In his annual message to Congress in December 1862, Abraham Lincoln recognized, "The dogmas of the tranquil past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, subsequently we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."
Today, our nation again faces a stormy present. In spite of a successful ongoing military operation against al Qaeda and the Taliban and the tremendous changes that have taken place since 11 September to enhance security in the air, at our seaports, and along our borders, we have no assurance that terrorists cannot or will not strike at the United States again. Thus, the Coast Guard and our area commanders are transforming to meet the requirements imposed by the post- 11 September world while we meet our Commandant's direction of readiness, people, and stewardship. As Lincoln said, we must think and act anew.
The Origin of Area Commanders
Traditionally, a Coast Guard operational commander has had a finite number and type of resources to accomplish a mission. In the Northeast, for example, the Ist District Commander was allocated a fixed number of cutter and aircraft patrol days each year by the area commander to protect marine fisheries. Similarly, district commanders in the Southeast and Caribbean, Great Lakes, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific, Alaska, and Hawaii competed for funds and resources to interdict drugs and illegal aliens, enforce fisheries laws, maintain aids to navigation, conduct international outreach, and protect the ports and waterways within their districts.
As of the mid-1970s, the Coast Guard's area commanders were concerned with search and rescue, ocean stations, oceanographic issues, and ice breaking, as well as with readiness and mobilization planning. By the 1990s, they allocated resources to achieve mission balance against resource constraints. The two area commanders, Atlantic and Pacific, served as the link between the Commandant, who identifies and mandates broad policy and doctrine, and the district commanders, who turn that policy and doctrine into tactical plans and operations. In the past, that meant setting operational goals and limits on the employment of major cutters, long-range HC-130 aircraft, and specialized units such as port security units across the range of Coast Guard deepwater missions within their areas.
The attacks on the nation last September had an enormous impact on the way the Coast Guard plans and conducts operations. Because of our existing command-and-control structure and broad law enforcement authority, we were assigned as lead federal agency for maritime homeland security. Accordingly, the role of the Pacific and the Atlantic area commanders has changed dramatically.
Today, the most pressing challenges facing the area commanders are:
- Be Ready—Mission Excellence: (1) maintain an appropriate balance between the area's many competing mission requirements; (2) facilitate the fusion of information so it can be shared and acted on quickly and effectively.
- Be Balanced—Not at the Expense of our People: (1) develop consistent guidance across all mission areas across all district boundaries within the area; (2) collect, validate, and consolidate district mission and resource requirements for consideration in strategic planning and policy development at the headquarters level.
- Be Resourceful—Properly Supported: (1) maintain direct oversight of the assignment and employment of critical operational resources, from cutters and aircraft to small boats and personnel; (2) match resource constraints to operational policy, with oversight of logistics and service-life management.
Prioritizing Mission Requirements & Operating Safely
As the Coast Guard works to reprioritize our missions in the aftermath of 11 September, the area commanders must work closely with the district commanders to achieve a sustainable and safe balance between high-priority port security and search and rescue and other vital missions such as fisheries enforcement and drug and migrant interdiction. Because requirements are affected largely by external factors such as a security threat in a particular region, the time of year, or changing national priorities, the area commanders must make course changes along the way. The Atlantic Area Commander might, for example, redirect long-range aircraft conducting counterdrug patrols in the Caribbean to the Gulf of Mexico (in another district) based on intelligence that indicates a potential security threat during a specific period. Similarly, ships and aircraft could be redirected from other missions or districts to meet a requirement for additional fisheries enforcement identified by the 17th District Commander in Alaska and validated by the Pacific Area Commander. A significant military load-out is another example that would require the area and district commanders to rebalance mission emphasis.
Balancing missions and resources also might include reaching out to and coordinating with other federal agencies, international partners, state and local governments, industry, private citizens, and volunteer organizations. This would help ensure all agencies' systems are complementary and that unity of effort is achieved in meeting an emerging requirement.' In addition, the area commanders must develop reliable measures of effectiveness to evaluate mission performance.
The area commanders' role in balancing mission requirements serves two purposes in meeting the demands of the mariners we serve. First, it ensures that there are clear and consistent criteria for assigning the Coast Guard's limited personnel and operational resources across a broad range of mission requirements across all districts within the area. Second, it establishes a framework and protocol for quickly and effectively responding to unplanned mission requirements in times of crisis. Coast Guard men and women deserve our personal involvement in setting priorities to preserve their safety.
Sharing Information
Assessments, timely indications and warnings, actionable intelligence, and the success of each of our missions rely on our ability to share information effectively. This includes databases, background checks, automated identification systems, and other information that can provide a transparent environment in which to make tactical decisions. Increasingly, it is the area commanders' responsibility to ensure that operational intelligence is received, analyzed, disseminated, and acted on in a timely manner. That is key to the Coast Guard's concept of pushing out our borders to detect and interdict threats before they close our shores. A cooperative information, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system, among private and government agencies, is critical to our knowing what enters the country well beyond traditional customs or economic boundaries.
Developing Consistent Operational Guidance
With limited people and assets, consistent application of operational guidance and mission execution across all regions is critical if the Coast Guard is to facilitate the flow of commerce but maintain border security. Imagine the confusion and unnecessary burdens that could result if a commercial ship was given different security guidelines for each port as it transited the coast. The area commanders ensure that the employment of boats, cutters, aircraft, and people to meet a specific operational objective is consistent among districts. For example, how the 7th District Commander uses port security boats, cutters, and sea marshals to safeguard a cruise ship transiting within a port in the southeastern United States should be consistent with how a cruise ship is safeguarded in a mid-Atlantic port in the 5th District under the same conditions. What is important is not that the number or type of resources employed are mirror images, but that the criteria used to determine how, what, where, and when those resources are employed is consistent, while recognizing geographic differences.
This consistency is important for three reasons: (1) to plan how critical resources such as maritime safety and security teams will be used by district commanders; (2) to ensure no port becomes economically disadvantaged because its security requirements are different from another's and that all carriers are subjected to the same measures under comparable conditions; and (3) to ensure the public receives the same level of service, whether in maritime security or search and rescue, regardless of location.
Validating and Consolidating District Concerns
The area commanders have assumed a greater role in collecting, validating, and consolidating district resource proposals and mission requirements for consideration in the Coast Guard's strategic planning process. For the first time, they are providing important input into the Coast Guard planning and budgeting process. In this environment of organizational growth and transition, it is critical that the district and field commanders have a mechanism for making their needs known in a timely and relevant manner. The area commanders and their resource and planning staffs are just that mechanism. This arrangement is likely to bear fruit as the Coast Guard embarks on three of the most important organizational changes in our history: (1) transition from the Department of Transportation to the Department of Homeland Security, (2) implementation of the $17-billion Deepwater acquisition project to replace aging ships, aircraft, and command-and-control systems; and (3) execution of the National Distress System Response Modernization Project. As these and other important projects unfold, the area commanders will be in a position to ensure that the operational needs and requirements of the district commanders are given appropriate consideration.
Providing Critical Resources
One of the most dramatic operational changes for the area commanders has been in the application of critical resources, those resources that are in high demand and short supply. Prior to 11 September, few Coast Guard resources were considered critical. That changed after the attacks, when there simply were not enough boats, cutters, aircraft, or personnel with law enforcement skills available or positioned to meet the huge demand for a sustained period. The Atlantic Area Commander had to identify, task, monitor, and redeploy major cutters (high and medium endurance), port security units, law enforcement detachments, and long-range patrol aircraft in the days, weeks, and months following the attacks. Today, we have other high-- demand, short-supply assets, including the new maritime safety and security teams, exercise planners, intelligence specialists, and port vulnerability assessment teams.
The President's fiscal year 2003 budget request contains the largest increase in Coast Guard spending in U.S. history. These critical resources are brokered by the area commanders to meet mission requirements under the "new normalcy." It is now a responsibility of the area commanders to determine which resources are critical and, with the logistics manager (Maintenance and Logistics Command), manage service platforms' maintenance cycles and life cycles. The district commanders determine how a critical resource is employed in the field, whether it be a maritime safety and security team, a cutter or buoy tender, or an aircraft. Remaining resources normally are allocated to the district commanders to be used to meet other mission requirements.
The Future Role of the Area Commander
Yet to be fully defined are the role and responsibilities of the area commanders under the new Northern Command. As part of the lead federal agency for maritime homeland security, the Coast Guard area commanders likely will serve as combatant commanders (formerly termed regional commanders-in-chief). As combatant commanders for the Atlantic and Pacific areas for maritime homeland security, the area commanders can request and receive operational forces from their DoD counterparts through the Northern Command or Joint Forces Command to accomplish their homeland security mission objectives. The Navy already has assigned 13 patrol craft temporarily to the Coast Guard's area commanders. In addition, the Coast Guard has identified DoD forces that can be requested for use in a stand-by status. Conversely, each area commander can flow forces to the Northern Command or fleet commanders, including port security units and maritime safety and security teams, in time of war to meet national defense requirements.
A similar arrangement between the Coast Guard and our partner agencies—such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Customs, Immigration and Naturalization, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, and the CIA—is likely to exist in the Department of Homeland Security if it is adopted by Congress as the President has proposed. Many of these relationships already exist and are likely only to become more institutionalized as each agency's homeland security roles and missions are formalized. Command and control and areas of responsibility in the new department and Northern Command must flow smoothly through homeland security and homeland defense tasks and related authorities.
Finally, the area commanders need periodically to reassess their command boundaries and responsibilities. Shifts in mission sets and priorities, in the recreational boating community and commercial fishing fleets, and in economic growth within ports all would signal a need to reexamine responsibility levels.
The attacks of 11 September were a defining moment in U.S. history and for the U.S. Coast Guard and our area commanders. For the first time since World War II, the Coast Guard is experiencing both increasing mission demands and aggressive resource and personnel growth. We remain committed to our multimission requirements, but the move to the Department of Homeland Security also provides us an opportunity to increase cooperation with our port and border security partners, to continue to be world-class first responders, and to meet the President's homeland security challenges. As maritime combatant commanders for homeland security, the area commanders are positioned to operationalize the Commandant's core mission goals and objectives. They must think and act anew.
Vice Admiral Hull is Commander, Coast Guard Atlantic Area, Maritime Defense Zone, Atlantic, and Fifth Coast Guard District.