As the Coast Guard continues its transformation to meet the challenges of a post-9/11 world, one of its traditional missions, aids to navigation (AtoN), is being overlooked. Unglamorous, the AtoN mission appears unable to find a niche in its new home, the Department of Homeland security (DHS). Struggling for alignment with DHS strategic goals, AtoN's relative importance within the organization has diminished. In the Coast Guard's new normalcy, the perception is that this mission is no longer important. That view is misguided; AtoN has been and always will be vital to our nation's prosperity and security. However, current signs indicate that the aids to navigation community is headed for troubled waters.
Some AtoN boats and cutters are well past their service lives and very difficult to operate and maintain. A lack of experienced and qualified personnel at some units is now common. Corrective action must be taken or the aids to navigation mission risks becoming a liability to mariners.
The Value of AtoN
The standard of living that Americans enjoy has a strong connection to trade. Our nation's ability to engage in worldwide commerce is only made possible by the Maritime Transportation System, a network consisting of 25,000 miles of waterways, 95,000 miles of coastline, and 300 ports. Each year, 14 million containers, 3.3 billion barrels of oil, and 90 million passengers pass through U.S. ports. In 2003, a total of 159 million metric tons of goods valued at $491 billion were imported to or exported from the United States.1 Everyone benefits from trade, which is only made possible by a safe and efficient AtoN system. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thomas Collins reiterated this point in his 2005 State of the Coast Guard address when he linked the service's missions to economic prosperity.
Another element of AtoN is often overlooked but crucial to understanding its importance. Aids to navigation has always played a supporting role in national security by allowing warships to safely transit in and out of port. When trouble starts anywhere in the world, the first question the President asks is, "Where are the carriers?" Well, those carriers have to transit through channels marked by AtoN to reach their stations. Furthermore, short-range AtoN is a complementary system to the global positioning system (GPS), should it ever become disabled.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, advances in electronic navigation have not negated the need for traditional aids to navigation such as buoys and range lights. Over-reliance on electronic navigation is causing alarm in some professional mariner circles because these modern systems may be detrimental to traditional principles of good seamanship.2 The advent of electronic boxes have created "waypoint" sailors who go from one electronic buoy to another without taking into account the dangers along the way, such as rocks and shoals. The International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA), the world's governing body for AtoN, found overwhelming worldwide support for its continued use. The widespread use of GPS actually encourages mariners to operate closer to shore, in darkness and reduced visibility. This trend is in fact increasing the need for visual aids around coastal areas.
The association's report closes with the statement that "there will be a continuing need for visual aids to navigation, albeit not so much for the purpose of position fixing but increasingly for visual reference and to alert the mariner to the fact that he may be standing into danger."3
The Coast Guard has been and continues to get a tremendous return for every AtoN dollar it spends. In 2004, these assets serviced 5,000 aids along with correcting 12,000 discrepancies.4 Cutters dedicated to this mission racked up 81,700 hours that also included search and rescue, maritime law enforcement, marine environmental protection, and homeland security.
While these numbers may be impressive, all is not well in the AtoN community. The Coast Guard's aid availability rating continues a steady decline, going from 99.4% in 1994 to 97.45% in 2004 (99.7% is the IALA standard).5 AtoN operational mishaps are on the rise, jumping from 71 per 100,000 hours in 2000 to 99 per 100,000 hours in 2004.6 Although the old buoy tenders were replaced with much more capable 225-foot buoy tenders and 175-foot coastal buoy tenders, the rest of the AtoN fleet continues to age, with no replacement in sight. The average AtoN cutter is 38 years old, with the oldest, USCGC Smilax (WLIC-315) at 61 years. On the boat side, there are 50-year-old buoy boats, 28-year-old aids to navigation boats, and 21-year-old trailerable aids to navigation boats.
Nevertheless, there is a glimmer of hope. Aids to navigation boats now have 49-foot stern loading buoy boats that replaced their old and worn out predecessors. A current project is underway to replace the trailerable aids to navigation boats. While these may be small steps, in this environment they are giant leaps.
What can be done?
Under these difficult circumstances, important questions must be asked. Has the Coast Guard reached a point in its history where it has a mission it can no longer perform in a satisfactory manner? Is AtoN no longer a viable mission for an organization now part of a department that focuses on homeland security? Are fixes available that can solve the problems discussed? Can the Coast Guard return the AtoN mission to a state in which the community has the necessary assets available with the needed internal and external support?
One solution is to transfer the AtoN mission to another government agency, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Both agencies have a connection to AtoN, NOAA because it falls under the Department of Commerce, which has a strong AtoN connection with trade; and the Army Corps of Engineers because it already has some waterway management responsibilities under U.S. law.
Another option is to outsource the mission. This is certainly not unreasonable, as it has been going on for years in states such as Alaska, California, and Oregon that do not have cutters assigned to build fixed aids.
Either way, this move would have enormous consequences for the Coast Guard. With the mission also go more than 2,100 personnel, 87 cutters, 143 boats, and $843 million in funding. While that may not seem like much in an agency with 45,000 people and an $8.2 billion budget, the Coast Guard's AtoN assets are true multimission platforms.
In addition to expending 106,000 resource hours performing AtoN missions during the last year, aids to navigation units spent 21,000 hours supporting other missions, including 6,500 hours of maritime law enforcement and 8,500 hours of ports, waterways, and coastal security (PWCS).7 If those assets were gone, what would fill the gap and what could be used for surge operations? The answer is nothing. Parceling out Coast Guard missions to other government agencies or outsourcing is not the answer.
The Coast Guard's AtoN mission expertise and economical methods of maintaining the waterways of the United States will be very difficult to replicate anywhere else and, once lost, will be impossible to replace.
The aids to navigation mission should remain in the Coast Guard. However, to halt the steady erosion of the Coast Guard's capability to perform this mission, certain concrete steps must be taken. First, the Department of Homeland security should:
* Reassess the importance of AtoN to the Marine Transportation System and its national security implications.
* Determine the true state of the Coast Guard's AtoN program in its required annual review of non-homeland security missions.
* Set appropriate performance goals for the Coast Guard to coincide with the AtoN mission.
Additionally, the Coast Guard should:
* Conduct a bottom-up review of the AtoN mission with a special emphasis on the current state of training, billet strength, performance, existing capability, material condition of assets, and remaining service life and trends.
* Modernize/replace aging AtoN assets.
* Where possible, leverage excess capacity of AtoN units to support PWCS, surge operations, and other missions.
The Coast Guard and its predecessors have been servicing aids to navigation for more than 215 years. Today's AtoN professionals maintain the world's best AtoN system in an extremely challenging environment. Despite these challenges, they will continue to faithfully carry out all assigned duties as the Coast Guard continues its post-9/11 transformation. Nonetheless, the AtoN community needs help and deserves the right resources to continue the proud legacy it inherited. Our nation cannot afford to let the AtoN lamp become extinguished.
1 Preliminary U.S. Foreign Waterborne Cargo Summaries, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.
2 Visual Aids to Navigation, Commodore David Squire, CBE, FNI, Nautical Institute.
3 The Use of Visual Aids to Navigation. (2003/4). AISM (IALA) Bulletin.
4 U.S. Coast Guard Fiscal Year, 2004 Report.
5 IATONIS database.
6 Commandant (G-WKS) data retrieved from EMISHAP database.
7 USCG Abstract of Operations data.
Lieutenant Commander Davanzo, a veteran of 27 years of service in a variety of ashore and afloat assignments in the AtoN field, is the commanding officer of CGC Hollyhock (WLB-214). Lieutenant Bee served for 26 years in the Coast Guard, including two tours on buoy tenders, one as the executive officer. He is currently a program analyst in the Coast Guard Acquisition Directorate.