Since September 11, 2001, the federal government has emphasized the need for a coordinated response to maritime threats. In December 2004, the White House issued National Security Presidential Directive 41 (NSPD- 41)/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 13 (HSPD-13), Maritime Security Policy, defining maritime domain awareness as the effective understanding of anything associated with the global maritime domain that could impact the security, safety, economy, or environment of the United States. NSPD-41/HSPD-13 also directed the Secretaries of Defense and of Homeland Security to jointly lead an interagency effort to prepare a National Strategy for Maritime Security to align all federal government maritime security programs and initiatives into a comprehensive and cohesive national effort involving appropriate federal, state, local, and private sector entities. Interagency coordination for maritime domain awareness is primarily exercised within the Maritime Security Interagency Policy Committee, which reports to the National Security Council Deputies Committee. A Maritime Domain Awareness Stakeholders Board consists of representatives from all departments and the intelligence community advises the Maritime Security Interagency Policy Committee through its Executive Steering Committee. DOD, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Transportation have all appointed executive agents for maritime domain awareness who, together with a representative of the intelligence community, constitute the Maritime Domain Awareness Stakeholder Board Executive Steering Committee. DOD Directive 2005.02E establishes policy and roles and responsibilities for maritime domain awareness within DOD. This directive designated the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy as Office of the Secretary of Defense Principal Staff Assistant to oversee the activities of the DOD Executive Agent for Maritime Domain Awareness and designated the Secretary of the Navy as the DOD Executive Agent for Maritime Domain Awareness. In addition, the directive establishes several management functions that the Executive Agent is required to conduct for maritime domain awareness, including: Overseeing the execution of maritime domain awareness initiatives within DOD and coordinating maritime domain awareness policy with the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy); Developing and distributing goals, objectives, and desired effects for maritime domain awareness, in coordination with the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) and the Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence); Identifying and updating maritime domain awareness requirements and resources for the effective performance of DOD missions; and Recommending DOD-wide maritime domain awareness planning and programming guidance to the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) and the Director of Programming, Analysis, and Evaluation (now the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation). The Secretary of the Navy issued an instruction in January 2009 that assigned the Chief of Naval Operations with responsibility for achieving maritime domain awareness within the Navy. This responsibility includes aligning Navy guidance with DOD policy guidance and coordinating with the Joint Staff to ensure that combatant commands have the necessary Navy resources to support their respective maritime domain awareness requirements. In May 2009, the DOD Executive Agent for Maritime Domain Awareness requested that the Joint Staff solicit maritime domain awareness annual plans from the military services, combatant commands, and defense intelligence components, as required by DOD Directive 2005.02E. In December 2009, the DOD Executive Agent completed an assessment of DOD components’ annual maritime domain awareness plans. The effort was intended to provide the Executive Agent with a “horizontal look” at maritime domain awareness concerns across DOD. The Executive Agent used information from the plans to: (1) gather program and project priorities, (2) formulate and update overarching DOD maritime domain awareness goals and objectives, (3) craft programming and planning recommendations, and (4) synchronize and align combatant command and component efforts and resources. The DOD Executive Agent is currently conducting an assessment of 2010 component plans. DOD relies on organizations both within and outside of the department to achieve maritime domain awareness. The Office of Naval Intelligence is a core element of Global Maritime Intelligence Integration, whose goal is complete maritime domain awareness and their primary mission is to produce meaningful maritime intelligence. The Office of Naval Intelligence produces a Common Operating Picture and Common Intelligence Picture, both of which are compiled from multiple sources of intelligence. The Office of Naval Intelligence, together with the Coast Guard’s Intelligence Coordination Center, compiles and provides a list of vessels of interest to DOD and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) components. In addition, the National Maritime Intelligence Center, created by the Director of National Intelligence, serves as the integration point for maritime information and intelligence collection and analysis in support of national policy and decision makers, maritime domain awareness objectives, and interagency operations at all levels. DOD, combatant commands, and joint task forces leverage numerous capabilities to enhance maritime domain awareness, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance collection platforms; intelligence fusion and analysis; and information sharing and dissemination. These capabilities assist DOD in responding to the range of maritime challenges, some of which are identified in figure 1. A range of platforms, such as sensors on naval vessels and aircraft, provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance collection capabilities. Once maritime domain awareness related data is collected, fusion and analysis capabilities assist DOD combatant commands and joint task forces to combine data from a variety of sources to provide information that may include location, course, destination, cargo, crew, and passengers of a given vessel. In addition, DOD uses a number of capabilities to promote the sharing and dissemination of maritime domain awareness information. For example, the Maritime Safety and Security Information System uses an existing, worldwide vessel safety system—the Automatic Information System—to produce an unclassified, Internet- based, password-protected ship tracking system. Currently, more than 50 nations participate in the Maritime Safety and Security Information System. In addition, DOD is working with other international partners to set up more advanced networks to share information. To validate joint warfighting requirements, including those associated with maritime domain awareness, DOD uses its Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System. The primary objective of the system is to ensure the capabilities required by the joint warfighter are identified with their associated operational performance criteria in order to successfully execute assigned missions. The Joint Requirements Oversight Council oversees this system and Functional Capabilities Boards, headed by a general, admiral, or government civilian equivalent, support the council by evaluating capability needs, recommending enhancements, examining joint priorities, and minimizing duplication of effort across the department. There are eight Functional Capabilities Boards: Battlespace Awareness, Building Partnerships, Command and Control, Force Application, Force Support, Logistics, Net-Centric, and Protection. DOD has articulated a broad strategy for maritime domain awareness and identified numerous maritime capability gaps through various documents. However, DOD does not have a departmentwide strategy that adequately defines roles and responsibilities for addressing gaps, aligns objectives with national strategy, and includes measures to guide the implementation of maritime domain awareness efforts, measure progress, and assess and manage risk associated with capability gaps. We previously reported that it is standard practice to have a strategy that lays out goals and objectives, identifies actions for addressing those objectives, allocates resources, identifies roles and responsibilities, and measures performance against objectives. The federal government, DOD, and its components have developed a number of documents that incorporate some of these key elements of an overall strategy for maritime domain awareness. Examples include the following: The National Strategy for Maritime Security broadly identifies threats to maritime security and strategic objectives and actions needed to achieve maritime security. The National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness is intended to guide the execution of the security plans tasked in NSPD- 41/HSPD-13. It supports the National Strategy for Maritime Security by outlining broad goals, objectives, threats, and priorities in order to coordinate maritime domain awareness efforts at the federal level. U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Pacific Command worked with the Joint Staff to develop DOD’s Maritime Domain Awareness Joint Integrating Concept to, among other things, provide a common vision for the future of maritime domain awareness related operations within DOD, identify maritime domain awareness capabilities and tasks and conditions for each capability, and inform future capability analyses. The DOD’s Executive Agent for Maritime Domain Awareness completed an annual assessment of maritime domain awareness plans prepared by several DOD commands, military services, and defense intelligence components. The assessment organized the analyzed information from the plans into three critical areas where it determined that DOD must focus and expand its efforts: increased information sharing, enhanced situational awareness, and enhanced data on vessels, cargo, and people. We found that these documents and others DOD and the Navy have developed demonstrate a considerable amount of effort toward defining and organizing DOD’s maritime domain awareness efforts, but we determined that they do not have several key elements that a strategy should contain. DOD’s Maritime Domain Awareness Joint Integrating Concept and the Assessment of U.S. Defense Components Annual Maritime Domain Awareness Plans are two of the key documents used to guide current maritime domain awareness efforts and execute the national strategies. Table 1 summarizes the desirable characteristics of a strategy and compares the elements contained in DOD’s Maritime Domain Awareness Joint Integrating Concept and the DOD Executive Agent’s Assessment of the U.S. Defense Components Annual Maritime Domain Awareness Plans 2009. DOD and its components have completed or are developing additional efforts that may assist the department in organizing its maritime domain awareness efforts. The Department of the Navy developed a strategy for maritime domain awareness in response to a congressional committee report requirement, and several draft maritime domain awareness roadmaps to guide the Navy’s implementation of maritime domain awareness. Additionally, as of November 2010, the Chief of Naval Operation’s Information Dominance Office was developing a Navy Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Roadmap that outlines the Navy’s vision for capabilities needed to fulfill its missions and priorities, including maritime domain awareness. As of November 2010, U.S. Pacific Command was in the process of drafting a maritime domain awareness concept of operations.