From a line in the National Security Policy of 2004, the Marine Security Operations Centre concept has become a formidable operation on both coasts and in the Great Lakes, bringing together the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets of five departments to deliver a broad and detailed maritime picture. Rear-Admiral David Gardam, commander of Joint Task Force Atlantic and Maritime Forces Atlantic, oversees the MSOC in Halifax. He spoke with editor Chris Thatcher.
How close are you to full operational capacity?
We are halfway between initial operating capacity and FOC. When we first started the MSOC it was built on establishing trust between the five key partners: how do we build that collaborative process so that we get the best answer possible to build a recognized maritime picture? I would say we have that now. We have had a number of cases where we have been able to use that synergistic effect to sort the wheat from the chaff. We are now working on smart collaborative tools which will allow us to better analyze the information more rapidly and to better share the information.
From a technical perspective, no one department owns the MSOC. It is a collaborative arrangement of the five key partners – the Coast Guard, RCMP, DND, CBSA and Transport Canada. And we’ve been able to use it to identify drug smuggling where we would not have gotten that information without having the key partners in a room. That is a huge success story. We are now spreading our wings beyond North America to tap into the international connections that our partners bring. The idea of the MSOC has always been to know what is coming before it leaves. We’re now there. Things like passenger lists, knowing where a ship was, is and will be going – all that information now comes into the MSOC. We currently manage 1.4 million pieces of data a day; by the end of the year it will be at 2 million. A lot of R&D has gone into how to smartly manage that information to get that recognized picture, to sort out why one vessel or aircraft might be a target of interest.
How does that target look today versus eight years ago?
In 05-06, you would have seen a dot and, if you drilled down, some information like a radar contact and maybe a VHF call associated with it. Now, if you drill down on that target, you’ll see a lot more scripted information that’s been put in from the various partners and our international partners. Things like Lloyds Register of Shipping. We are using smart technologies and really smart people to pull information from global databases that have always been there and push it into one picture.
Has that capability improved the decision-making process?
If you have a maritime incident, the perception is that you have a lot of time to deal with it. The reality is because of jurisdictional and legislative issues, you actually do not have that much time. You need to sort out the problem ideally before it hits the 200 mile EEZ (exclusive economic zone), certainly before the 24 contiguous zone, and absolutely before it hits 12 miles. We are now able to do that. Because we have better information, the decision cycle is much better. In the past the information was kind of grey; now it’s far more solid. Also, we’re pushing the MSOC picture into the Arctic through things like satellite-based AIS (automatic information system) using RADARSAT II information and smart algorithms to determine when we have a target and where it is going.
The MSOC was once described as a possible lightning rod for changing how government agencies interact with one another. Have you seen evidence of that cultural change?
The MSOC is about trust and when we first started it we had to build trust. Over the period of the last seven years we’ve built a great deal of credibility, which we now leverage. But it takes time to build that credibility. Interestingly, this system is viewed by not only our European allies, but also the Americans as probably the poster child for collaboration. The MSOC is about relationships; that’s why it works.
That’s at the personal level. Have the institutional relationships become stronger as well?
Absolutely. And that wouldn’t have happened if there wasn’t proof that this works. We have unequivocal proof that we now have information that we would not have had without the MSOC collaborative process. Had that not happened, I would say we would probably still be back in 2005.
Have the legal requirements changed? That was an initial barrier to information sharing.
The legal requirements have not changed. The MSOC partners recognize that not all information can be routinely shared and that not all partners require all information; however, with experience, we have a good understanding of what information can and should be shared in order to develop a fulsome understanding of the maritime domain while respecting the current legal framework.
Has tasking changed as the MOSC has matured?
The legislative and jurisdictional issues now clearly drive who is the lead department. And it can change. As an example, if we’re dealing with a customs or an immigration issue, different departments will have certain responsibilities and capabilities at the 200-mile zone or the 24 contiguous while others will have to wait until 12 miles. So we’ll leverage whatever department we need to give us the effect as furthest away as possible. So it’s a smart way of queuing response in what could be viewed as a cumbersome system. A department may not have jurisdiction until 12 miles, but now they know what is happening. If we had a vessel of interest with suspected illegal immigrants and the possibility of someone on a watch list, Customs and Immigration and the RCMP might ask the navy to help with boarding the vessel since we have the boarding capability. We’d have three or four departments working together to do that one boarding; in the U.S., the Coast Guard would do the whole thing.
What lessons have you distilled about interdepartmental information sharing and data fusion?
I think the first one is never assume that your partner has the information. That’s a big one. When it comes to data fusion and information transfer, we often assume everyone has the same clarity that we have, and that is never the case. Second, the backbone of this organization is trust, and trust takes time and effort. So when you have new folks come in, they need to be inculcated into the culture of what the MSOC is. You don’t just say welcome aboard and then walk away. Because everyone who comes into that MSOC initially has their departmental view, until they get exposed to the group and then become more part of the collective response. Third, as I mentioned, we have learned that not every piece of information is required by each partner. As we get more experience, we are getting better at working with each other to understand information sharing requirements as well as limitations.
How do you incorporate the U.S., and in particular NORAD, into the MSOC picture?
The relationship with NORAD and NORTHCOM is through Canadian Joint Operations Command. On the military side, my relationship is through the Joint Fusion Centre Atlantic and also my NATO partners, and those relationships have been around for decades. We have liaison officers embedded in both and it works seamlessly. Recently I’ve had two commanders of NORAD-NORTHCOM come to this office. That has never happened before. They came to talk about MSOC. So it is having a huge impact on not only our relationship but also how we share information. Back to my comment on sharing that 85 percent of the pie: I’ll take everything you can possibly give me, but when you say I can’t have something, that’s fine because I guarantee you the only difference between the white source information we have now and segmented, highly sensitive information is the source. I don’t need the source; someone else has it. As long as I don’t go after source information, we can do what we need to do.
Is there a requirement for an MSOC in the Arctic? I would think there is a great constabulary role, and therefore greater interdepartmental collaboration.
You hit the nail on the head. The North is a constabulary role, where we would always be the support player except for a small role in defence. But I see that more as a NORAD role than a traditional defence role. I don’t think an MSOC is necessary now – but I’m not saying, never. Right now we have a good enough picture because of satellite coverage and simple things such as the Arctic Water Pollution Prevention Act of 1985, which requires ships to request permission to transit and to meet certain requirements like a double hull. As traffic builds over the next decades, we might.
With the delays in the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, do you have sufficient space-based assets for the Arctic?
What you need is the ability to discern between ice and a target. And then, the relative length and size of a target, which requires certain processing capabilities. Just having a blip isn’t good enough. However, because the Arctic is still a destination, we are okay with what we have. But it’s not going to stay like that.
Have you considered expanding beyond the five core partners or are you able to bring in expertise as required?
Public Safety is the quarterback to make sure the right partners are brought in if expertise is needed from non-traditional partners. We recently participated in Frontier Sentinel 12, a whole of government exercise in which immigration and health issues were involved. Often, different agencies may come into the MSOC if they feel it’s of value to them, or they’ll get the queuing from us and work within their own cluster to make things work.
You mentioned the development of smart collaborative tools: what’s missing from the technological side?
The final pieces are more a software issue on a collaborative sharing tool. Right now it is still pretty darn manual. We need to bridge that manual gap. That’s the last piece.
Does the IMIC3 project (Interdepartmental Maritime Integrated Command, Control and Communications) fill part of that information-sharing requirement?
It is one tool but I don’t see it as the bridge to other systems that are the primary requirement at this point. We have a common backbone system which we use to build the recognized maritime picture. We have a fair amount of information that is fused into that automatically from various sources like ships, ports, and some agencies. But we have some that is air gapped – from one machine, human interface, and plug into the other – and that’s the last piece that we need to fix.
Is this solely a defence requirement or do you need other departments to develop their systems?
The biggest issue, and this is across Canada, is that when we do force development work we need to do it collaboratively so things talk. In the past each department has had their own perfect solution, which was incapable of linking or talking with another. The Olympics taught us a lot of lessons about how we actually needed to build systems and subsystems to talk. I’m hoping the lessons identified become lessons learned, and we change our joint and interagency doctrine to ensure that one of the first requirements in force development is interoperability with our partners. Because of the size of our country and the fact that no one department can afford to go it alone, we need this to happen. In the U.S., the Coast Guard would address all of this; we, however, need this “strange” relationship where we have three or four departments all working together on law enforcement, drug enforcement, immigration – we just have too much coast line to manage.
How complete is the common operating picture? Is every ship and every aircraft a potential sensor?
It is automatic data transfer now, and it’s not just the navy and the coast guard, it’s every ship that is out there. On the Grand Banks, for example, there are a lot of fishing vessels and it is not uncommon to have them all clustered together and then break apart, and when they break apart you can get a picture which is confusing. If you’ve got a fishing vessel you know, you can ask who is off your starboard bow at three miles. Through chat or Inmarsat or web-based tools, we can challenge any ship anywhere in the world and ask, what is that beside you, we can’t see what it is, and then feed that into our picture. On the air side, I use Provincial Aerospace, Auroras, Sea Kings, King Air, whatever is out there that we can tap into. And that is a huge change. In the past, Fisheries would go out and do fisheries, Environment would do environment monitoring, the RCMP would do its thing. Now they are all pulled into the MSOC picture. If it’s flying, it’s feeding. If it’s on the water, it’s feeding.