By Calvin Biesecker
The Coast Guard has awarded Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] Space & Mission Systems sector a two-year, $12 million contract to build out the shore side infrastructure of the Nationwide Automatic Identification System (NAIS), which will permit the receipt and transmission of vessel data and related maritime information between ships at sea and the Coast Guard.
The total potential value of the contract is $68 million, including the two-year base period and six one-year options. That shore side infrastructure is the core data exchange capability and is known as Increment 2, Phase I of the NAIS project.
The shore side infrastructure will permit the transfer and processing of Automatic Identification System (AIS) information between AIS-equipped vessels, aircraft, aids to navigation and shore stations within all major United States ports, waterways and coastal zones. AIS is a maritime digital broadcast technology that continually transmits and receives voiceless exchange of vessel data.
Currently, under NAIS, the Coast Guard has AIS coverage in critical ports and coastal areas where there was existing infrastructure to receive vessel data transmitted by onboard AIS systems. That capability was delivered in September 2007.
Increment 2, Phase 1 of the program will accommodate full nationwide coverage and provide bidirectional data communications utility within a service oriented architecture framework, says Cmdr. James Ingalsbe, NAIS deputy project manager. Receiver coverage under the new increment will be out to 50 nautical miles and transmit capability will be out to 24 nautical miles.
After the two-year base period, the Coast Guard expects to have transmit and receive coverage for three of its sectors in addition to the basic core data exchange capability.
Under Increment 2, Phase I the Coast still plans to issue a new Request for Proposals–anticipated for early 2010–that will be for a multiple-award contract for remote site work and installations to complete nationwide AIS coverage.
Eventually, under an Increment 3, Phase 1 of NAIS, the Coast Guard plans to have AIS long-range receive coverage out to 2,000 nautical miles. Already the Coast Guard has done a feasibility evaluation of space-based AIS reception using a commercial satellite that was launched last summer. An evaluation of that demonstration is ongoing.