U.S. Navy officials ask SPAWAR engineers to design anti-terrorism device

After the USS Cole was attacked two years ago while docked in Yemen, U.S. Navy officials asked engineers at Charleston’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center-SPAWAR to design a device that could protect our harbored ships.

SPAWAR’s engineers responded by modifying its unmanned, remote-controlled watercraft called the RWC, originally designed to snare waterborne drug smugglers. The 10-foot-long vessel, which can travel 50 mph, is a kind of Jet Ski equipped with sensors, sirens, video cameras, night-vision equipment, two-way communications and lights. Also, it’s armed with non-lethal weapons, such as ropes that are launched from its stern and designed to snag and stop the propellers of suspicious, unidentified small boats motoring in our ports.

Using a joystick, the operator controls the RWC from as far away as the operator can see. If the RWC senses something unusual in its environment-a terrorist-piloted boat, for instance-the device alerts the operator immediately. Once the intruding boat is stopped, the RWC’s 360-degree cameras transmit visuals back to the operator, enabling port security personnel to see what they’re facing.

“You don’t want to send people into unknown, potentially dangerous areas, and that’s what makes the RWC so valuable,” explains Will Chiaiese, a senior design engineer in SPAWAR’s Surveillance and Systems Engineering Department. “The device lets our people know what they’re going into, and it’s even equipped with biochemical and radiological sensors to warn us of gases in the area.”

Chiaiese, who began work on the RWC three years ago with help from the Office of Naval Research, says the RWC’s command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities-what SPAWAR calls C4ISR-can detect diversionary tactics terrorists might use.

Earlier this year at the Port of Charleston the RWC was shown to Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, who in February presided over a port security hearing at the Charleston Maritime Center in an attempt to gather security information for the proposed Port and Maritime Security Act, a federally funded measure to strengthen America’s ports against terrorists and drug smugglers. Hollings called U.S. seaports a collective “gaping hole in the nation’s security” but said Charleston’s port was well ahead of the others, thanks in part to the RWC.

Shortly after the hearing, Hollings and U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Gary Merrick observed the RWC in action during a demonstration near the carrier Yorktown at Patriots Point. According to Merrick, it was “the first exercise of its type in the United States.”

Chiaiese says he’s working with the University of California at Berkeley to enable the RWC to operate on its own.

“Everything is ‘plug and play,'” Chiaiese points out, using computer terminology to illustrate that the RWC requires different equipment installations to perform different tasks, just like a computer requires different software installations for different functions. “There are lots of things we can do to the RWC.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is interested in using the RWC to monitor ecological changes and detect migration patterns of birds and marsh animals. In addition, Chiaiese says the RWC can be equipped to rescue boats.

“The RWC has multiple capabilities, and we’ll continue to find new uses for it,” says Chiaiese.