To outside observers, 2017 looked like “The Year of the Hurricane” for the U.S. Coast Guard. With three megastorms—Harvey, Irma, and Marie—devastating areas of the continental United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, the service faced significant demand signal.
But 2017 was much more than hurricanes. From record narcotics interdictions and significant icebreaking to increased emphasis on the new offshore patrol cutter and an aging inland cutter fleet, the Coast Guard was stretched in ways that underscore a need for additional capability and resources.
The Coast Guard’s national demand signal was forefront on 16 November, when Commandant Admiral Paul Zukunft told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard:
Operational successes introduced real costs. Damage to Coast Guard facilities, IT, aids to navigation, and the cost of deferred maintenance are significant. Similar to any prolonged natural disaster or security event, responding to consecutive major hurricanes severely strained capacity and required us to assume additional risk in other geographic regions and mission areas.
Winter ice rescues are particularly perilous, and training simulations like the one shown here help ensure the safety of rescue teams as well as civilians. Over the past decade, Coast Guard Ninth Disctrict has responded to more than 1,000 ice rescue cases.
Zukunft told Congress units struggled to sustain maintenance and training standards and future readiness was diminished. For example, he noted:
• The USCGC Mohawk (WMEC-913) deferred major maintenance to get under way and avoid Irma.
• The USCGC Forward (WMEC-911) diverted from a counterdrug patrol to provide supplies and critical command-and-control services after all three major hurricanes.
• Training at Aviation Training Center Mobile was suspended, creating a backlog in the pilot training pipeline.
• Many air stations that contributed assets to hurricane operations had to get by with one aircraft versus the three required to maintain a full-time search-and-rescue (SAR) response posture.
• Forces available for other operations were reduced significantly.
• Many first responders suffered personal losses. Approximately 700 Coast Guard families’ homes were damaged to the point they will need to be relocated.
The Commandant continued, “While the Coast Guard is well positioned for immediate and effective first response, our bench strength makes it impossible to sustain these operations for an extended period of time.”
Hurricane season
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria dominated the news in August and September. The Coast Guard mobilized nearly 3,000 personnel, including more than 2,000 active-duty, almost 800 reservists, and 150 civilians; most deployed to the area before the first hurricane made landfall.
Collectively, the service saved or assisted more than 11,000 individuals during the hurricanes.
The number of Coast Guard assets supporting the hurricane responses underscores the immense size of the effort:
• Harvey: 34 helicopters, 7 fixed-wing aircraft, 69 shallow-water assets
• Irma: 25 helicopters, 5 fixed-wing aircraft, 55 shallow-water assets, 15 cutters
• Maria: 7 helicopters, 17 fixed-wing aircraft, 14 cutters
Coast Guard rotary-wing aircraft flew almost 1,600 hours, more than double the total programmed annual hours for an MH-60T and almost four times the annual programmed hours for an H-60 series aircraft. In addition, Coast Guard fixed-wing aircraft flew more than 1,400 hours in support of these disasters, almost double the total programmed annual hours for an HC-130J.
The Coast Guard inland river tender fleet, the oldest commissioned vessels, operated more than 600 hours above programmed hours.
Counterdrug Operations
It was yet another record-breaking year for the Coast Guard’s counterdrug mission, highlighted by the USCGC Stratton’s (WMSL-752) offload of 50,550 pounds of cocaine and heroin in San Diego in September. The drugs, with an estimated value of $679 million, were the cumulative result of 25 interdictions involving four Coast Guard cutters and a Navy ship operating in the eastern Pacific since early August.
“The single most vulnerable part of the entire drug network may be their weakness at sea,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in remarks at a pier-side ceremony following the offload. “The Coast Guard has now tripled their effectiveness and these incredibly large seizures validate that.”
The past 12 months also saw a rise in interdictions of low-profile vessels (LPVs). Specifically designed for smuggling cargo, LPVs ride low in the water to reduce their radar signature, are painted to blend into the water, and have multiple outboard motors. Multiple cutters contributed to the LPV interdictions, including the USCGC Waesche (WMSL-751); Northland (WMEC-904); Dependable (WMEC-626); Steadfast (WMEC-623); Tampa (WMEC-902); and James (WMSL-754).
In addition, in November 2017, the USCGC Escanaba (WMEC-907) returned to her homeport in Boston following a 64-day eastern Pacific patrol that resulted in the seizure of 6.7 tons of cocaine valued at an estimated $202 million wholesale. The seizure was the result of five separate interdictions, including of a rare self-propelled semisubmersible vessel. Each interdiction took place in the drug transit zones off the coasts of Central and South America and resulted from coordination between the Escanaba’s crew and several partner agencies from Joint Interagency Task Force South.
In total, the Coast Guard seized more than 455,034 pounds of cocaine valued at some $6.1 billion in fiscal year 2017, besting its 2016 record of 443,000 pounds.
“Today, our nation faces significant emerging threats on our southern borders and transit zones,” said Zukunft during a press conference on board the Stratton. “We are seeing the rapid growth of transnational criminal organizations that fuel violence and instability throughout the region. These criminal networks are vying for illicit markets, including human and drug smuggling. It will take unity of effort across government to overcome these challenges.”
Living Marine Resources
The living marine resources mission continues to be an integral part of the Coast Guard’s operations. In the past year, the service conducted 5,518 domestic living marine resources enforcement boardings and cited 158 significant fishery violations; supported 66 requests to assist with stranded, distressed, or entangled marine protected species; detected 136 incursions of the 3.4 million square nautical mile U.S. exclusive economic zone; and boarded 86 foreign vessels to suppress illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
Search and Rescue
Every Coast Guard unit from Eastport, Maine, to Southwest Asia performs the SAR mission. In addition to thousands of rescues conducted during the 2017 hurricane season, the service responded to 16,069 other SAR cases, assisted more than 22,000 people, and saved 4,228 lives.
The National Search and Rescue School in Yorktown Virginia, established on 10 October 1966 as a joint venture with the U.S. Air Force to train the two services’ oceanic, coastal, and inland search planning procedures, has graduated approximately 30,000 individuals, including more than 2,400 international students from 150 nations.
Every SAR case comes with high stakes, but none more so than winter ice rescues on the Great Lakes. The Coast Guard Ninth District has responded to more than 1,000 ice rescue cases over the past decade, saving or assisting hundreds of individuals. Its Ice Rescue Program oversees the National Ice Rescue School, which conducts training annually in Essexville, Michigan. Instructors train rescuers from more than 50 Coast Guard units who then deliver ice rescue training at their respective units and to local SAR partners. This standardized training ensures the safety and effectiveness of ice rescue teams and the citizens they protect.
Reports of people falling through the ice are frequent on the Great Lakes. Two cases last year highlight the mission. A call came in to Station Saginaw Bay from two men who had fallen through the ice in Saginaw Bay. Sector Detroit launched Air Station Detroit’s MH-65 and Station Saginaw’s 20-foot special purpose craft airboat (SPC-AIR) to assist. The station stayed on the phone with the individuals to help vector in the SPC-AIR and helicopter. Luckily, the airboat found the victims quickly and brought them to Station Saginaw, where they were met by medical personnel and treated for the onset of hypothermia. The two men had been returning to shore on an ATV towing their ice shanty when they broke through the ice. The ATV, shanty, and all associated gear sank.
In the second case, multiple people reported to Sector Detroit seeing flashing lights on the ice. The ice rescue team from Station Toledo was dispatched, as was an MH-65 from Air Station Detroit. The Monroe County Fire Department joined Station Toledo’s team on scene to find five individuals on an ice floe that had broken away from shore and was drifting into Lake Erie. The MH-65 was vectored in by the shore personnel, hoisted all the people on board, and transported them to the local airport to be treated by emergency medical personnel.
Acquisitions
With a growing demand signal, the Coast Guard is working toward the future. A Congressional Research Service report entitled “Coast Guard Cutter Procurement: Background and Issues for Congress” provides one of the most comprehensive summaries of the program of record, noting, “The Coast Guard’s acquisition program of record (POR) calls for procuring 8 National Security Cutters (NSCs), 25 Offshore Patrol Cutters (OPCs), and 58 Fast Response Cutters (FRCs) as replacements for 90 aging Coast Guard cutters and patrol craft. The Coast Guard’s proposed FY2018 budget requests a total of $794 million in acquisition funding for the NSC, OPC, and FRC programs.”
National Security Cutters
NSCs—with an estimated average procurement cost of $695 million per ship—are the Coast Guard’s largest and most capable cutters. The first six are now in service; the sixth was commissioned in Seattle on 1 April 2017; and the seventh, eighth, and ninth are under construction, with the seventh and eighth scheduled for delivery in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The value of these ships, especially in support of operations to combat transnational criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere, is considerable.
As part of its action on the Coast Guard’s FY2017 budget, Congress provided $95 million for the procurement of long lead time materials for a tenth NSC. The Coast Guard’s proposed FY2018 budget requests $54 million in acquisition funding for the NSC program.
Offshore Patrol Cutters
The Commandant emphasized in 2017 that acquisition of the offshore patrol cutter is the Coast Guard’s highest investment priority. The OPC will provide a capability bridge between the NSC, which patrols the open ocean in the most demanding maritime environments, and the fast response cutter, which serves closer to shore. The OPCs will feature state-of-the-market technology and will replace the service’s 270-foot and 210-foot medium endurance cutters, which are becoming increasingly expensive to maintain and operate.
According to the Congressional Research Service report, the estimated average procurement cost of the OPCs is about $421 million per ship. On 15 September 2016, the Coast Guard announced it had awarded Eastern Shipbuilding Group a contract with options to build up to nine OPCs. Its proposed FY2018 budget requests $500 million in acquisition funding for construction of the first unit—expected to be delivered in 2021—as well as for procurement of long lead time materials for the second OPC and certain other program costs.
Fast Response Cutters
The Coast Guard continues to build multimission cutters. The Sentinel-class fast response cutters (FRCs) perform drug and migrant interdiction; ports, waterways, and coastal security; fish-ery patrols; search and rescue; and
national defense. Currently, 26 FRCs are in service from New Jersey, Alaska, and Hawaii to Puerto Rico, Florida,
and Mississippi.
As with their FRC sisters, the next flight of 19 FRCs will bear the names of enlisted leaders, trailblazers, and heroes of the Coast Guard and its predecessor services. These enlisted heroes include recipients of the Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Gold Lifesaving Medal, Silver Lifesaving Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Medal, and Purple Heart Medal.
Icebreaking
Recently, the Coast Guard Ninth District Commander, Rear Admiral Joanna Nunan, joined Julie Gascon, assistant commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard’s Central and Arctic Region, to sign an updated memorandum of understanding (MOU) on icebreaking services in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.
The renewed MOU strengthens the two nations’ mutual commitment for ensuring vital icebreaking operations in the Great Lakes region, including the main connecting navigable waterways: Georgian Bay and the St. Lawrence River from Tibbetts Point, New York, to as far east as Cornwall, Ontario.
”Our partnership with the Canadian Coast Guard is crucial for our mutual success on the Great Lakes and surrounding waterways,” said Nunan. “As the beginning of this winter’s severe conditions have demonstrated, we need to work together to provide seamless service to our communities and keep commerce flowing.”
The Coast Guard’s icebreaking capability also was on display in 2017 in the First District in New England. As part of Operation Reliable Energy for Northeast Winters (RENEW)—a region-wide effort to ensure Northeast communities have the security, supplies, energy, and emergency resources they need throughout the winter—three 65-foot Coast Guard harbor tugs worked to break ice jams in the Connecticut River to prevent flooding and open the Maritime Transportation System. The crews of the USCGC Bollard (WYTL-65614), Hawser (WYTL-65611), and Pendant (WYTL-65608) created a downstream pressure relief in the ice, opening a space approximately 500 yards wide, which allowed upstream ice to flow to open water.
Inland Tender Fleet
In 2017, recapitalization of the inland tender fleet became a priority for the Commandant. Consisting of 35 vessels and 27 barges classified as either inland buoy tenders, river tenders, or inland construction tenders, the fleet’s average age is 52 years old. These vessels provide an organic capability to establish, maintain, and repair buoys and beacons in waters inaccessible by larger and geographically displaced aids-to-navigation units.
The fleet maintains a presence in U.S. navigable waters and services navigation aids within the nation’s Marine Transportation System, which provides for the safe, secure, and efficient movement of $4.6 trillion in U.S. goods annually. Typically, the inland river tenders service up to 13,000 floating aids to navigation each year and replace more than 7,000 buoys that mark safe transportation routes for commercial and private vessels.
Construction tenders provide construction capability for 14,500 fixed aids to navigation and can provide additional non-aids to navigation construction services on an as-needed basis. This allows the Coast Guard to complete work to critical infrastructure.
Electronic aid-to-navigation technologies will enhance and provide resiliency to the U.S. aid-to-navigation system, but the need for physical aids will remain. Physical aids provide visual “markers” and information for the maritime community, like road signs on the nation’s highways. Both the physical and electronic capability are critical to this center of gravity for the U.S. economy.
Bits and Pieces
The Coast Guard Research and Development Center (RDC) closed out an interesting project this year—its first ever working with the Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS)—to address serial hoax callers around the country.
Serial hoax callers are individuals who routinely submit false distress calls that cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars and place first responders and those who are in real distress in potential jeopardy. The RDC teamed with the Department of Homeland Security’s Center of Excellence at Rutgers, its consortium member Carnegie Mellon University, and private industry to take a three-pronged approach that included voice analysis, direction-finding capability, and social media analysis. The impact has been significant, and CGIS is using this approach to investigate several cases around the country.
The 81-year old Coast Guard Cutter Eagle, a 295-foot barque, is a unique ship in the fleet and provides an enviable training resource for the service. The Eagle currently is undergoing the final phase of a four-year service life extension at the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore, Maryland. The project began in 2014 and has been conducted in four phases so the ship still can support its training role for Coast Guard Academy cadets and Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officer candidates. By the time the final phase is complete, the Coast Guard Yard will have renewed approximately 2,800 square feet, or about one-fourth, of the Eagle’s 4/10-inch-thick steel hull.
Finally, in February, during the State of the Union, President Donald Trump highlighted the work of 15 citizens, including Aviation Electronic Technician Second Class Ashlee Leppax. During Hurricane Harvey, Leppax, from Air Station New Orleans, was part of one of the first flight crews to arrive on scene and carry people out of harm’s way.