National Search and Rescue Plan

Last updated April 27, 2019

The National Search and Rescue Plan or National SAR Plan is a policy document of the US government that establishes the responsibilities for search and rescue in the domestic United States, as well as areas where the US has international commitments.^[1]

The Federal Government of the United States is the national government of the United States, a federal republic in North America, composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and several island possessions. The federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U.S. Constitution in the Congress, the President, and the federal courts, respectively. The powers and duties of these branches are further defined by acts of congress, including the creation of executive departments and courts inferior to the Supreme Court.

The Plan makes the US Coast Guard responsible for maritime search and rescue, and while inland areas are overseen by the Air Force. Both have Rescue Coordination Centers to coordinate this effort, and also cooperatively operate Joint Rescue Coordination Centers where appropriate. These centers receive Cospas-Sarsat distress alerts sent by the United States Mission Control Center in Suitland, Maryland and are responsible for coordinating the rescue response to the distress. Each service takes a slightly different approach to search and rescue operations.

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the coastal defense and maritime law enforcement branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's seven uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the U.S. military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency mission as part of its mission set. It operates under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during peacetime, and can be transferred to the U.S. Department of the Navy by the U.S. President at any time, or by the U.S. Congress during times of war. This has happened twice: in 1917, during World War I, and in 1941, during World War II.

The United States Air Force (USAF) is the aerial and space warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the five branches of the United States Armed Forces, and one of the seven American uniformed services. Initially formed as a part of the United States Army on 1 August 1907, the USAF was established as a separate branch of the U.S. Armed Forces on 18 September 1947 with the passing of the National Security Act of 1947. It is the youngest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, and the fourth in order of precedence. The USAF is the largest and most technologically advanced air force in the world. The Air Force articulates its core missions as air and space superiority, global integrated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, rapid global mobility, global strike, and command and control.

A rescue co-ordination centre (RCC) is a primary search and rescue facility in a country that is staffed by supervisory personnel and equipped for co-ordinating and controlling search and rescue operations.

Inland SAR

The Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, coordinates all inland search and rescue activities in the continental U.S., but does not directly prosecute SAR cases. In most situations, the actual operation is carried out by the Civil Air Patrol, state police or local rescue services.

Tyndall Air Force Base is a United States Air Force Base located 12 miles (19 km) east of Panama City, Florida. The base was named in honor of World War I pilot 1st Lt. Frank Benjamin Tyndall. The base operating unit and host wing is the 325th Fighter Wing of the Air Combat Command (ACC). The base is delineated as a census-designated place and had a resident population of 2,994 at the 2010 census.

Florida is the southernmost contiguous state in the United States. The state is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida. Florida is the 22nd-most extensive, the 3rd-most populous, and the 8th-most densely populated of the U.S. states. Jacksonville is the most populous municipality in the state and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. The Miami metropolitan area is Florida's most populous urban area. Tallahassee is the state's capital.

Civil Air Patrol Civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force

The Civil Air Patrol (CAP) is a congressionally chartered, federally supported non-profit corporation that serves as the official civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force (USAF). CAP is a volunteer organization with an aviation-minded membership that includes people from all backgrounds, lifestyles, and occupations. It performs three congressionally assigned key missions: emergency services, which includes search and rescue and disaster relief operations; aerospace education for youth and the general public; and cadet programs for teenage youth. In addition, CAP has recently been tasked with homeland security and courier service missions. CAP also performs non-auxiliary missions for various governmental and private agencies, such as local law enforcement and the American Red Cross. The program is established as an organization by Title 10 of the United States Code and its purposes defined by Title 36.

Maritime SAR

The US Coast Guard coordinates and conducts maritime SAR missions. The Coast Guard uses the Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System to most accurately model leeway divergence for many search and rescue objects as well as optimize planned search areas.^[2]

Leeway is the amount of drift motion to leeward of an object floating in the water caused by the component of the wind vector that is perpendicular to the object’s forward motion. The National Search and Rescue Supplement to the International Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue Manual defines leeway as "the movement of a search object through water caused by winds blowing against exposed surfaces". However, the resultant total motion of an object is made up of the leeway drift and the movement of the upper layer of the ocean caused by the surface currents, tidal currents and ocean currents. Objects with a greater exposure to each element will experience more leeway drift and overall movement through the water than ones with less exposure.

Coast Guard RCCs are set up to cover specific geographic areas and react to command and coordination centers. The geographic areas of responsibility are divided among nine Coast Guard District commands and two Rescue Sub-Centers (RSC).

USCG RCCs

District 1 - Boston, Massachusetts
Atlantic Area/District 5 - Portsmouth, Virginia (RCC Norfolk)
District 7 - Miami, Florida
District 8 - New Orleans, Louisiana
District 2 - Cleveland, Ohio
Pacific Area/District 11- Alameda, California
District 13- Seattle, Washington
District 14- Honolulu, Hawaii
District 17- Juneau, Alaska
Puerto Rico RSC - San Juan, Puerto Rico
Marianas RSC - Guam

Portsmouth is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 95,535. It is part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area.

Alameda is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is located on Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island, and is adjacent to and south of Oakland and east of San Francisco across the San Francisco Bay. Bay Farm Island, a portion of which is also known as "Harbor Bay Isle", is not actually an island, and is part of the mainland adjacent to the Oakland International Airport. The city's estimated 2017 population was 79,928. Alameda is a charter city, rather than a general law city, allowing the city to provide for any form of government. Alameda became a charter city and adopted a council–manager government in 1916, which it retains to the present.

The City and Borough of Juneau, commonly known as Juneau, is the capital city of Alaska. It is a unified municipality on Gastineau Channel in the Alaskan panhandle, and it is the second largest city in the United States by area. Juneau has been the capital of Alaska since 1906, when the government of what was the District of Alaska was moved from Sitka as dictated by the U.S. Congress in 1900. The municipality unified on July 1, 1970, when the city of Juneau merged with the city of Douglas and the surrounding Greater Juneau Borough to form the current municipality, which is larger by area than both Rhode Island and Delaware.

Other

The U.S. Department of Defense Southern Command Search and Rescue Center in Key West, Florida helps to coordinate Cospas-Sarsat activity in Central and South America.

The Department of Defense is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government concerned directly with national security and the United States Armed Forces. The department is the largest employer in the world, with nearly 1.3 million active duty servicemen and women as of 2016. Adding to its employees are over 826,000 National Guardsmen and Reservists from the four services, and over 732,000 civilians bringing the total to over 2.8 million employees. Headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., the DoD's stated mission is to provide "the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security".

The United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), located in Doral, Florida in Greater Miami, is one of ten Unified Combatant Commands (CCMDs) in the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for providing contingency planning, operations, and security cooperation for Central and South America, the Caribbean, their territorial waters, and for the force protection of U.S. military resources at these locations. USSOUTHCOM is also responsible for ensuring the defense of the Panama Canal and the canal area. As explained below, USSOUTHCOM has been under scrutiny due to several human rights and rule of law controversies in which it has been embroiled for nearly a decade.

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An emergency position-indicating radiobeacon station is a distress radiobeacon, a tracking transmitter that is triggered during an accident. These are detected by satellites. The system is monitored by an international consortium of rescue services, COSPAS-SARSAT. The basic purpose of this system is to help rescuers find survivors within the so-called "golden day" during which the majority of survivors can usually be saved.

A coast guard or coastguard, is a maritime security organization of a particular country. The term implies widely different responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with customs and security duties to being a volunteer organization tasked with search and rescue functions and lacking any law enforcement powers. However, a typical coast guard's functions are distinct from typical functions of both the navy and a transportation police.

Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search is conducted over. These include mountain rescue; ground search and rescue, including the use of search and rescue dogs; urban search and rescue in cities; combat search and rescue on the battlefield and air-sea rescue over water.

Canada Command was one of the four operational commands of the Canadian Forces from 2006 to 2012, responsible for routine domestic and continental operations, such as search and rescue, sovereignty patrol, national security coordination and contingency planning. As an operational formation, Canada Command used resources generated from the three environmental commands of the Canadian Forces: the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force. The command was merged into the Canadian Joint Operations Command in October 2012.

As the United States' inland search and rescue (SAR) coordinator, the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC) serves as the single agency responsible for coordinating on-land federal SAR activities in the United States, including Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands.

The National Search and Rescue Program (NSP) is the name given by the Government of Canada to the collective search and rescue (SAR) activities in Canada. Until 2015, the NSP was administered by the National Search and Rescue Secretariat (NSS).

The International Cospas-Sarsat Programme is a satellite-aided search and rescue initiative. It is organized as a treaty-based, nonprofit, intergovernmental, humanitarian cooperative of 45 nations and agencies. It is dedicated to detecting and locating radio beacons activated by persons, aircraft or vessels in distress, and forwarding this alert information to authorities that can take action for rescue.

A Sector is a shore-based operational unit of the United States Coast Guard. Each Sector is responsible for the execution of all Coast Guard missions within its Area of Responsibility (AOR), with operational support from Coast Guard Cutters and Air Stations. Subordinate commands within a Sector typically include Stations and Aids-to-Navigation (ATON) Teams. Some Sector commands also have subordinate units such as Sector Field Offices and Marine Safety Units that are responsible for mission execution in parts of the Sector's AOR. There are 37 sectors within the Coast Guard.

The National Search and Rescue Secretariat (NSS) was an independent portfolio organization within the Government of Canada's Department of National Defence, established in 1986 as one of the recommendations resulting from the Royal Commission of Enquiry into the Ocean Ranger disaster.

In the field of Search and Rescue, Mission Control Centres (MCCs) are a type of clearinghouse responsible for receiving and distributing distress signal alerts from emergency position-indicating radiobeacon stations. MCCs are a core component of the international satellite system for Search and Rescue - Cospas-Sarsat.

The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Victoria is a rescue coordination centre operated by the 1 Canadian Air Division and manned by personnel of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG).

An international distress frequency is a radio frequency that is designated for emergency communication by international agreement.

The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre of Northern Norway or JRCC NN is a rescue coordination center located in Bodø which is responsible for coordinating major search and rescue (SAR) operations in Norway north of the 65th parallel north. Its area of operation includes Svalbard, but excludes Jan Mayen. Established in 1970, it is a government agency subordinate to the Ministry of Justice and Public Security and led by the Chief of Police of Salten Police District. The agency has twenty-three employees and has at least two rescue controllers at work at any time.

The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre of Southern Norway or JRCC SN is a rescue coordination center located in Sola which is responsible for coordinating major search and rescue (SAR) operations in Norway south of the 65th parallel north. Established in 1970, it is a government agency subordinate to the Ministry of Justice and Public Security and led by the Chief of Police of Rogaland Police District. The agency has twenty-three employees and has at least two rescue controllers at work at any time.

The Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) was a constellation of polar orbiting weather satellites funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) with the intent of improving the accuracy and detail of weather analysis and forecasting. The Spacecraft were provided by NASA and the European Space Agency, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center oversaw the manufacture, integration and test of the NASA-provided TIROS satellites. The first polar-orbiting weather satellite launched as part of the POES constellation was the Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS), which was launched on April 1, 1960. The final spacecraft, NOAA-19, was launched in February 2009. The ESA-provided MetOp satellite operated by EUMETSAT utilize POES-heritage instruments for the purpose of data continuity. The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), which was launched on November 18, 2017, is the successor to the POES Program.

The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Halifax is a rescue coordination centre operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG).

The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Trenton is a rescue coordination centre operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG).

The Cyprus Joint Rescue Coordination Center or JRCC Larnaca is an independent agency of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Cyprus and its primary mission is to organize the Cyprus Republic Search and Rescue (SAR) system, to co-ordinate, to control and direct SAR operations in the region that the Cyprus JRCC is responsible for, so that people, whose lives are at risk as a result of aviation or maritime accidents, can be located and rescued in the least amount of time.

The 601 Air Operations Center (AOC) plans, directs, and assesses air operations for the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command, and the United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM). The AOC provides aerospace warning and control for NORAD Defensive Counter Air (DCA) activities. As well as it directs Air Force air capabilities in support of NORTHCOM homeland security and civil support missions. The 601 AOC directs all air sovereignty activities for the continental United States.

References

↑ National Search and Rescue Plan of the United States (Adobe PDF), United States Coast Guard Office of Search and Rescue, Homeland Security Digital Library, 2007
↑ Rescue Coordination Centers (RCCs), NOAA

External links

NOAA Rescue Coordination Center Information Page

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[1] National Search and Rescue Plan of the United States (Adobe PDF), United States Coast Guard Office of Search and Rescue, Homeland Security Digital Library, 2007

[2] Rescue Coordination Centers (RCCs), NOAA