Mr Brown said Clyde Coastguard was "the busiest rescue and co-ordination centre in Scotland, and among the busiest in the UK".
The closure of the Forth Marine Rescue Co-ordination Centre at Fife Ness starts a UK programme which will also see Clyde Coastguard at Greenock shut.
He served as team leader of RAF Leuchars and Kinloss mountain rescue teams (MRTs) and worked for four years in the Kinloss air rescue co-ordination centre.
The Pentland station made its last radio broadcast at midday and its role as a rescue co-ordination centre will be split between the coastguard stations in Shetland and Aberdeen.
"If the beacon is operating... that's a good sign as a heavy landing can tend to prevent the beacon working, " Steve Rendle from the Rescue Co-ordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ), told Radio New Zealand.
Last month the U.K.'s National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre issued a major call for vigilance, noting 17 targeted Trojan horse attacks sent by e-mail that "appear to be covert gathering and transmitting of commercially or economically valuable information" from British companies and the government.
Both the government and Maritime and Coastguard Agency assured the Committee that "robust and extensive testing" was being done before the closure of Clyde Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre, to ensure the stations taking over its area of responsibility would do so seamlessly and continue to provide the level of search and rescue cover which the public had a right to expect.
Falmouth, being the UK's centre for international maritime rescue co-ordination, checked the signal and who the vessel was registered to.
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CIA. But as John Hamre, the president of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, has argued, more co-ordination is likely to mean fewer opposing views, just when you want to encourage those rare souls who got Iraq right.
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