Coast Guard research dollars flow toward new missions.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

The Coast Guard's research and development center at Groton, Conn., has a small budget, but manages to keep about 100 projects in the pipeline.

The lab supports traditional missions such as search and rescue, aquatic nuisance species and hazardous material response, but the post-9/11 world means more emphasis on maritime domain awareness and security. Capt. Thomas Jones, the center's commanding officer, told National Defense.

The Bush administration requested only $13 million for the center in fiscal year 2007. Its home state Democratic senators, Joseph Lieberman and Chris Dodd, have boosted that number to $17 million in the Senate version of the Department of Homeland Security budget bill. However, the lab works closely with its counterparts in the military, such as the Office of Naval Research and joint non-lethal weapons directorate, and receives reimbursement for its services, Jones said.

One objective for the lab is the refinement of non-lethal weapon technologies, or what the Coast Guard calls "compelling compliance."

The service requires the means to force every type of vessel, from a speedboat to a container ship, to "stop when we want them to stop ... so we can execute boardings," Jones said.

There are several projects focusing on wide area coastal surveillance, which is part of a larger Department of Homeland Security mission to boost maritime domain awareness. Part of that, is the application of unmanned aerial vehicles, Jones said.

"There are a lot of UAVs out there, but there's much more to analyzing a UAV other than whether it flies and lands and how fast it...