Portsmouth’s Raytheon unveils port security system

<b>Mary Petryszyn,</b> Vice President at Joint Battlespace Integration at Raytheon, explains the port security system last week.
Mary Petryszyn, Vice President at Joint Battlespace Integration at Raytheon, explains the port security system last week.

Surveillance, reconnaissance is the focus of Project Athena

It looked like Sept. 11 with ships.

Four Syrian vessels were all headed to different parts of the United States with similar estimated docking times. Their arrival was unanticipated and they were all suspected of wanting to carry out some type of attack on America.

However, unlike the 9/11 terrorist attacks, officials in the threat simulation had the capabilities to put out alerts before it was too late.

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The scenario was part of a demonstration last week of the Project Athena Maritime Domain Awareness System, a surveillance and reconnaissance system developed by defense system supplier Raytheon to, among other things, keep the nation’s ports safer after Sept. 11.

Developed at the company’s Naval Integration Center facility in Portsmouth for less than $10 million, the system integrates various sensors and data sources, giving it the capability to monitor ports and shorelines on an international basis.

Athena’s capabilities were displayed at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Portsmouth last week.
Scott Spence, director of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems’ Maritime Domain Awareness Programs, said that Project Athena has the capability to detect irregular behavior from a ship. Once that ship has been singled out, the program can go through the ownership history of the vessel, determine what type of engine it uses and look at its extended traffic history.

All of this information helps the system user identify whether or not the vessel is a threat.
“If we see this ship all of a sudden show up in Providence, we’d probably want to spend a little more time … to assure it’s not a threat,” Spence said.

In the threat simulation used last week, Spence showed that once a specific ship has been singled out as a potential threat, warnings can be sent out along the system. When the ship in the simulation was shown to be owned by Syria, Spence searched other vessels heading into American ports and found three more owned by the country.

A warning was sent out to the other ports so preparations could be taken before the potential threat could get close.

Spence said the program has successfully proven itself in the field, demonstrating its capabilities for border security in western New York. During a 45-day demonstration in the Lake Ontario region near Buffalo, Project Athena successfully proved that it could monitor drug trafficking across the Canadian border.

In the year prior to the demonstration, there had been no reports of activity, Spence said. But during the time that Project Athena was being tested in the region, 850 potential incidents were detected.

“We increased the (awareness) in the area infinitely when we were there,” Spence said.

At the event, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who worked to get the project its initial contract of $6 million from the U.S. Department of Defense, recalled stories he had heard about the United States invasion of Grenada.

During the brief conflict, Kennedy said, a common story was soldiers having to communicate with each other by pay phone.

“Clearly, all of that is changing and Raytheon is a big part of that change,” he said. “Knowledge is power, info is power – but it’s only that if you have all of that.”

Awarded a $1.1 million contract modification from the Department of Defense’s Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office last month to demonstrate the project’s capability, Athena will complete “Spiral 3” development in upcoming months. The development includes the integration of other sensors and information sources, according to a Raytheon news release, and will refine the program’s anomaly detection.

Headquartered in Waltham, Mass., Raytheon does extensive work in defense and government electronics, space, information technology and business and special mission aircraft. Its 2004 sales were $20.2 billion.

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