[Photo: Sgt. Christian Gay, assistant air boss for Task Force Vigilant Horizon, uses the MSWIN radio system to relay coordinates from a C-23 Sherpa plane to task force headquarters and vessels conducting oil skimming operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Courtesy of the Mississippi National Guard.]

As BP attempts to cap the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Coast Guard and Mississippi National Guard have begun using interoperable radios to improve communication and coordination between planes looking for oil patches and containment vessels in the water.

On July 8, deployment of the radios began allowing air patrols to report oil sightings directly to the boats in the water helping to prioritize which patches are cleaned up first, according to Col. Lee Smithson, leader of the Mississippi National Guard’s response to the spill as commander of Task Force Vigilant Horizon.

“Before what was happening was aircraft were flying, and at the end of the day turning in their reports,” he said. “Then that was consolidated and given to the boats to go look at the following day.”

Distribution of more than 200 radios began in early July. The Mississippi Wireless Communication Commission distributed 700 and 800 MHz radios capable of operating over the Mississippi Wireless Integrated Network (MSWIN) to the state’s National Guard and U.S. Coast Guard personnel involved in cleanup operations. The cleanup began following the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. 

The radios are incorporated into standard communications packages aboard three UH-72 Lakota helicopters deployed in the region, according to Smithson.

Each boat is equipped with a marine radio limited to line-of-sight transmission. When the National Guard troops aboard the boats get reports from the planes over the MSWIN radios, they can direct their boats to the oil’s location over the marine channel. The MSWIN radios have a 100-mile range, allowing responders to communicate along the Mississippi coast into Louisiana and Alabama.

“We were able to talk about 10 miles or so from our barrier islands before this incident took place,” said Mike Womack, director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. “But because of the incident, we were able to install a tower out in the Gulf of Mexico, so we can talk literally from the Mississippi coastline all the way to the spill site a hundred miles away.”

Now the aircraft are in real-time contact with the groups of boats in the water directing them to the highest-priority patches of oil. “We cleaned up more oil yesterday [July 8] with our Vessels of Opportunity in one day than we had previously combined,” he said, estimating that Vessels of Opportunity, a program that pays local boat operators to assist with response activities, cleaned up 600 pounds of oily water mix. “The skimmers got a whole lot more than that.”
 
Work on the MSWIN began after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and exposed the lack of interoperability in the region. “You had police who couldn’t talk to fire, who couldn’t talk to emergency medical,” Womack said. “You would literally have to wave somebody down if they were from a different city or a different discipline … and talk to them that way because there was no interoperability.”

The network is currently operational in the southern third of Mississippi and is expected to be operational statewide in December 2011. The MSWIN was established with $157 million in federal funds and $57 million in state bond funds, according to a National Guard press release.