Adm. Thomas H. Collins became the Coast Guard’s 22nd Commandant on May 30, 2002, nine months after the Sept. 11 tragedy turned homeland security into a service priority, equal in importance to search-and-rescue operations. In the past year, Collins has moved to strengthen all aspects of the nation’s top maritime enforcement agency while coordinating its historic transfer to the Department of Homeland Security and international initiatives to protect against maritime terrorism. Bigger budgets have helped the Coast Guard in the war on terrorism and war with Iraq. But it remains a small force under enormous strain with an aging fleet of cutters and aircraft. Collins, who has an extensive background in port security operations, previously served as commander of the 11th and 14th Coast Guard districts, Pacific area commander, and vice commandant. He is pressing for new technologies to make the Coast Guard more effective. He discusses these and other challenges in an interview with contributing editor Tom Philpott.

In your State of the Coast Guard address in March, you said so much was going on it was hard to highlight in a single speech. How would you characterize the Coast Guard era that began on Sept. 11?

It’s a watershed time in our service’s history. The evolution of any organization has important time frames [when] transformational things happen—like 1915, when we combined the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life Saving Service and became the United States Coast Guard. We’re in one of those critical times now.

New missions?

Not new, just rejuvenated. A presidential commission on Coast Guard roles and missions a few years ago said, in effect, “Boy, they’re going to get bigger.’’ It was almost a forecast of post-Sept. 11. It told us to get on with the Deepwater Project, the largest recapitalization program in our history. It said transnational threats were growing, international crime was growing, and those have a maritime dimension requiring our full set of missions. Very consistent with where we are today.

On March 1 the Coast Guard moved from the Department of Transportation to the new Department of Homeland Security. How has it affected Coast Guard people?

Positively. The country’s primary maritime law enforcement agency is seen as a very natural component of this new department. Alexander Hamilton formed us in 1790 for that very purpose. Men and women of the Coast Guard understand who we are and our relevancy to this mission. If you created a Department of Homeland Security without us, then something would be missing. That’s the view.

What has been the impact on missions and resources?

We’ve shifted assets into the homeland security mission, and we shift even more in times of heightened security. But we are a multimission organization. We rarely build single-purpose cutters or aircraft. They do fisheries patrols one day, search and rescue the next, and counter-drug operations the third. The same assets are providing security in our ports. We pulse to the threat of the day.

Although we rearrange slices of the mission pie constantly, the good news is the size of the pie is getting bigger, expanding our capacity to do the missions. If we get the 2004 budget [we’ve] requested, we will have grown our budget 30 percent over three years. We will have added 4,100 people on a base in 2002 of 36,000. That’s pretty significant growth.
We’re growing our reserve program as well, from 8,000 members in 2002 to 9,000 in 2003 and to 10,000 Selected Reserve in 2004. That gives us surge capability as security conditions rise or we deploy in support of the Department of Defense.

Despite our growth, we have challenges. The big three are to build out homeland security capabilities, modernize what is a rapidly becoming a technologically obsolete capital plant [of cutters and aircraft], and sustain operational excellence in non-homeland security missions.

How has that 30 percent budget growth been allocated so far?

A large portion has gone to homeland security, a must-do mission. Lives, the security of our nation, the flow of commerce are at stake. In fact, homeland security and search and rescue are now on a par. We must maintain a high state of readiness for both. That 30 percent growth is going into those two missions.

From 2002 through 2004, we will have added [more than] 1,000 new billets to search-and-rescue stations, [to] operations centers, and for training—including reopening Boatswains Mate A school. That should dispel any notion that we’re not paying attention to non-homeland security missions. But obviously the bulk of additions go to homeland security. Already funded are six new units called Maritime Safety and Security Teams [MSSTs], our answer to Defense Department special operations. We will fund six more in the 2004 budget.

These 70-person teams, augmented by 30 reservists when appropriate, have special skills. They can secure ports, protect waterfronts, conduct maritime interdiction and boarding, do escort duty and underbody survey of ships and piers, run K-9 teams for sniffing out explosives, and conduct vertical insertion from helicopters. If there’s a hurricane or other disaster, the same teams can pulse in to provide assistance. We’re very enthused about them. They are trained at Camp Lejeune [N.C.], where we have a small-boat tactics training facility in partnership with [the] Marines. Joint activity there is getting more robust.

Do MSSTs have special equipment?

Yes, including deployable boats with machine-gun mounts for close-in deployment. We just awarded a 700-boat contract, worth $145 million, to Safe Boat of Port Orchard, Wash. These boats will have 25-foot aluminum hulls with foam collars, cabins, [and] twin four-stroke, 225-horsepower engines that will go 45 knots. We’ll equip all mssts with these within seven years.

Are 12 teams enough?

There may be potential for more, but we want to catch our breath, institutionalize them, refine training and doctrine, and then take our pulse.

We also requested two more reserve port security units in the 2004 budget to add to the six already operating. We’ve used them in various capacities for 12 years. They are expeditionary, deployable to support combatant commanders. We’ve got four in [the Iraqi] theater now. We have some down in [Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba] providing waterfront protection for the al-Qaida prisoner camp.

Besides building homeland security capabilities, is there an integration process under way to become part of the new department?

There will be some organizational and process changes. But in the Homeland Security bill the president signed last November, there were very specific boundary conditions set for the Coast Guard’s transfer. The service could not be fragmented but had to be moved over with its full range of missions. In fact, the department’s inspector general must send an annual report to Congress on the Coast Guard’s full range of missions.

When Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge raises or lowers the alert level, is there a noticeable shift in Coast Guard assets?

Definitely. We have corresponding security levels of one, two, and three to colors of red, orange, and yellow. We see steady state yellow as the new normalcy in providing security in ports and waterways. For each higher level, we ratchet up operational tempo to provide additional presence.

You’ve said the Coast Guard must transition from a response agency to a presence agency. Do users of U.S. ports see a greater Coast Guard presence today?

They do. Military supplies, for example, have to be loaded out at key strategic ports, which are potential targets for terrorist activity. In the out-load ports supporting our efforts in Iraq, we’re providing 24-7 waterfront and port protection, up and down the maritime supply chain, from the United States all the way over into theater.

But the presence posture has huge consequences for force structure. We need more. We’re about the size of the New York City police department. We’re hard-pressed to cover 95,000 miles of coastline and 361 ports. The 2004 budget reflects the reality that we need to grow.

How short are you of the force structure needed?

That’s a discussion I need to have with Secretary Ridge and within the administration. The next increment will be discussed for the 2005 budget. But clearly, demand for the kind of services we deliver, and that the nation needs, isn’t going down.

Before Sept. 11, you had ambitious goals to modernize cutters and aircraft. How has that effort, your Deepwater Project, been affected by new homeland security requirements?

While we manage legacy systems, the new ships will be rolled out over time. The projected cost of Deepwater approaches $17 billion, stretched out over 20 years or more. It involves replacing all major cutters…with three classes of ships. 

The notional design of Deepwater assumes spending $500 million a year, in 1998 dollars, not including program management and operating costs. However, at the current flow of capital funds, we’re short of that cash flow. So it will be something in excess of 20 years to complete Deepwater.
The program was started well before Sept. 11. Since then, we have looked at it again and concluded Deepwater is more relevant than ever. Behind it is a concept of maritime domain awareness, a fancy term for enhancing the visibility of our environment—people, cargo, and vessels—and managing the threat using systems that allow network-centric battlefield awareness. We don’t have that in our platforms now. In Iraq we saw how powerful network warfare is. Ships and planes get a lot of visibility with Deepwater. But new C⁴ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] competency is what will push borders out and provide transparency of things coming at us well before they are in port.

There are adjustments to performance requirements of Deepwater in the wake of Sept. 11. We’ve got to build CBR [chemical, biological, and radiological] protection into our ships. We have to have ability to handle the highest levels of classified materials. And one subsystem we’re looking at anew is fixed wing. That requirement changed post-Sept. 11. We need to maintain a heavy lift capability to move units like MSSTs. The aircraft proposed, the Casa aircraft, remains a good component of the fixed-wing fleet. What we’ll probably end up with is the Casa aircraft and something else.

You’ve said that, for the first time in many years, the Coast Guard has enough money to properly maintain its electronics and communication gear. Is that right? For the first time in years?

In the 1990s we were well below funding levels needed to maintain our equipment. The choice was, do we pay our people or maintain our equipment? We were paying people but laying up ships, cutting back on maintenance, eating our capital plant. We’ve driven up our maintenance accounts with the 2002 budget supplemental, 2003 budget, and 2004 budget request. We’re going to have to do more of that. We’re operating legacy systems so old that the maintenance requirement is going up faster than funding. We’ve got some ships [more than] 60 years old. They’re maintenance-intensive, particularly if you run them hard. 

In 1998, when we planned Deepwater, there was symmetry between the curve of introducing new assets and the curve of legacy systems going out. We now see, because of casualty maintenance and a higher pace of operations, that we’re consuming our assets faster than we anticipated. There’s a sense of urgency in getting on with Deepwater.

Another major modernization effort is Rescue 21. What is it?

The shorthand description is a maritime 911 system. It allows for distress calling on a vhf band. Boaters can call in on channel 16, a vhf channel designated international for distress. …It will also double as command-and-control coast frequency. We will be able to communicate with, command, and automatically track our own boats. It will eliminate some blind spots or gaps we have around the country.

Rescue 21 will be implemented in geographic chunks. The contractor will survey, determine where towers should be located, and build up the system. By the end of 2004 it will be 35 percent to 40 percent complete and fully implemented in 2006.

What was the Coast Guard’s role in Operation Iraqi Freedom?

We brought things we do every day to the war effort. About 1,200 people, a little less than 3 percent of our force structure, operated eight patrol boats—two squadrons of four—and a support team ashore. We also had two high-endurance cutters — one in the Mediterranean and one in the Persian Gulf— doing marine intercept operations, vessel escort, and other force-protection missions. A buoy tender off Iraq did channel surveys and installed aids to navigation. Four port security units provided waterfront protection.

How extensive was your mobilization?

Right after Sept. 11 we mobilized 30 percent of our Selected Reserve. By the time we went to war in Iraq, we had 4,300 reserves mobilized out of 7,800 in our inventory. The ability to sustain that is incredibly difficult, which is why we want to keep driving up Selected Reserve numbers. If the 2004 budget request is approved, our Selected Reserve ceiling will rise from 8,000 to 10,000, improving our surge capability when we are extended for a Code Orange or another contingency. 

From a threat perspective here at home, what are the Coast Guard’s greatest challenges?

We’ve got so many maritime targets that the whole maritime transportation system and infrastructure is what concerns me. We’re an open country with 95,000 miles of coastline. It’s not like we have bow-to-stern boats around that. And we have incredibly valuable maritime assets. Ninety-five percent of U.S. trade, by volume of goods, comes by sea. We’ve got nuclear power plants. … The Houston ship channel, between Galveston and Houston, is 40 miles of contiguous petrochemical industry. That’s why we’ve got to be a greater presence organization, to protect assets that are so vulnerable and valuable.

The same day the president signed the Homeland Security Bill last November, he signed the Maritime Transportation Security Act, a tremendously important piece of legislation. It sets up the security regime for our ports and vessels. We have expedited rule making under way that has the potential to be a model for performance-based rule making to secure the United States. We’re not saying, ‘OK, facility, put up so many feet of fencing, so many cameras, and have this kind of access to ports.’ Instead it says, ‘This is the performance we want out of your system.’

So the safety of these facilities is not entirely a Coast Guard responsibility?

It can’t be. We could grow by a factor of 10 and not, by ourselves, protect and secure the maritime infrastructure of this country. It’s too vast, especially adding inland waters with locks and dams. It has to be a state, local, federal, private, and international solution. 

That’s why we went to [the] International Maritime Organization after Sept. 11 to put security on the agenda. We drove an international security regime for shipping that was approved in less than a year. A total of 108 nations agreed to put security high on their agenda. The agreement goes into effect July 2004. It’s tremendous.

Are 60-hour workweeks still commonplace for operational units?

Yes, or higher. We had an initiative to drive the workweek down below 60 hours for people at search-and-rescue stations prior to Sept. 11. The possibility of reaching that goal has evaporated. The workload is up considerably. The reserve force absolutely has saved our bacon and performed incredibly well. We also have 32,000 auxiliary personnel we can draw on for search and rescue and other non-law-enforcement activity. And just as we’ve provided resources to the Navy to help in our core competency areas, the Navy is supporting us. We’ve got 11 Navy pt-170 boats tactically shifted to us for homeland security. But, yes, operational tempo is very high.

Having said that, Coast Guard morale has never been higher. Our people feel they’re doing noble work for the nation. Our recruiting is up. Our retention is up.

Retention was so high last year you lowered your recruiting goal.

I love that problem. Our all-time-high retention is tremendously good news. Several years ago those numbers were running in the wrong direction. As horrific as Sept. 11 was, there’s renewed respect for those who do the nation’s work. President [George W.] Bush recently flew up to Philadelphia to visit a Coast Guard unit. He talked with our people and then went before the press wearing a Coast Guard parka. You talk about energizing [a] workforce!

Also, we’ve got a great set of missions. I mean saving people’s lives, cleaning up the environment, protecting our living marine resources, providing security for our nation, breaking ice in the Antarctic— those are missions young people can get excited about. People respect what we’re doing, and we’re needed like never before.