performing its search and rescue and law enforcement missions, the USCG 

 makes use of information from visual, radio, and radar sensors installed 

 in cutters and in fixed and rotary wing aircraft. Additional informa- 

 tion is obtained from the Automated Merchant Vessel Reporting (AMVER) 

 system and various surveillance systems operated by DoD, supplemented 

 by information about vessel identities and intended movements compiled 

 by state and federal agencies. When it is properly correlated and 

 analyzed, the information from all of these sources can be combined to 

 provide an ocean surveillance "Picture" that is much more complete and 

 of greater validity than could be provided by any one or a few sensor 

 systems. The problem of 200-nmi fishing zone enforcement will also re- 

 quire the acquisition, correlation, and analysis of multisensor data. 



The necessity to accept and correlate a large amount of sensory 

 data from a wide variety of sources, in near real time, has led the 

 military to develop specialized systems for the purpose that, generally, 

 can be described as multisource correlation facilities. It seems likely 

 that the USCG will need to develop similar capabilities to cope with 

 the sensory data that will be required to enforce the 200-nmi fishing 

 zone. Such a facility can also support other USCG missions, such as 

 search and rescue, ocean pollution control, and so forth. Thus, a multi- 

 source correlation facility, while not strictly a remote sensing technique, 

 will be an important means of obtaining maximum capability from available 

 remote sensing resources. Accordingly, a description and general dis- 

 cussion of the potential of this area of technology is provided in Sec- 

 tion V. 



31 



