Chapter 23

Homeland Security: Implications for the Coast Guard

Edward Feege and Scott C. Truver

What if January [2000] had started with 1,000 Americans dead in six or seven locations around the world? We came very close to having that happen.¹
— Richard A. Clarke
National Coordinator for Infrastructure Protection and Counterterrorism, December 2000

On September 11, 2001, America received a horrific, first-hand demonstration of asymmetric warfare: the unconventional strategies that self-proclaimed enemies of the United States, unable to stand up to U.S. conventional military power, have increasingly adopted to achieve their aims. The use of hijacked airliners to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon underscored the fact that the United States is at war with a global network of terrorist forces as well as the groups and states that support them.

In retrospect, the Nation had been at war for some time, even if U.S. leaders and citizens did not wish to acknowledge this unsettling fact. During the past 5 years, terrorist groups bombed the Khobar Tower barracks in Saudi Arabia, U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar as Salaam, Tanzania, and the Navy destroyer USS Cole during a brief stop for fuel in Aden, Yemen. Moreover, the September 2001 attacks were not the first attempts to strike the United States. Indeed, the Islamic militants had already bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. And as then-counterterrorism national coordinator Richard Clarke noted, attempts were planned for the millennium celebration.

In December 1999, U.S. Customs Service agents in Washington state apprehended a would-be Algerian terrorist on the U.S.-Canadian border as he departed from a ferry, his vehicle loaded with the ingredients to make a powerful bomb. Ahmed Ressam’s potential targets reportedly were in the Los Angeles area. Subsequent reports identified Ressam as a member of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network—the leading suspect for the September airliner attacks. Only a fortuitous hunch by a Customs Service agent resulted in Ressam’s arrest. The terrorist might have had better luck if his vehicle had blended better into cross-border traffic or if Ressam had tried entering the United States another way. Little wonder, then, that the first report of the Hart-Rudman Commission in 1999 concluded:

States, terrorists, and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction and mass disruption, and some will use them. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers.²

The September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington occurred despite efforts to improve the security at U.S. airports. They also proved that innovative terrorists can and will use a broad array of methods and techniques to infiltrate the United States and attack its citizens. As U.S. law enforcement agencies now concentrate on closing one gap in U.S. defenses—significantly beefing up airport security and conducting reconnaissance sweeps of the country’s airspace with armed fighter aircraft—terrorists will most assuredly be seeking other ways of entering the country and launching additional terror operations, including maritime means.

Ironically, shortly after Customs agents apprehended Ressam, 600 Haitians in a ramshackle boat almost accomplished what he had not: penetrating U.S. maritime borders and escaping inland. If their boat had not run aground in Biscayne Bay, only a mile from the Florida coast, there is a good chance that at least some of the illegal migrants would have made it to shore. These Haitians were unlucky; scores of other illegal migrants from Cuba, China, and some 20 other countries in recent years have entered the United States successfully, some with help from savvy smugglers in fast pleasure craft or hidden on board commercial vessels. Drug smugglers have also used such tactics to penetrate U.S. maritime frontiers, usually successfully, for decades.

While posing a danger to America’s social fabric, drug traffickers and illegal migrants do not represent the same type of threat as a lone terrorist or well-heeled terrorist group, particularly one that may be attempting to bring chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons of mass destruction and disruption onto U.S. soil. But smuggler ability to infiltrate U.S. borders is cause for serious concern. The routes and procedures they use offer similar opportunities for the more dangerous foes of the United States. Hence, it is becoming increasingly important that the United States be able to identify and stop anyone attempting to breach America’s maritime sovereignty.

This is easier said than done. Extremely high volumes of maritime traffic—commercial freighters and tankers, fishing vessels, tugs and barges, cruise ships, ferries, and recreational boats—cross our maritime borders every day. Anyone wishing to attack the United States by sea could choose to do so by blending in with peaceful, legal traffic approaching our coasts and ports from all points of the compass. Once inside U.S. waters, for example, naval mines could be clandestinely planted (as was done by Libya using a commercial ferry in the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez during summer 1984) or worse.

Traditional naval forces, while offering important surveillance and tracking capabilities, are inadequate for stopping this kind of maritime infiltration. The problem ultimately requires the apprehension of individuals, both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens, who offer assistance. This activity, at its core, is a law enforcement function and thus falls under the responsibility of the U.S. Coast Guard, although in its roles, missions, and tasks the Coast Guard links to numerous departments, services, and agencies in the United States and abroad.

Law Enforcement in Deep Water

As the only U.S. armed service with law enforcement authority, the Coast Guard is charged with guarding America’s maritime frontiers, along with a host of other duties. It is already heavily involved in interdicting drug and illegal migrant traffic, two missions that entail protecting American citizens and territories from transnational foreign threats that are not military in the traditional sense. In carrying them out, the Coast Guard is already contributing to U.S. homeland defense.³ Immediately following the September 11 attacks, the Coast Guard strengthened patrols of critical ports, harbors, and roadsteads. Surveillance of offshore areas increased, and the service activated its special interest vessel (SIV) program. This program closed U.S. inland and territorial waters and offshore zones to vessels that were flying the flags of certain suspect states, that were owned by citizens or groups of these countries, or that had recently visited a port in these states.

As currently equipped, however, the Coast Guard is only partially able to meet the demands of these critical missions. Plagued by obsolescent equipment, perennial budgetary constraints, and severe readiness problems, while at the same time tasked with a growing array of missions and tasks, particularly in its deepwater operating regions, the service has struggled to hold its own in recent years. It is in these deepwater areas—more than 50 miles off U.S. shores—where the Coast Guard maintains America’s first line of defense, against drug smugglers, migrants, and any other individuals or groups that may wish to breach U.S. sovereignty from the sea. These offshore operations allow the Coast Guard to conduct a layered defense that give the service, and its law enforcement and military partners, time to react to emerging maritime threats.

Nevertheless, there is light at the end of the Coast Guard tunnel. In 1997, the service established the Integrated Deepwater System Capabilities Replacement Project (the “Deepwater Program” for short) designed to replace the aging cutters, aircraft, and support systems that routinely operate in waters. More than just replacing a collection of aging ships and aircraft, the Deepwater Program promises to transform the Coast Guard into a modern force able to leverage advanced technology to perform its security missions more effectively. The program is a central element in the ongoing Coast Guard attempt to develop a comprehensive means of tracking, analyzing, and interpreting maritime activities that can impact the security and well-being of the United States and its citizens and, when necessary, responding with an active defense.

Deepwater cutters and aircraft will be participants in—and beneficiaries of—the emerging integrated maritime intelligence and surveillance system that the Coast Guard is also pursuing. As planned, the new Deepwater national security cutters also will be more effective than their current counterparts in acting as forward sensor and operations platforms. Their embarked aircraft and boats will be able to deliver boarding teams to the decks of a wide variety of threat vessels, thus consummating the critical interdiction endgame and apprehending those who would endanger the safety and security of the United States and its citizens. Overall, with new and strengthened existing capabilities that derive from the Deepwater Program, the Coast Guard and the Nation will have taken an immense step forward in securing its maritime borders against any and all unconventional threats.

The Coast Guard, Homeland Security, and Homeland Defense

The Coast Guard has five major roles, each associated with specific mission areas. These roles include maritime security, maritime safety, marine environmental protection, protection of natural resources, and national defense.

Conceptually, the Coast Guard places its roles and missions on a continuum of activities that contribute to U.S. national security. In particular, the service plays a key role in the area of homeland security. Besides encompassing the Coast Guard’s homeland defense activities, homeland security also includes sovereignty missions associated with maritime safety, marine environmental protection, and protection of natural resources.⁴ (Homeland defense per se and border protection both fall under a more expansive definition of homeland security.)

But no matter how one divides the Coast Guard’s roles and missions, the expertise and capabilities that it has developed to perform them—along with the legal authorities it has been given under U.S. law—are central to effective U.S. homeland defense and security in the maritime realm. The Coast Guard is the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces with domestic and international law enforcement authority. Additionally, its missions require extensive interagency coordination at the Federal, state, and local levels, and the Coast Guard routinely coordinates its operations with other U.S. and foreign military services, as well as with civil law enforcement agencies at home and abroad.

Coast Guard activities and forces that contribute to U.S. homeland security, and homeland defense, occur over a wide geographic area, encompassing U.S. inland waterways, ports, and coastal waters, as well as the deepwater region well beyond U.S. coasts. Together, they comprise a layered system of defense that extends outward from U.S. territory and territorial waters—and in some cases thousands of miles into international ocean space.

An important example of the Coast Guard’s inshore effort is the service’s port safety and security program. Coast Guard captains of the port (COTPs)—and the marine safety offices that they command—enforce laws dealing with the protection and security of vessels, harbors, waterfront facilities, and deepwater ports. COTPs have the authority to establish security and safety zones, regulate navigation areas, and control the anchorage and movement of any vessel within their assigned areas. The COTPs also serve as officers in charge of marine inspection and as predesignated Federal on-scene coordinators for pollution emergencies.

Routine Coast Guard activities and programs under the cognizance of COTPs not only safeguard ports, vessels, and waterfront facilities from accidents and negligence but also from terrorism and sabotage.⁵ COTPs can direct vessels or waterfront facilities to take specific actions to prevent sabotage. They can enlist the aid and cooperation of other governmental and private agencies to ensure the protection and security of these vessels or facilities. Also, they implement the service SIV program that identifies and targets vessels and crews from foreign countries that may pose a threat to U.S. security. COTPs can either deny these ships or people entry into U.S. ports, or, if they are permitted into U.S. waters, they can be placed under additional controls. As such, COTPs are critical elements of any first-response to a terrorist attack from the sea, and, in the wake of the 2001 attacks, COTPs on all U.S. coasts were ordered to highest alert.

The Coast Guard also is responsible for maritime defense zone (MDZ) activities that protect the strategic U.S. ports from which U.S. military forces deploy. Coast Guard port security and Navy coastal warfare units routinely work together to secure critical seaports and shipping operations, both in the United States and overseas, under the command of the Coast Guard MDZ commanders, who in turn report to Navy fleet commanders.⁶ COTPs also chair port readiness committees in 13 strategic seaports from which U.S. forces would deploy during a crisis or war, ensuring multiagency coordination and resolution of local defense readiness issues.

In the event of an emergency, other Coast Guard commands back up COTPs with key consequence management capabilities. For instance, three Coast Guard national strike teams are poised to respond to oil or hazardous material spills in any U.S. waterway or port. The teams also provide expertise, equipment, and command and control support to the Environmental Protection Agency for inland spills. To increase usefulness in homeland defense, the Coast Guard is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Department of Defense (DOD) to give the strike teams the capability to respond to nuclear, biological, or chemical attacks as well.

Coast Guard inshore homeland defense activities represent only one part of broader service capabilities. In effect, however, they are the last line of a layered defense-in-depth against threats that may already be on the high seas, headed to the United States, already in U.S. territorial waters and proceeding to a U.S. port or even anchored in a roadstead or tied to a pier. Moreover, these capabilities are specifically structured to detect and prevent security (as well as safety and environmental) threats within the massive stream of commercial traffic that passes through U.S. ports and surrounding coastal waters on a daily basis. But ports are just one gateway through which dangerous materials and people can cross U.S. maritime borders.

The Coast Guard is also called upon to protect the entire 95,000-mile expanse of U.S. coastline and 3.5-million-square-mile expanse of territorial seas and economic zones against smugglers carrying illicit drugs and illegal migrants. Countering these traffickers and their operations is important for reducing the drug scourge on American streets and upholding immigration laws.

From a broader perspective, however, these illegal networks and contraband routes also offer any nation or group a means of short-circuiting U.S. sovereignty and bypassing the U.S. border controls that keep dangerous individuals and materials out of the country. Closing them down is a vital security issue for the United States, one with which the Coast Guard has been grappling for decades, if not since its birth as the Revenue Cutter Service in 1790. The importance—and difficulty—of this task only highlights further the importance of the Coast Guard in the Nation’s future and the need for its Deepwater Program.

Deepwater Challenges

Deepwater forces are crucial to Coast Guard ability to fulfill its maritime security role. Maritime security encompasses multiple missions, in particular drug interdiction, alien migrant interdiction, and the protection of fisheries and other organic marine resources. While critically important to the livelihood of a $30 billion industry, the fisheries protection mission does not have a direct impact on U.S. homeland defense. As discussed above, however, the first two are closely intertwined with overall U.S. efforts to defend its borders. Additionally, the Coast Guard’s national defense role and its capabilities in this area also have a direct impact on the service’s ability to defend the United States from asymmetric and unconventional attacks as well as to contribute to conventional, general-purpose naval missions and tasks.

Drug Interdiction

In mid-2001, the U.S. Government estimated that 242 tons of cocaine had already entered the United States since the first of the year, setting a pace that exceeded that of the year before. Likewise, the importation of marijuana, heroin, and other illegal narcotics appeared to be holding steady or increasing as well, demonstrating that the drug trade is thriving despite a banner year for drug seizures, including a record number carried out by the Coast Guard.⁷

Most of the supply of illicit drugs sold in the United States either originates in or passes through Central and South America. Ninety percent of the cocaine peddled on U.S. streets is produced in Colombia, as is a significant amount of heroin. Jamaica and, to a lesser extent, Mexico supply American drug users with marijuana. Meanwhile, Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, lacking a stable government and suffering from endemic corruption, serves as a major drug transshipment point for the Western Hemisphere.⁸

Illegal narcotics are transported by a variety of means, but most shipments travel at least part of the way to the United States along Caribbean and Eastern Pacific routes. The primary method for smuggling large quantities of cocaine through the Caribbean to the United States is by vessel, including “go-fast” boats (typically 30- to 50-foot, multiengine boats that can carry 500 to 1,500 kilograms of cocaine in each trip), fishing vessels, bulk cargo freighters, and even containerized cargo vessels. Private aircraft also make airdrops to vessels—mainly go-fasts—which then smuggle the drugs into Caribbean nations for staging and subsequent delivery to the United States.⁹

Getting drugs into Haiti or the Dominican Republic, its neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, is often the immediate goal of the smuggler. From there, others can attempt to move the drugs into Puerto Rico, which is easily accessible from Hispaniola by plane or boat. Since Puerto Rico has U.S. commonwealth status, a shipment of cocaine from there to the United States will usually not be inspected by U.S. Customs Service agents upon arrival on the U.S. mainland. A similar procedure occurs in the Pacific, where large cocaine shipments from Colombia are often offloaded to smaller go-fasts or pangas for further transport into Central America and Mexico, from which much of the cocaine is then transported primarily via land routes—or sometimes near-shore routes in an illegal version of cabotage—into southern California.¹⁰

Staunching these flows of illegal drugs is a daunting problem, which is compounded by the sheer size—six million square miles—of the Caribbean and Pacific areas that encompass the drug transit zones, trafficker ingenuity, and the volume and variety of commercial cargo flowing through these areas. Nevertheless, this is what the Coast Guard and its Federal partners are called upon to do. The Coast Guard has been designated the lead agency for maritime drug interdiction under the National Drug Control Strategy.¹¹ It has established an international presence in drug enforcement and cooperates with other Federal agencies within the framework established by the U.S. Interdiction Coordinator.

For more than 2 decades, Coast Guard cutters, aircraft, and legal detachments operating from Navy warships have been deployed in Pacific and Caribbean drug transit corridors. The service supports both the Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF)-West and JIATF-East, commands that coordinate Federal counterdrug efforts—including both military and civilian agencies—in their respective areas. The Coast Guard contribution, including high- and medium-endurance cutters, patrol boats, and long-range aircraft, has resulted in significant cocaine seizures and smuggling activity disruptions. In fiscal year 2000, for example, the Coast Guard seized a record 62 tons of cocaine, much of it traveling Eastern Pacific routes. Those drugs, along with another 25 tons of marijuana seized during the year, had a street value of approximately $4.1 billion—equal to the Coast Guard’s entire budget.

An overarching, multiyear strategic plan, dubbed Steel Web, guides Coast Guard drug-interdiction efforts. Within this framework, the service has employed a variety of innovative interdiction tactics. For instance, during Operation New Frontier, which began in August 1999, armed Coast Guard helicopters used nonlethal, disabling force to stop go-fasts.¹² The helicopters work in tandem with Zodiac rigid-hull inflatable boats, whose crews handle the final boarding and apprehension of suspects.

Even with its past successes, however, the Coast Guard estimates that it is interdicting at most only 10 percent of the drugs that enter the transit zone. Moreover, the traffickers are not standing still. They are increasingly employing leading-edge equipment and technology such as hard-to-detect low-profile boats and aircraft, higher endurance go-fast boats, global positioning system equipment, satellite communications, cellular telephones, worldwide paging, e-mail, and sophisticated counterinformation technologies. All of this enables the drug traffickers to challenge law enforcement organizations with greater daring and boldness and highlights the critical need for more effective U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and interdiction capabilities.

Alien Migrant Interdiction

Stemming the tide of illegal migrants seeking entry into the United States is likewise a major Coast Guard maritime security mission. With continuing economic and political upheaval in the Caribbean and Asia, turning back the resulting flow of illegal migrants will remain a difficult challenge. In the recent past, the numbers have been extraordinary: 125,000 illegal migrants interdicted in 1980 during an attempted mass migration from Cuba to south Florida and 37,600 from Haiti in 1990 and 1991. Then, in 1994, Coast Guard cutters and aircraft responded to two nearly simultaneous mass migrations from Cuba and Haiti, working closely with Navy and other DOD assets. An afloat Coast Guard task force commander directed operations for the largest fleet of cutters since World War II, interdicting more than 25,300 Haitian migrants in Operation Able Manner and nearly 38,600 Cuban migrants in Operation Able Vigil.

During fiscal years 1999 and 2000, the Coast Guard interdicted 9,036 illegal immigrants, for an average of 4,400 per year. The origin of these migrant flows varies from year to year. In 1999, for instance, Chinese immigrants accounted for almost one-third of the total apprehended by the Coast Guard. In 2000, the service interdicted more than 1,300 Haitians, while the number of Chinese immigrants dropped precipitously. Moreover, these numbers do not represent the entire illegal migration picture. Some illegal migrants avoid Coast Guard defenses, while others change their routes or mode of entry in response to Coast Guard and other Federal activities.

Illegal migration into the United States by maritime means involves many different types of vessels. Cuban and Haitian migrants have relied upon craft ranging in size from small freighters and fishing boats to small boats and rafts. There also have been several well-publicized incidents in which superannuated and unseaworthy merchant ships have run aground on U.S. beaches in attempts to land other illegal migrants from South Asia. In late August 1998, for example, the Coast Guard intercepted the converted Chinese fishing vessel Chih Yung, crammed full of illegal migrants, many of whom were in very poor health and in desperate need of food and water.

Recently, many would-be migrants have been turning to professional smugglers to get them into the United States. Maritime immigrant smuggling is a potentially lucrative undertaking: one large boatload of Chinese aliens is worth some $6 million to the smugglers, with some migrants paying $45,000 or more for the hazardous voyage that might last as long as 4 months. Likewise, smugglers of Cuban immigrants are demanding anywhere from $2,000 to $8,000 per person to transport them to the United States.

Professional migrant smuggling has brought more sophisticated tactics, similar to those used by drug traffickers. Some smugglers pick up their human cargo from vessels at sea. Significantly, migrant smugglers also have begun to rely heavily on high-speed boats, similar to the go-fasts used by drug traffickers, to elude the Coast Guard. As is the case in drug interdiction, current Coast Guard forces are not always sufficient to stem the immigrant flow. As one Coast Guard officer based in Key West, Florida, noted in early 2001, “We may be missing more than we’re getting.”¹³

Alien migrant interdiction operations (AMIO) do not end when the Coast Guard intercepts a vessel. There are extensive follow-on requirements for removing (sometimes large numbers of) individuals from unsafe vessels at sea: providing medical care, sustenance, and security, as well as transporting them safely to the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. AMIO is a complex mission, yet it is critical if the United States is to control the number and ascertain the identities of people crossing into its territory.

Interdiction for National Defense

As the Nation’s fifth and smallest armed service, the Coast Guard acts as part of the Navy in times of war or whenever the President directs. The Coast Guard participates routinely in naval operations, both within the Western Hemisphere and overseas. Specific Coast Guard responsibilities for supporting DOD military operations and contingencies in key areas are spelled out in a memorandum of agreement that was signed in 1995 between the Department of Transportation and DOD.¹⁴

Existing command relationships, along with a continuing quest for better interservice interoperability, allow the Coast Guard and Navy, and the other services, to work together and integrate their efforts. This is critical both for the Coast Guard’s support to the Navy’s overseas operations and also to Navy (and other service) support for Coast Guard law enforcement efforts. As noted, the Coast Guard, Navy, other U.S. armed services, and law enforcement agencies all work together in Joint Inter-Agency Task Forces. Coast Guard high-endurance cutters deploy overseas to participate in maritime interdiction operations aimed at nations such as Iraq or to operate as part of Navy battlegroups. Likewise, the service’s cutters, boats, and aircraft play an important role in U.S. overseas warfighting and crisis-response plans. Conversely, Navy forces can operate under Coast Guard operational command, as occurred during past Caribbean mass migrations.

Together, the Coast Guard and Navy comprise a broad national fleet, which can handle a range of maritime threats to the United States and its interests, from conventional to asymmetric. ¹⁵ The Navy is best suited to ensuring access to overseas regions, responding to crises, and fighting conventional wars, while the Coast Guard is more expert in performing law enforcement missions and tasks at the lower end of the defense-military operational spectrum. The capabilities and requirements of both overlap, sometimes to great extent, so that the Coast Guard can conduct specialized naval missions and the Navy can support Coast Guard operations by providing highly capable sensors, command and control links, and platforms from which Coast Guard law enforcement detachments can operate. This mutual support will likely be critical when facing unconventional threats—both overseas and in the Western Hemisphere—in the years ahead.

A Deepwater Solution

A common factor in all Coast Guard missions that impact homeland defense is the need for a robust capability for interdiction at sea.¹⁶ In simplest terms, this means the ability to detect, track, arrest, and board suspect vessels at will, both off our coasts and in deepwater regions farther offshore. Interdiction at sea is a sequential process that includes surveillance of often broad ocean areas, detection of targets that might be potential threats to U.S. security or sovereignty, sorting of these targets (mostly surface platforms, but occasionally aircraft), identification of targets of interest, and finally interception and boarding if necessary.

Current Coast Guard capabilities are marginal in many of these areas, shortfalls that the Deepwater Program is designed to rectify. One of the more glaring inadequacies is service inability to gather, process, and disseminate tactical information reliably—activities that are critical in interdiction operations.

The execution of these activities occurs at both the tactical and the operational level. Events at the tactical level involve deployed Coast Guard cutters or maritime patrol aircraft, which use onboard sensors or off-board systems such as helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles to locate and react to threats in their vicinity. Tactical maritime domain awareness is a prerequisite for the final stage of the operational sequence (interception) and the subsequent boarding of a suspect vessel and, if necessary, the apprehension of its crew, passengers, or cargo.

Before tactical domain awareness even becomes an issue, Coast Guard commanders functioning at the operational level must direct their cutters and aircraft to optimal patrol stations. They must also provide these forces with the outside cueing that allows them to react expeditiously to events occurring beyond the range of their own sensors. Without this outside support, deployed Coast Guard forces would be forced to cover large ocean areas with their own range-limited sensors while attempting to sort through a wide variety of maritime traffic. Most of this traffic will seem to be—and in reality will be—peaceful and legitimate. However, the flow of legal commercial and recreational vessels also provides camouflage for the activities of dangerous or illegal operators, many of whom will be trying to appear innocuous as well. Thus, outside intelligence that provides deployed forces with cues as to what and whom to look for, and where to look, is indispensable in establishing broader or operational-level maritime domain awareness and is a key to effective operations in the deepwater zone.¹⁷

The Coast Guard has an existing infrastructure for building maritime domain awareness at the operational level, but it needs to be modernized and better integrated to be more effective, and significant investment is needed to enhance tactical capabilities, which are meager. The Coast Guard requires improved fusion of its intelligence and increased integration between its deployed deepwater forces, the network of Coast Guard command and control nodes, and the service’s coastal, near-shore forces. It also requires greater interoperability with intelligence and information nodes and the operational units of other military and civil law enforcement units.

At the tactical level, the Coast Guard needs new platforms and sensors that can deal with existing and projected threats—those in its inventory now are no longer sufficient. As noted by one naval analyst in 1998:

The cutters now in the Coast Guard inventory have no air-search radars, no modern synthetic-aperture radars, no sonar systems, no infrared sensors, and no night-vision equipment. They also lack the equipment needed to allow the analysis and sharing of tactical information between Coast Guard units. With the best equipment the Coast Guard now has, a cutter may be able to identify a 60-foot vessel at 2,000 yards—but that means that the 25-foot “cigarette boats” favored by drug runners have little to fear.¹⁸

The Coast Guard is working to achieve greater maritime domain awareness at all levels. Its ongoing effort to modernize the National Distress and Response System is designed to provide an integrated command, control, and sensor system in the coastal and port zones. This effort, along with modernization and integration of other key maritime information systems such as the Marine Information for Safety and Law Enforcement, the Law Enforcement Information System, and the Joint Maritime Information Element, may eventually allow the Coast Guard to provide its forces with a common maritime operational picture throughout U.S. territorial waters and beyond.

At the platform level, the cutters and aircraft that emerge from the Deepwater Program will be designed to take advantage of—and be key participants in—this integrated Coast Guard maritime information network. Unlike the assets they will replace, the new Deepwater forces should have a more comprehensive understanding of ongoing maritime events in homeland waters. Deployed Coast Guard crews and coastal command centers will be able to exchange information readily using both voice and data. Also, because Deepwater command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) systems will be interoperable with those of DOD and those of other Federal agencies, joint and multiagency operations will be significantly more efficient and effective.

Additionally, the nature of Coast Guard missions requires that the final phase of any interdiction operation—boardings, inspections, and possibly arrests—require the close-quarters and physical presence of Coast Guard personnel on the scene, whether the target is a drug-runner, pirate, or terrorist. A key difference between the Coast Guard and other naval forces, this requirement means that the new Deepwater cutters will be equipped to embark, deploy rapidly and safely, support logistically, and provide control for helicopters, rigid-hull inflatable boats, and possibly other craft such as deployable pursuit boats. As such, they will become more effective bases for the employment of integrated teams of armed helicopters and fast boats, a tactic that proved highly successful in Operation New Frontier.

Preparing for the Coming Challenge

Since it was established as a consolidated force in 1915, the Coast Guard has been performing missions that today fall under the rubric of homeland defense. However, the stakes in the homeland defense battle will likely rise sharply in the coming years, as hostile states and groups increasingly incorporate asymmetrical or unconventional tactics into their military repertoires. The Coast Guard—a pivotal part of America’s seaward defenses—must prepare itself to meet this emerging threat.

Improving Coast Guard interdiction capabilities is a key part of this preparation. Drug and alien migrant smugglers have already shown how porous America’s maritime borders can be. For either financial or ideological reasons, these criminal entrepreneurs could one day agree to smuggle weapons or terrorists or both, using the same methods and routes that they do to deliver narcotics or illegal aliens to U.S. territory. When that day comes, it will be in the Nation’s best interest to have a modern, effective Coast Guard that is able to stop these smugglers and their deadly cargoes before they reach American shores. Without the new capabilities that will originate with the Deepwater Program, that kind of Coast Guard will not exist.

Edward Feege is a senior maritime security analyst with the Center for Security Strategies and Operations at the Anteon Corporation. Scott C. Truver is vice president of national security studies at the Anteon Corporation. Research for this chapter was completed prior to January 2002.

Notes

¹ Vernon Loeb, “Planned Jan. 2000 Attacks Failed or Were Thwarted,” The Washington Post, December 24, 2000, A2. [BACK]

² U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, Major Themes and Implications (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1999), 141. [BACK]

³ As noted in chapter 4 of the current volume, critics have suggested that less-than-abundant funding will force the Coast Guard to reduce the amount of assets devoted to the counterdrug mission to carry out counterterrorism missions. Others maintain that the two missions essentially go hand in hand. [BACK]

⁴ This definition of homeland defense is from a traditional Coast Guard viewpoint and does not exactly coincide with current DOD definitions for homeland defense or homeland security, which are not specifically concerned with the listed sovereignty missions. [BACK]

⁵ The port safety component of the Port Safety and Security (PSS) program is concerned primarily with prevention of accidental damage to vessels and port facilities. This is generally accomplished through various activities, including inspections, hazardous materials-loading supervision, and cargo-transfer monitoring. The port security component is concerned with the prevention of intentional destruction, loss, or damage to port assets. During peacetime, port security is a law enforcement function. During time of armed conflict, port security can quickly change from being primarily a law enforcement function to a military mission carried out in ports within the United States as well as overseas. [BACK]

⁶ Naval Coastal Warfare Doctrine (NWP 39) delineates Navy and Coast Guard responsibilities for port security, harbor defense, and coastal sea control. It describes the maritime defense zone concept and states the command relationships and roles of the Coast Guard captain of the port, the MDZ sector commander, Naval forces, and other involved agencies. This doctrine was developed to support coastal warfare efforts in both domestic ports and in ports overseas where United States forces are deployed. [BACK]

⁷ Office of the National Drug Control Policy Coordinator, The National Drug Control Strategy 2001 Annual Report (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2001), 15–16. [BACK]

⁸ Approximately 15 percent of the cocaine heading to the United States passes through Haiti or the Dominican Republic. Statement of Michael S. Vigil, Special Agent-in-Charge, Caribbean Field Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, April 12, 2000. [BACK]

⁹ Statement of John C. Varrone, Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Office of Investigations, U.S. Customs Service, before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Criminal Justice Oversight on Drug Smuggling in the Caribbean, May 9, 2000.[BACK]

¹⁰ Statement of Robert D. Allen, Commander, Coast Guard Activities San Diego, before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, March 7, 2000. [BACK]

¹¹ Presidential Decision Directive 14, “Western Hemisphere Counter-Drug Strategy,” established the Coast Guard as the lead agency for maritime interdiction. The Coast Guard shares lead agency responsibility for air interdiction with the U.S. Customs Service. [BACK]

¹² Previously, service helicopters could only monitor the progress of go-fasts and were powerless to stop them. In addition to deadly force, the Coast Guard is investigating a variety of nonlethal/disabling technologies for drug enforcement and other interdiction tasks. See Mike Emerson, “Coast Guard Helos: A Call to Arms,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 125, no. 10 (October 1999), 30–33. [BACK]

¹³ Thomas Walker, “Coast Guard Expects Smuggling to Increase,” Daily Citizen (Key West, FL), March 24, 2001, 1. [BACK]

¹⁴ “Memorandum of Agreement between the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation on the Use of U.S. Coast Guard Capabilities in Support of the National Military Strategy,” October 3, 1995. This document identifies 1) maritime intercept operations; 2) military environmental response operations; and 3) deployed port operations, security, and defense as Coast Guard capabilities that DOD planners may rely on as being available during military operations and other contingencies. This agreement was amended in 2001 to add “coastal sea control” operations as an area of mutual support. [BACK]

¹⁵ This is the term used by Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Coast Guard to refer to complementary forces. See Jay Johnson and James Loy, National Fleet Policy Statement, September 28, 1998. In March 2001, Vernon Clark and Loy reissued the National Fleet Policy Statement and expanded it beyond cutters and surface warships to include aircraft and C4ISR systems. In the fall 2001, a joint Navy-Coast Guard Review Team was established to review the National Fleet Policy Statement and the 1995 memorandum of agreement (as amended) to “identify enhancements to our partnership to ensure interoperability and complementary operations between the Navy and the Coast Guard, especially in the area of homeland security.” [BACK]

¹⁶ Several recent studies have argued that at-sea interdiction is not effective for the monitoring of large container vessels. Instead, a mixture of inspection and sophisticated monitoring technologies needs to be adopted. This requires considerable cooperation between the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and local port authorities, with post authorities taking the lead on developing and maintaining the computer-based systems for tracking individual containers. See, for example, Charles Pope and Chris McGann, “Ports Getting Top-Notch Security: Seattle, Tacoma are First on Nation’s List for New, Tougher System,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, July 11, 2002, 1. [BACK]

¹⁷ For instance, noting the vast area and the countries that must be monitored to interdict drug shipments in the Caribbean basin, DEA agent Vigil insisted in 2000 congressional testimony that “any meaningful, effective interdiction program must almost exclusively depend on quality, time sensitive intelligence. See Vigil. [BACK]

¹⁸ James B. Thach, “USCG’s Urgent Need for Deepwater Replacements,” Sea Power, April 1998. [BACK]