SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – The U.S. Coast Guard has announced the official acceptance of the Rescue 21 Search and Rescue communications system, now serving Sector Detroit. A ceremony and demonstration will be held Friday, Sept. 30, 2011. For Detroit, the Rescue 21 search and rescue system delivers life-saving communications and position/location technologies along the coast of eastern Michigan and northwestern Ohio. Rescue 21 helps the Coast Guard to perform the functional tasks of command, control and communications along United States inland and coastal zones including the Great Lakes, Hawaii, Guam and Puerto Rico. The integrated system of command centers, towers and advanced direction-finding technology detects and locates distress calls and can detect hoax calls, avoiding unnecessary and expensive tasking of rescue personnel and resources.

Rescue 21 by the numbers:

• 27 operational Coast Guard sectors.
• 198 towers are in use throughout the system.
• 31,991 search and rescue cases have used Rescue 21 as of Sept. 26, 2011.
• Over 38,056 miles of coastline are monitored by Rescue 21.

General Dynamics C4 Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics (NYSE:GD), is the prime contractor for Rescue 21.

For the full text of the Coast Guard announcement, please visit www.d9.uscgnews.com/go/doc/443/1204591/.