitive,” they represent a “quantum leap” in capability over the semi-submersibles that are being used by drug smugglers, Koupash said. Semi-submersibles are largely submerged but still have a couple feet of hull above the water surface.
Koupash also said that CBP’s vision for Predator unmanned aircraft systems remains at 24 aircraft, even though the agency will pause the acquisition program after the 10th aircraft is delivered this fall. The agency isn’t requesting funds for any Predators in FY ’13 and instead is seeking funding to “catch-up” in terms of support systems, sensors and crew development, he said.
With funding constrained, CBP will be focusing on improving the interconnectivity of its sensors with other command centers and organizations such as the Coast Guard, North American Air Defense Command, the Joint Interagency Task Force South and others to enhance data flow, Koupash said. These projects won’t be large in dollar terms, more likely several hundred thousand dollars to $1 million or slightly more, he said.