Meeting its Mission—and More
The U.S. Coast Guard faces its biggest homeland security challenge since World War II.
By Shelley Bishop

The oceans that separate the United States from the world’s hot spots have served as natural protective shields throughout our history, especially during the 20th century. The terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, changed all that. On the eve of the formal establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, President George W. Bush declared, “Oceans no longer protect America from the dangers of the world. We are protected by vigilance at home.”

The task of protecting America’s 95,000 miles of coastline and 361 ports falls to the U.S. Coast Guard, a job it has been doing since its creation in 1790 when Congress authorized the construction of 10 ships to prevent smuggling and enforce tariff and trade laws along the young nation’s coastline. Although demands and priorities have shifted over the years, the Coast Guard has never strayed from its primary mission of protecting America’s valuable yet vulnerable coastlines. 

The Three M’s

Today, that mission is multiplied as the Coast Guard tackles its largest port-security operation since World War II while adjusting to its March 1, 2003, transfer to the Department of Homeland Security. 

“We call this challenge the three M’s...maritime, military, and multimission,” explains Rear Adm. Kevin Eldridge, assistant Coast Guard commandant for governmental and public affairs. With 95 percent of commerce entering the United States through its ports, including 10,000 arriving vessels and 70,000 port calls each year, the Coast Guard has its work cut out for it. 

The Coast Guard rapidly adjusted its mission after Sept. 11 to emphasize maritime domain awareness. A critical part of this change was shifting the entire Coast Guard to the Department of Homeland Security, which allows the agency to retain and build on its overall mission while focusing on homeland security issues. The Coast Guard was one of only two federal agencies—the other was the Secret Service—that made the move intact to the new executive department. As a result, Eldridge characterizes the Coast Guard transfer as seamless.

That doesn’t mean, Eldridge says, that the move to the new department is without challenge. “We need to grow into the maritime homeland security mission without detracting from our other missions,” he says. “The challenge is mission balance, but we are meeting that challenge because of our multimission character—we have always been able to do more than one thing.”

The Coast Guard is growing to meet its increased duties, with 2,200 additional personnel authorized in 2003 and the largest operating expense increase since World War II.

Pushing the Borders

On Dec. 23, 2002, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thomas H. Collins unveiled the Coast Guard’s official Maritime Strategy for Homeland Security, a key component of President George W. Bush’s National Strategy for Homeland Security. The Coast Guard’s new game plan emphasizes “identifying and intercepting threats well before they reach U.S. shores.” Coast Guard officials call this strategy “pushing the borders out.” 

“The Coast Guard wants to know what’s coming to us; we don’t want to find it in our ports,” Eldridge explains. Key components of the Coast Guard’s homeland security strategy include increasing maritime domain awareness, enhancing existing security operations, closing gaps in port security, building critical security capabilities, leveraging partnerships to mitigate security risks, and ensuring readiness for homeland defense operations.

Many of the initiatives put in place by the Coast Guard after Sept. 11 remain in operation today. Specialized port-security units are deployed to domestic hot spots. Newly developed Marine Safety and Security Teams (MSSTs) are positioned at critical ports, including Seattle; Long Beach, Calif.; Houston; and Norfolk, Va. These maritime Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams are specialized 100-person units, trained by the Marine Corps and deployable by c-130. Two more MSSTs will be in operation this year and six more are included in the 2004 Coast Guard budget. 

The Marine Corps is training Coast Guard members in its technique of “fast roping,” which uses helicopters to allow rapid boarding of high-interest vessels at greater distances from shore than possible with normal Coast Guard small boat operations. 

Another critical element of the Coast Guard’s strategy to push the borders out is the requirement for 96-hour notification of arrival in U.S. ports by all commercial vessels weighing more than 300 gross tons, which includes providing crew, passenger, and cargo information and flag registry. 

Before Sept. 11, the time frame for notification was only 24 hours. The new requirement gives the captain of the port more time to decide whether to allow the vessel in, request an escort, or have sea marshals board the vessel. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Coast Guard has conducted nearly 40,000 port security patrols and more than 10,000 vessel boardings. 

A Seat at the Table

The key to success in the battle for homeland security, Eldridge says, is “intel, intel, intel.” When it comes to providing critical intelligence information and operations, the Coast Guard now has a seat at the table with the other military services. “Before [Sept. 11], we were an outsider in the intelligence community,” Eldridge explains. “We’ve been building our intelligence, attaching intelligence cells to captains of ports, and becoming providers of intelligence.”

One sign of this new status is the appointment of the first civilian commandant in the history of the Coast Guard to manage its beefed-up intelligence operations. Fran Townsend, an intelligence veteran from the Department of Justice, joined the Coast Guard as assistant commandant for intelligence in the fall of 2002. 

The Coast Guard is playing a greater role not only in intelligence but also in duty overseas. Thousands of reservists have been called to active duty, and units have been shipped overseas to support the service’s largest deployment since the Vietnam War. During the war in Iraq, more than 40 percent of the Coast Guard’s reserve force of 8,000 was on active duty, many in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“We bring a unique capability to the theater,” says Eldridge. Deployed units provide port security, force protection, and embargo enforcement and interdiction. So far, the Coast Guard has deployed eight 110-foot cutter patrol boats, two high-endurance 378-foot cutters, one 225-foot buoy tender, two port-security units, and two maritime-support units. 

The Coast Guard continues its search and rescue, drug interdiction, and environmental protection missions unabated. Its deployed forces, along with contingency plans to close ports or boost surveillance activities, ensure that it has a major role in military actions. And now the Coast Guard’s presence and expertise along the nation’s coastlines and ports place it at the forefront of homeland security.