Demand for the Coast Guard’s services has never been higher. However, the service’s own analysis estimates that there are only enough cutters to complete 6 out of its 11 statutory missions. Integrating unmanned assets into Coast Guard operations and arming the skilled workforce with state-of-the-art autonomous technology enables every cutter, small boat station, and sector to effect operations with heightened efficiency and precision. These added capabilities—partnered with a maintained maritime domain awareness (MDA), persistent global intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and increased maritime law enforcement presence will allow the Coast Guard to optimize its use of manned assets to ensure freedom and safety at sea.
Unmanned Systems
The Coast Guard has already successfully deployed unmanned aerial systems (UAS) on board cutters. However, unmanned surface vessel (USV) development has lagged. These surface vessels operate remotely under human control or entirely in an autonomous state. Both configurations reduce manning requirements while maintaining necessary law enforcement presence and building MDA.
USVs have extended endurance and range compared to traditional assets. They do not require habitability spaces and can thus carry larger payloads or additional fuel. Further, they can integrate with manned assets to increase sensor range and can act as a communication tether for cases far offshore. Finally, USVs have a lower lifetime operating cost than traditional vessels. Additional capabilities can easily expand to launching a tethered quad copter from a USV to increase height of eye when attempting to locate a distressed person in the water or an illicit target.
In March 2023, the Coast Guard published its Unmanned Systems Strategic Plan, stating: “The Coast Guard effectively employs, defends against, and regulates unmanned systems in a complex maritime environment advancing maritime safety, security, and prosperity for the American public.” The Coast Guard began testing USV technology in 2020 when the Research and Development (R&D) Center completed two 30-day demonstration contracts with Spatial Integrated Systems and Saildrone. These contracts maintained persistent unmanned systems in a MDA capacity for a period extending longer than what a manned crew could accomplish on a similar platform and integrated contracted autonomous technology into existing Coast Guard systems. In 2021, the R&D center completed a successful test of the Triton USV with expanded capabilities. This momentum should not be wasted.
Though the Coast Guard has limited experience with USVs, the service does not need to undertake the full burden of developing and implementing unmanned systems alone; it can learn from its Department of Defense (DoD) counterparts. The DoD’s Replicator Initiative has taken off, representing a $1 billion investment in unmanned systems in which the DoD is attempting to field thousands of drones in an 18-to-24-month period.
Further, the Navy is a global leader in USV technology and has effectively used unmanned assets in the Fourth, Fifth, and Seventh Fleets. The Navy also completed significant testing within the operational theater, particularly in the Arabian and Caribbean Seas, where the Fourth and Fifth Fleets have enhanced MDA and ISR capabilities with unmanned assets to counter smuggling activities. Unmanned systems have been instrumental for the Navy in intercepting unlawful maritime activities; this technology directly correlates to the Coast Guard’s drug and migrant interdiction missions.
Concepts of Operations
It is important to consider how new autonomous assets and capabilities could be used as a force multiplier. This is not an exhaustive list, and the Coast Guard should collect ideas from working groups that survey the entire workforce on ways to implement autonomous technology across all facets of operations.
National Security Cutter–Mothership Concept
USVs can be used in conjunction with a major cutter. The national security cutter (NSC) is an ideal platform. Capable of deploying with three small boats, a helicopter, and a ScanEagle UAS, the NSC has the capacity and flexibility to add USVs to its outfit for deployment. NSCs already employ the Scan Eagle UAS system to assist in locating smuggling vessels; however, the NSC can carry more small boats in addition to its standard outfit. It could employ the autonomous Triton sailing ISR surface drone or a similar USV. A series of three or more Tritons outfitted with radar, AIS, and an optical camera could be deployed in fencing operations. With their estimated endurance of 30 days, the USVs could help NSCs locate targets of interest for a manned crew to eventually interdict. At the end of the endurance period, the USVs would be recovered, and ship’s force could complete any necessary maintenance items and refuel the drones before redeploying them for another period of operations.
Finally, USVs could be launched in the Bering Sea and Artic Ocean to help patrol the maritime boundary line and locate vessels that may be engaged in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
Sector Domain Awareness
A USV or an UAS could be employed by a sector or station to maintain awareness within their area of responsibility. The asset, either surface or aerial, could be launched and operated, in a loiter mode, in areas of increased traffic or in vectors in which illicit activity may be likely. Instead of deploying a manned crew that has endurance limits or is easily fatigued by harsh elements, a single drone operator would remotely monitor and control the vehicle. Once a threat is identified, a manned crew would get underway to respond and can be immediately vectored straight to the scene.
An aerial asset has an increased height of eye for a better view of the area. Meanwhile, a surface vessel typically has greater endurance. If on scene for a search-and-rescue case, a USV could provide basic lifesaving equipment, such as personal flotation devices, to boaters in distress. This would be particularly useful for stations during special events or holidays and for seasons with increased boating traffic to maintain officer presence and respond to the increase in volume. For example, applied at certain sectors with fast response cutters, unmanned vehicles could allow the 21–person crew to remain at the pier in a standby status instead of deploying manned assets on a rotational basis to maintain uninterrupted coverage. This could increase the time available for operational units to train, reduce operational fatigue, and grow the attractiveness of sea duty.
USV Communications Stations
Rescue-21 is the current shore-based Coast Guard system to receive calls from mariners in distress. The existing system reaches approximately 20 nautical miles offshore with towers spaced along the coastline. A USV with a tethered aerial component would expand the range of the Rescue-21 network and should be strategically placed in areas of increased traffic density such as offshore fishing grounds. The addition of offshore components improves the capability of the Rescue-21 network to fix a position of distress by creating intercepting lines of position when a mariner speaks on the radio and the signal is received by multiple Rescue-21 towers or Coast Guard assets with radio direction finding instruments. Further, increasing the height of the antennae sending a signal increases the range of a radio transmission and allows boats without satellite communications to have a greater communication range.
Adding USVs as communication relays also increases the range and robustness of the Coast Guard communication network. The expanded range would allow responding assets to have more reliable communication with a sector and could allow the unit to talk with distressed mariners at greater distances. Finally, mobile USV communication stations could be employed in disaster-response missions to reestablish communications, allowing responding agencies to best coordinate relief efforts.
Contracting
It is vital to pick a procurement model that can deliver technology quickly. Highlighted in the Coast Guard’s strategic plan, the first step would be contracting services, rather than asset procurement. This is a proven model illustrated by the successful deployment of ScanEagle on NSCs. Starting in 2021, four NSCs per year were outfitted with this additional capability and saw great success in interdiction operations. The UAS hardware and operators were contractor owned and operated. This contracting strategy would give the Coast Guard the ability to rapidly test multiple vendors and simplifies initial workforce training requirements to operate an unmanned system. Once reliable unmanned systems have shown their ability to improve the performance and efficiency of the service, then the Coast Guard can consider long-term procurement of the systems.
Workforce and Training
Initially, operational units will need to partner with contractors to determine best practices to use and direct USVs. This will help build the institutional knowledge needed for long-term, widespread operations that can eventually be published in tactics, techniques, and procedure documents, or inked in Coast Guard policy.
To prepare for the future of Coast Guard owned, maintained, and operated USVs, Coast Guard leaders must develop and implement methods to train the workforce. Looking to the Navy as an example, the Coast Guard should create a new rate or specialty for autonomous systems. The Navy recently established a robotics warfare specialist rating (RW). RW sailors will serve as operators, maintainers, and managers who plan and control operations of robotic systems. The Coast Guard should establish its own specialty and begin training the workforce through commercially available training courses, Navy RW training, and, eventually, a dedicated Coast Guard Force Readiness Command run “C-school.”
Looking Forward
The global rise of unmanned surface vessels is undeniable, and the Coast Guard needs to must harness this technology to fortify its capabilities and alleviate the pressures on an overstretched workforce. Drawing from lessons and acquisition tactics from existing unmanned system initiatives, the Coast Guard can swiftly adopt these technologies, forging a more resilient and powerful force for the future.
