Almost two decades ago, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Coast Guard leaders created the modern U.S. Coast Guard sector command. While it seemed a prudent undertaking at the time, it led to some undesirable outcomes for the service, many of which have not been fully apparent until now.
Prior to 2005, most shore-based Coast Guard mission operations were led and managed by marine safety offices (MSO) and group commands. Coast Guard air stations were under the operational control of district commands, and aircraft were assigned to the requesting group or MSO as needed. When the need arose for coordination between MSOs and groups, the field units collaborated and accomplished mission objectives without many issues. Although this organizational structure served the Coast Guard well for decades, DHS and Coast Guard leaders decided to consolidate MSOs and groups into new, larger field commands called sectors.
Two catalysts led to the creation of sectors. First, there was a desire for a more centralized, streamlined field unit at the local port level. Coast Guard leaders envisioned that a single command with jurisdiction over a designated captain-of-the-port zone would better facilitate personnel and resource sharing across missions. Arguably the most significant organizational change in modern Coast Guard history, this restructuring also was highly influenced by post–9/11 activities, including the service’s transfer into the newly formed DHS.1
The sector was an interesting concept, but implementation was messy, shortsighted, and directed by Coast Guard Headquarters with little or no logistical support and funding. Today, the service is still struggling to adapt. And, since many active-duty members and civilian employees have operated only under the sector model, they may not recognize the long-term consequences of this organizational change.
A Sector Commander’s Many Hats
Before there were sectors, MSO commanding officers held captain-of-the-port, federal maritime security coordinator, federal on-scene-coordinator, and officer-in-charge of marine inspections authorities, while group commanding officers served as search-and-rescue mission coordinators (SMCs) and managed most local subordinate units, such as cutters, buoy tenders, and small-boat stations. The delineation between authorities and missions functioned well for decades and allowed many active-duty Coast Guard members to pursue either marine safety (regulatory) or operational (military) career paths. Now, under the sector construct, all five major authorities, personnel, and resources have been consolidated into a single command.2
There are few leaders within the federal government with the number and breadth of authorities entrusted to Coast Guard sector commanders. These authorities are responsible for saving lives and property in the maritime environment, ensuring safe and secure commerce across the nation’s ports and waterways, maintaining whole-of-government and industry preparedness for maritime-related security incidents, implementing U.S. and international commercial vessel safety and environmental standards, and coordinating all federal, state, local, tribal, and industry response activities during coastal oil spills and hazardous material releases.
The transition to sectors expanded the authorities of field commanders by a country mile, but experience in many of these areas remains only an inch deep. Senior Coast Guard officers, at the pinnacle of their careers, now find themselves in positions with significantly increased responsibility for and oversight of missions for which they may have limited experience or qualifications. The result has been a dilution of expertise, as area officers are now expected to be proficient at everything but are never given the opportunity to develop as experts in any field. With responsibility for five major federal authorities and their required oversight activities, sector commanders and their staffs often find it challenging to balance and accomplish daunting workloads, especially in the nation’s busiest ports.
The largest sectors are constantly challenged by port activity, compliance inspections, emergency responses, marine casualties, search-and-rescue (SAR) cases, and other mission demands. For example, the Port of Los Angeles is the busiest intermodal container port in the world; more than 9.5 million 20-foot container units were handled there in 2018.3 Southeast Louisiana consists of five major ports, from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Baton Rouge. Sector New Orleans oversees and manages one of the nation’s most complex and diverse areas of responsibility, which includes offshore, coastal, and inland river environments. Historically, Sector New Orleans oversees more than 5,500 foreign vessel arrivals, investigates more than 2,500 reports of oil discharges, and responds to more than 2,000 marine casualties and 400 SAR cases each year.
At these massive port complexes, the broad decision-making authority and responsibility entrusted to the sector commanders—who are always captains—are generally more than or equivalent to those held by Coast Guard rear admirals (lower half). Other federal agencies, such as Customs and Border Protection, appoint flag officer–equivalent Senior Executive Service civilians to oversee operations at many of the nation’s largest port complexes.
One of the core concepts in the National Incident Management System framework, which is part of a required Incident Command System training curriculum for most Coast Guard members, is span of control. While the sector span of control appears manageable on paper, the number of important decisions pushed up to sector commanders is disproportionately higher when compared with the unit’s departments and divisions, making the sector organization top-heavy, centralized, and inefficient.
To complicate matters, sector commanders are forced to satisfy chain-of-command reporting requirements to districts, areas, headquarters, and three distinct staff commands—each overflowing with senior officers, many of whom have even less sector field experience than sector commanders. Nevertheless, many of these senior staff officers do not hesitate to question a sector commander’s decision-making, which also must pass muster and survive scrutiny by Coast Guard and DHS senior leaders.
Loss of Proficiency
Creation of sectors has resulted in some notable long-term, servicewide trends, such as a loss of workforce proficiency and the ensuing decline in key mission areas.
One of the missions that has been adversely affected is marine environmental prevention (MEP). MEP encompasses waterfront facility and vessel inspections and compliance activities, oil and hazardous material incident investigation and response, and associated preparedness activities.
Under the sector organization, these complementary missions have been divided: The Prevention Department oversees compliance, while the Response Department oversees incident investigation and response. Furthermore, the compartmentalized nature of sectors makes officer and enlisted member training and qualification a persistent challenge. Consequently, performance across MEP has suffered.
Another Coast Guard mission area that has experienced degradation is SAR. Sectors do not adhere to Coast Guard organizational policy as it applies to SAR. According to the Sector Organizational Manual, the Incident Management Division (IMD) is responsible for overseeing Coast Guard small-boat stations, oil and hazardous material incident investigation and response, and the unit’s SAR program.4 However, not one sector IMD across the country performs any meaningful oversight role for SAR; most units rely on the command center chief or senior enlisted watchstanders for subject-matter expertise in this core mission. In fact, newly assigned sector commanders, deputy commanders, and response department heads regularly arrive to their units with little or no command center or SMC experience.5
When sector command centers were created, staffing levels only marginally increased, while mission requirements expanded many times over. Watchstanders inherited not only SAR case management, but also coordination roles for marine safety, MEP, and other regulatory missions. Almost overnight, sector command centers evolved into true multimission watch floors. However, 14 United States Code (USC) 911 clearly states the Coast Guard should operate “search and rescue center facilities” for coordination and management of SAR cases.6 While former group command centers essentially maintained a dedicated SAR watch consistent with federal law, today’s sector command centers are a major deviation from the intent of Title 14 search-and-rescue standards. As a result, SAR proficiency nationwide has been diluted by expanded unrelated watchstander knowledge requirements, a high number of non-SAR mission calls, and other distractions from SAR case-planning and coordination duties.7
These observations about the sector command center were evident but largely overlooked by the Coast Guard following a notable SAR case in 2009. After the sinking of the fishing vessel Patriot near Gloucester, Massachusetts, which resulted in the death of two mariners, the Coast Guard commissioned a formal review of the response to the incident. Although the final report found the Coast Guard could not have prevented the loss of life, it did highlight a slow and inadequate SAR response after notification of distress.8 Furthermore, the report’s conclusions placed most of the blame on the inexperience of watchstanders at the sector and district command centers involved in the case. While the Coast Guard did recommend improvements to SAR tactical procedures for watchstanders, they addressed only symptoms (inexperience and loss of proficiency) and not the source of the problem (the sector command center itself).
These are key elements of one of the service’s most disturbing trends. SAR—the Coast Guard’s oldest and arguably most important mission—has declined in proficiency, and the role of SMC has been reduced to a second-tier collateral duty at field commands.9
How to Fix It
While the decision to create sectors was well-intentioned, it was an example of change mismanagement, resulting in many long-term detrimental outcomes for the Coast Guard. Most notably, the consolidated major federal authorities and resulting proficiency gaps have led to inconsistent interpretation and enforcement of Coast Guard regulations, mistrust and loss of credibility with industry and port partners, lackluster performance across core mission areas, and an emergent officer corps of “generalists.” These unexpected outcomes—coupled with a risk-averse service culture of “career fear” exacerbated by increased scrutiny across multiple levels of the chain of command—have prevented many sector commanders from making sound, timely, and pragmatic decisions.
Returning the service to the days of MSOs and groups is not feasible, and there are few, if any, reasons to have active-duty Coast Guardsmen perform regulatory activities such as commercial vessel and barge inspections, marine casualty investigations, pollution investigation and response, intermodal container safety inspections, waterfront facility safety and security inspections, and waterways management. The most practical way to improve the current situation is to transition most, or all, Coast Guard regulatory authorities and associated activities to a 100-percent civilian workforce within the Coast Guard or to move these functions to other existing federal entities.
One of the best examples of nearly identical agency roles applies to federal pollution compliance and enforcement regulations. Both the EPA and Coast Guard have a congressional mandate to ensure compliance with the Clean Water Act. Both organizations can issue civil penalties and pursue Department of Justice criminal prosecution for pollution violations. Each agency has jurisdictional boundaries that dictate which one assumes the role of federal on-scene commander during a pollution incident; the Coast Guard oversees marine environmental response activities in the coastal zone, while the EPA—staffed completely by civilians—oversees responses in the inland zone.
Another example of overlapping federal authority and jurisdiction applies to the outer continental shelf (OCS) across the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) work together closely under a memorandum of agreement to ensure compliance with a complex set of regulations for the offshore energy industry.10 Under its outer continental shelf marine inspection (OCMI) authority, the Coast Guard inspects mobile offshore drilling units when they are transiting to or from an offshore site.
Once the units are on station, the Coast Guard focuses its inspections on firefighting, lifesaving, and environmental protection, while BSEE concentrates inspections on drilling processes and associated equipment. BSEE also completes safety inspections on behalf of the Coast Guard on offshore facilities permanently attached to the seafloor. The Coast Guard also can exercise its OCMI authority to detain a drilling rig for OCS Lands Act violations and make recommendations to BSEE to restrict or halt oil and gas operations on an offshore facility. Like the Coast Guard, BSEE can issue civil penalties for safety infractions on fixed platforms and floating OCS facilities.
The EPA and BSEE are both federal regulatory agencies with 100 percent civilian workforces with regulatory authorities similar to the Coast Guard’s OCMI and Clean Water Act authorities and do not require active-duty military oversight and management. Transferring authorities such as these to a civilian workforce would allow the service to focus on its military missions and activities, which are ever-increasing in terms of scope and complexity. Furthermore, these regulatory functions are out of place in a department focused on security-related initiatives and with senior leaders and staff who have little knowledge about and experience with the Coast Guard’s regulatory compliance role.
Transitioning these functions also would give the Coast Guard the opportunity to restore SAR proficiency and mission effectiveness, which should be the service’s focus. If sectors continue to exist in their current form, this core lifesaving mission will continue to atrophy.
1. Department of Homeland Security, “The Homeland Security Act of 2002.”
2. ADM R. J. Rapp, Commandant, USCG, Coast Guard Publication 1: Doctrine for the U.S. Coast Guard (February 2014).
3. “The Port of Los Angeles: America’s Port,” www.portoflosangeles.org/.
4. U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Coast Guard Sector Organization Manual (March 2008).
5. CDR Drew Casey, USCG (Ret.), “Restoring Coast Guard Search and Rescue Proficiency,” Professional Mariner (September 2021): 32–34.
6. 14 United States Code § 911: Search and Rescue Standards.
7. CDR Drew Casey, USCG (Ret.), “The Coast Guard Must Stop Diluting Maritime Search and Rescue Expertise,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 147, no. 11 (November 2021).
8. U.S. Coast Guard, “Final Action Memo: U.S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue (SAR) Case Study: F/V Patriot–Death in the Marine Environment—MISLE Case #437683” (June 2009).
9. Casey, “Restoring Coast Guard Search and Rescue Proficiency.”
10. Interview with CAPT Russell Holmes, USCG (Ret.), former outer continental shelf officer in charge of marine inspection, U.S. Coast Guard District Eight, May 2019; and interview with CDR Michael Dougherty, USCG (Ret.), former deputy outer continental shelf officer in charge of marine inspection, U.S. Coast Guard District Eight, October 2020.