Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Glitches stall Coast Guard radio upgrade

From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 13:54:31 -0400

Glitches stall Coast Guard radio upgrade
06/28/04
By William Jackson,
GCN Staff

The Coast Guard’s $611 million project to overhaul its coastal radio
system for search and rescue has fallen months behind schedule because
of delays in integrating control system software.

The House of Representatives has taken note of the delays and plans to
fund the Rescue 21 system at $27 million less than the administration’s
request for fiscal 2005. The House voted to provide $134 million for
Rescue 21 next year, which is still $791,000 above the 2004
appropriation.

The House Appropriations Committee justified its reduction in a report,
stating, “Rescue 21 has been experiencing significant software
development problems, resulting in the program falling about one year
behind schedule.”
The spending panel said the release of Rescue 21 funds would depend on
successful completion of software and hardware integration and quality
tests expected this summer.

But the Coast Guard does not expect to complete its testing until early
fall, according to Coast Guard Cmdr. Ken Marien, deputy project manager
for Rescue 21.

“It took us a little longer than we thought to integrate various
commercial products,” Marien said, referring to the software that
controls the Rescue 21 radios. “This is essentially software to operate
the components of the radio systems and graphical user
interfaces.”

The guard had expected to complete software testing by March, but now
that deadline has stretched to September, Marien said.

“The big holdup was the software integration,” he said. “That was the
big challenge.”
Rescue 21 program planners have started two prototype versions of the
advanced search and rescue system at Atlantic City, N.J., and on the
Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Distress calls

Rescue 21 lets Coast Guard personnel remotely operate equipment at “high
sites,” towers located along the coasts, to communicate with Coast Guard
boats and other vessels.
“The high site is a steel skeleton tower that gets coverage out to 20
nautical miles to hear distress calls,” Marien said.
The Coast Guard has 46 communications centers around the coasts, on the
Great Lakes and on inland waterways.
General Dynamics Corp.’s C4 Systems unit is performing the Rescue 21
work in coordination with Coast Guard software and radio specialists.

“It’s a 19-year project,” Marien said. General Dynamics’ contract, which
is mainly on a fixed-price basis, calls for four years to deploy the
system and two years of follow-on maintenance. General Dynamics is
eligible to receive extensions of the maintenance contract, Marien said.
A General Dynamics spokesman referred most questions about the contract
to the guard.
General Dynamics won the contract in a competition with Lockheed Martin
Corp. and Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego.

The project delay has not increased Rescue 21’s cost, Marien said.
When General Dynamics received the contract in September 2002, it was
called the National Disaster and Response System Modernization.

When it becomes operational, “Rescue 21 will take the search out of
search and rescue,” Marien said. Improved and standardized VHF radios
will dramatically reduce the area of coastline that Coast Guard rescuers
will have to search to locate imperiled boaters.

Rescue 21 communication centers use servers running Microsoft Windows
NT. Each center has a disaster recovery plan in case systems fail.

System operators use two 22-inch, flat-panel monitors. One display shows
a geographic image of a region’s coastline, together with all Coast
Guard vessels in the area and lines of bearing from the towers to
various vessels offshore.
The second monitor shows radio controls and can signal the Coast Guard
which radios have been activated by distress calls from the VHF radios,
which boaters are required to carry.

In addition to its search and rescue function, the “maritime 911” system
will help the Coast Guard carry out several other missions, such as
environmental protection, homeland security work and law enforcement.
http://www.gcn.com/23_16/news/26385-1.html

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