Your Coast Guard assets bring some unique capabilities.
Most ships deployed to the region will have a week-long Mid Deployment Voyage Repair, often here in Bahrain. This week inport offers another unique opportunity for training. We’ve got great Coast Guard expertise here for VBSS training. Ship’s boarding teams are able to practice boarding with a real dhow maintained in a warehouse, which they refer to as the ‘boat in a box.’” Whatever VBSS skills the ships have gotten through the training pipeline, this Coast Guard-led training makes them better. This training pays off. USS Jason Dunham was recently doing an approach and assist visit on a dhow. Their helo was up, and discovered a skiff alongside the dhow, and they observed them passing things back and forth. The helo observed this with visually with their sensors, and the ship did an approach and assist on the dhow. There was nothing unusual to see there. Then they went and chased down this skiff and, sure enough, a cache of weapons was found. That skiff appeared to be headed for the Yemeni coast. It was great teamwork by the ship and helo team on Dunham.
A U.S. Coastguardsman from the Island-class patrol cutter USCGC Aquidneck (WPB 1309) conducts an approach and assist visit with the U.S. Coast Guard Island-class patrol cutter USCGC Wrangell (WPB 1332) in the background. Coast Guard patrol boats are forward-deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in support of maritime security operations to reassure allies and partners and preserve the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce in the region. U.S. Navy photo
Our CMF partners do a lot of the interdiction mission here. They’ve got a lot of success stories –more so with drugs than with weapons, although we are re-emphasizing weapons interdiction.
Piracy was a big issue several years ago. Is it still a mission?
The multinational CTF 151 counter-piracy mission continues– currently led by Kuwait, which just took over from Singapore. There really hasn’t been any recent successful piracy attacks, but that in its own right is a success story. I’m fairly convinced, if we were to let our guard down, we’d start to see it again. CTF 151 is a great hedge against piracy picking up again.
Piracy isn’t the problem it was several years ago. There are some sporadic attempts. But the fact that CTF 151 is out there on the beat is a great deterrent against piracy becoming a problem again. It’s a pretty good success story.
There are some politically charged issues between some of the countries in the region. I imagine that requires a tactful approach.
As professional military officers, we like to keep all of the discussions outside the political and diplomatic realm, and just talk to each other as fellow Sailors and military officers. Vice Adm. Stearney has close relationships with all his counterparts in the region: We’re all interested in maritime security for the region, and all these countries depend on those chokepoints I talked about, to buy and sell their commodities and products on the international market, so it’s in everyone’s interest to keep them open and keep commerce flowing freely through them.
Rear Adm. Pail Schlise, deputy commander of Naval Forces Central Command, speaks to a multinational group of senior enlisted leaders during the Combined Joint Maritime Enlisted Leadership Development Program (ELDP), Back Bone University. ELDP is designed to instill and improve enlisted leadership attributes; allowing senior enlisted leaders to operate more effectively with commander’s intent to make sound and ethical decisions, anticipate, communicate and mitigate risk while conducting joint operations. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Victoria Kinney
You have some Military Sealift Command ships in your AOR, including the new EPF—the expeditionary fast transport. Has it been useful?
The EPF is not a warship, but in the absence of other capability, we’ve been able to employ that ship in a variety of roles. The speed is phenomenal, and it’s a great platform for moving people and equipment around theater. Our EOD expeditionary force is moving around the theater all the time supporting various missions, and EPF is a great way to get them where they need to go with all of their gear, as just one example. EPF is a unique capability that we didn’t have before.