A concept of operations for an unclassified common operational picture in support of maritime domain awareness

Abstract

The maritime domain is an area of significant strategic concern to the United States and its allies. When the need arises, U.S. forces are able to detect and monitor vessels of interest (VOIs) in support of maritime interests throughout the world. However, current maritime domain awareness (MDA) processes lack the ability to provide actionable information in a timely and usable manner. Advances in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) technology—particularly unclassified data sources, analytical processes and tools—available in the commercial sector could be leveraged to make MDA data more accessible and productive. The purpose of this thesis is to establish a concept of operations (CONOPS) that will provide an unclassified maritime common operational picture (COP) with the capability to produce near-real-time shareable information from which all authorized interested parties can benefit. The research focuses on utilizing available unclassified commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) capabilities to create a scalable and extensible platform that provides intelligence analysts and decision makers the ability to gain additional situational awareness and gather actionable information that can be quickly and easily shared with other services and international partners. Additionally, in an effort to prove the proposed CONOPS will work, the process was attempted utilizing some of these technologies.