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U.S. Coast Guard

Commissioning the newest Coast Guard flagship

ALAMEDA, Calif--The U.S. Coast Guard entered one of its newest and most technologically advanced vessels into action during a ceremony here Friday, with the commissioning of the 418-foot National Security Cutter Waesche, a Legend-class vessel replacing antiquated ships from the 1960s.

Equipped with the state-of-the-art command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaisance (C4ISR) equipment, the abilities of the Waesche are part of an interoperability objective that will give the Coast Guard better collaborative interagency capabilities, improving operational readiness and enabling better fulfillment of new multimission roles more effectively.

See the full gallery of images from inside the Waesche here. … Read more

Gulf Coast oil spill responders employ latest tech

With hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil threatening some of America's richest wetlands and fisheries, crews grappling with the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico have at their disposal new technologies never before available in such a disaster.

To be sure, oil spill response is a largely low-tech business that hasn't changed that much over the years. But as the aftermath of the explosion and subsequent sinking of the semi-submersible offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon looks increasingly like it may result in the country's worst environmental catastrophe in decades, there are some ways that technology … Read more

High tech doesn't really help with oil spills

Just under two weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk here at CNET when I saw a bulletin online that a ship had hit the Bay Bridge. The bulletin was very short and to the point, and really just said that there was no structural damage to the bridge. We laughed about it for a few minutes and moved on.

I didn't think more about it until the next morning when I logged onto SFGate. There, I read that, in fact, the damage that had been done by the so-called Cosco Busan accident had been to the extremely … Read more