Los Angeles Times: 21 May 2009 - A new computer system and camera installed in government aircraft can study a wide stretch of ocean, zoom in on a single vessel, and track courses for easy interception by the Coast Guard.
Off The Florida Coast — They can spot the smile on a suspected smuggler's face from 10,000 feet in the air, record full-color video of his run for shore and simultaneously track 5,000 ships spread over hundreds of miles of ocean.
Flying above the Atlantic about halfway between Florida and the Bahamas, the latest addition to the government's anti-smuggling arsenal can track the trajectory of a boat leaving Cuba and compare it -- in seconds -- to every filed course plan for vessels on the water. And if the boat seems suspicious, the computer will calculate course, speed and relative positions to tell the nearest Coast Guard vessel the bearings to follow to intercept it.
"With the old system, you were looking through a straw for a quarter on a card table," said Michael Ringgold, an air interdiction agent who worked with the engineers to develop the new system. "Now you're looking with your eyes open at the whole room."
Only two airplanes -- both belonging to the United States -- carry this combination of smuggler-spotting equipment and computer software. One belongs to the Miami office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The new computer can identify and filter out hundreds of legitimate cargo ships or boats within minutes. With the old system, it could take up to 10 minutes for a radar operator to manually identify a single vessel. The computer also matches the outline of any unidentified craft against its database to determine what type of vessel it is -- a freighter, sailboat or yacht, for instance. The time saved allows operators to concentrate on other suspicious targets.
"In a sense, you have an air-traffic control system for the ocean," said Blake Page, a Dallas-based radar expert.
The system proved itself while it was still in development last May, flying test missions aboard a Customs twin-engine turboprop Bombardier Dash 8 while engineers worked out kinks in the computer code.
Ringgold used the system's powerful camera to spot and record a boat near Cay Sal, Bahamas, with a suspicious tarp covering the back. With three clicks of a mouse, he was able to give the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Chandeleur the coordinates to intercept the boat, which carried 20 Cubans. On April 14, a Key West federal jury convicted Ricardo Espildora on 22 counts of human smuggling charges in the case.
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