The Littoral Challenge
Written by David Burpee
Then, add the fact you also need to be prepared in the same conditions to perform low-intensity conflict and special operations missions as well as nontraditional missions such as noncombat evacuations of American citizens, humanitarian assistance/disaster relief, political stability, peacekeeping and civic action/nation building.
These circumstances describe the essence of littoral operations missions. There can be a formidable number of issues to take into account, including combat tactics/techniques, available forces, equipment on hand, available time, logistics, weather, enemy forces and safety of navigation—topics that keep planners and operators awake at night.
The one common requirement that stretches across all aspects of littoral operations, however, is the need for accurate, upto- date geospatial intelligence to plan and conduct such operations. The complexity of this need is underscored when one considers that littoral operating areas can extend from the open ocean, to the shore, and to those inland areas that can be attacked, supported and defended directly from the sea. In practice, this can translate to roughly 200 nautical miles off shore (and down to 200 feet) and more than 100 nautical miles or more inland. This area can extend from the continental shelf all the way to isolated upland regions.
Given the extent of the world’s shorelines, this obviously represents a very large area. Additionally, there are more than 900,000 rivers and more than 465,000 commercial inland waterways in the world, the majority of which have never been mapped or surveyed.
Finally, the area is made all the more important by the fact that more than 60 percent of the world’s politically significant urban areas are within 25 miles of a coast, 75 percent are within 150 miles and four out of five capitals are within 300 miles. Demographically, the littoral environment stands out as the area with the highest probability for employing the armed forces.
The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations recognized the economic importance of coastal zones in a recently published Navy maritime strategy document, “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.”
“The maritime domain—the world’s oceans, seas, bays, estuaries, islands, coastal areas, littorals and the airspace above them— supports 90 percent of the world’s trade, [and] carries the lifeblood of a global system that links every country on earth,” the report indicated.
PLANNING CHARTS
John Haumann is the digital nautical chart and littoral program manager at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He and his team work with other NGA programs, as well as partners outside the agency, to help provide and put into useable formats information about the littoral areas of the world.
“NGA and its predecessors have worked on littoral information issues for a long time, dating in the modern era back to at least World War II,” Haumann said. “Since the mid-1990s, there has been more focus on littoral information as a result of Navy concepts such as ‘From the Sea’ and ‘Forward from the Sea.’ Most of the requirements come from military plans and have been on the books for some time, but there are also training requirements.”
Haumann added that a key factor in getting good littoral information, especially bathymetric data, was access. “Lack of access to denied areas is the biggest issue for us. For non-denied areas, it is more a matter of priorities and resources. The training requirements are not a problem because the Navy provides good bathymetric data, and we have excellent image and elevation data for the land part of all the charts.”
The littoral products used to be called “combat charts,” Haumann noted, but recently the name had been changed to “littoral planning charts” to reflect other possible uses. All of the charts are produced on paper, and the newer ones are also produced as PDF files.
“NGA has about 400 special littoral charts worldwide,” he said. “Each chart generally covers an area about 40 miles as measured along the shore and extends about 10 miles inland and 10 miles to sea. We are working with various partners to wrap our hands around the issue of how much area should be on a littoral map, but for now we are building products to fit diverse customer needs.
“For example, the Marine Corps has had us produce littoral planning charts that cover an area 25 nautical miles onshore and 25 nautical miles offshore,” Haumann continued. “The challenges obviously increase as the size of the area increases, especially for the bathymetric data.”
NEW REQUIREMENTS
One of the key factors driving the need to improve and update littoral planning charts is the advent of new military systems and equipment, such as amphibious vehicles.
“The new littoral platforms of the Navy and Marine Corps require more data to operate with peak effectiveness,” according to Haumann. “The Marine Corps’ expeditionary fighting vehicle is a good example of technology driving requirements. The vehicle will approach the shore at a high speed, about 28 knots, and obviously needs to slow down to use its low-power mode before it runs aground. As a result, the Marines have asked us to trace the 6-meter depth line on littoral planning charts. This is a very precise and important challenge.”
Haumann also mentioned other technology challenges, such as how to derive bathymetry from satellite imagery, overcome issues caused by turbidity in the water, obtain bathymetric data in denied areas, create consensus from the various stakeholders regarding technical standards and features required on littoral planning charts, and migrate the paper and electronic products to interactive digital formats.
“The good news is we are not starting from scratch,” Haumann said. “A lot of large-scale data is available in selected areas such as ports and their approaches. In addition, products such as digital nautical charts have smaller-scale data available for en route information. The key will be to define parameters for the information needed and then gather the data and produce the charts.
“There are already several initiatives in this area. For example, we are exploring areas for littoral co-production with our partners from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others to spread the work among several nations. We are making good use of our NGA support teams, especially our teams with the Navy and Marine Corps, to understand requirements.
“We also have a proactive program of technical exchange meetings, conferences and other gatherings to share information at the classified and unclassified levels. These meetings can include industry and academia as appropriate,” he added.
Haumann noted that continued developments in industry and academia would play a major role in future improvements to littoral planning charts. “Improvements on how to derive bathymetry from satellite imagery will obviously help us gather much needed data,” he said. “Other valuable improvements would be in the areas of unmanned underwater vehicles for use by the Navy, development of new algorithms for multispectral imagery, and techniques to solve global shoreline limitations, such as how to define the shoreline in mangrove and swamp areas.
“U.S. military operations in support of noncombatant evacuation [NEO] missions and humanitarian rescue/recovery show the value of good topographic and bathymetric information,” he said. “Examples include the Lebanon NEO a couple of years ago, and operations associated with the tsunami devastation in areas like Banda Aceh and Indonesia as well as with damage caused by storms such as Hurricane Katrina. We have an important mission and will continue to work with all concerned to improve our littoral holdings.”
NAVY SHIFT
During the Cold War, when the primary adversary was global and had a large submarine fleet, the Navy had a strong deep-water focus. Today, however, there are new challenges to national security, and many of them are focused on the coastal zone. That has led to a shift in emphasis toward littoral operations.
One example reflecting this shift is the littoral combat ship program, which comprises surface vessels slightly smaller than guided missile frigates. They have a flight deck and hangar for two SH-60 Seahawk helicopters, can recover and launch small boats from stern ramp, and can deliver a small assault force with armored vehicles to a roll-on/roll-off port facility.
Another example is the Navy’s riverine force, which consists of specially designed craft configured to operate in a hostile inlandwaterway environment. These craft have multiple crews for near continuous operations, and lift capacity for a small tactical unit.
According to Lieutenant Commander Lora Turner, geospatial information and services officer at the Office of the Oceanographer of the Navy, the Navy has various means to gather bathymetric data through the use of a variety of vessels. They include multimission survey vessels that focus on deep water, hydrographic survey launches that focus on shallow water, and survey teams that use small zodiac boats and can be used for very shallow water surveys.
“We have our own sources to gather data, but it is critical to coordinate our efforts with others. An important part of coordinating geospatial information requirements for littoral and other areas is the National System of Geospatial- Intelligence [NSG],” she said.
“The NSG provides a holistic approach because everyone can put in their requirements along with their priorities. The NGA can then cross-check requirements from many sources to eliminate duplications and then work issues according to user and national priorities,” Turner said.
“The Navy does have a capability to produce their own charts and maps, but this is usually circumstantial and at a higher level,” she noted. “For example, the Office of Naval Intelligence has geospatial analysts on staff who develop GEOINT products. Another example is the work being done by teams in Iraq that survey rivers used for logistic support.
“However, all Navy mapping and charting efforts still use NSG/NGA standards so they can be incorporated into the larger enterprise system, as well as pull information from the larger enterprise system. This includes the work done at places like Banda Aceh, where teams surveyed approaches for rescue/recovery ships, and also along the U.S. southern coast after Hurricane Katrina. Any program of record that has GEOINT equities is shared with everyone, and anyone with an interest can provide input into the Standards Working Group chaired by NGA,” Turner explained.
“The Navy plans to make more use of unmanned underwater vehicles because they are cost effective and safer,” she added. “The Office of Naval Research has already done some work in this area, including the use of glider technology that uses differential water pressure to propel the vehicle instead of relying on large and heavy batteries.”
LEVERAGING INDUSTRY
Challenges are always on the horizon, Turner said, and one of them is how to best leverage service-oriented architectures and net-centric capabilities to better allow sharing of GEOINT across communities. Another challenge, she said, is “how to share feature data without compromising classified information.
“The Navy is moving toward integrating various shipboard displays—for example, navigation, combat radar, weather and others— into geospatially referenced, interactive, single displays. These are all things that, working together within the government and with industry and academia, we can seek to improve,” she said.
Scott Van Dermark, vice president of federal programs at Fugro EarthData, put forward his company as an example of how industry could be leveraged to help gather topographic and bathymetric data in the coastal zone.
“We have all the tools—aircraft, ships and autonomous underwater vehicles [AUV]—you would need to collect information in permissive littoral situations,” he said. “This is an area of growing interest with the government, industry and our company in particular. The primary obstacle has always been to the lack of funding for NGA, the Navy and others to contract for such commercial services.”
One capability of Fugro EarthData and others is the use of airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), which is an optical remote sensing technology that measures properties of scattered light to find range and/ or other information of a distant target. The prevalent method to determine distance to an object or surface is to use laser pulses.
Like radar technology, which uses radio waves, the range to an object is determined by measuring the time delay between transmission of a pulse and detection of the reflected signal. Another capability to collect bathymetric data is the use of multibeam echo sounders either onboard a surface vessel or AUV.
Airborne bathymetric LiDAR uses a red laser to measure the distance from the air to the water’s surface, and a green laser that penetrates to a distance determined primarily by water clarity. “The intensity of the return can also provide information on the type of habitat present on the seabed,” Van Dermark said. “For example, rocks give a stronger return than sand.”
Industry can play a role to help with issues identified by NGA and Navy as important to future operations, he said. “Working with industry partners, Fugro EarthData has developed a way to interpret multispectral and hyper-spectral data collected by satellite and airborne sensors. It is possible to determine water clarity based on the presence of dissolved organic carbon, suspended sediments and chlorophyll in the water.”
The littoral areas of the world will continue to be of growing importance to the United States and its partners for security reasons, driving the need for accurate and upto- date GEOINT products along the coastal zone. A combination of adequate funds, digital standards, technology and hardware enhancements, as well as continued interaction between government, industry and academia, will be needed to ensure successful development of useful and timely littoral planning charts necessary to operate in these areas. ♦
