Officials from the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Defense and other government agencies were at the U.S. Coast Guard base last week to take a look at new laser technology being used by the Coast Guard.

The purpose of the visit was to demonstrate how the technology works, and how the system could be implemented by the U.S. Navy, U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, said Terry Boyce, investigative analyst for the Coast Guard's Aircraft Repair and Supply Center.

"This has brought the Coast Guard into a closer working relationship with other military services and NASA," Boyce said.

The officials visited ARSC to see demonstrations of the Coast Guard's two new lasers, which are being used to apply markings to flight-critical aircraft parts. Called the Unique Identification 2-D Barcoding Matrix, the lasers permanently mark aircraft parts so they can be easily tracked.

The Coast Guard initially became interested in the new inventory control system as a means of identifying counterfeit aircraft parts, which pose a significant safety risk.

ARSC, the investigative section is responsible for the preventing and detecting unapproved aircraft parts. That's because all aircraft parts must conform to approved production standards set by the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We were trying to get a handle on the unapproved parts problem," Boyce said. "This is one way in law enforcement that we can get one step ahead of the bad guys."

The investigative section has a 100 percent conviction rate on all suspected unapproved parts cases in federal court. The office also conducts in-house investigations of criminal activity at ARSC.

The barcode contains information about the parts manufacturer, as well as flight and maintenance history. Officials say the technology can improve inventory, logistics management, parts tracking and flight and aviation maintenance.

Representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense were at ARSC Tuesday to observe the laser labeling process.

"We're looking at the Coast Guard as what we call a pathfinder," said Greg Kilchenstein, policy analyst at the OSD. "We're working very hard to get the policies, procedures and funding in place for marking."

Portable data readers allows Coast Guard technicians to scan the barcode without removing the part from the aircraft. Because the labels are applied with a laser, they cannot be altered.

"That mark is tamper-proof," Boyce said. "The only way of getting that mark off is by taking the material off, and we can easily recognize that."

While the Coast Guard does not have a mandate like the DoD does that requires parts to be marked, ARSC is leading the field in laser labeling.

"We're doing this for safety purposes, because we feel it is the right thing to do," Boyce said.

The technology was originally developed by NASA, but the Coast Guard continued with developing the bar coding.

"Now NASA sends things here for testing, and calls us for advice," Boyce said. "Now we are leading all of aviation in this technology. The Coast Guard is the leader in all of this."