Lt. Marina S. Turner, MTB’s boat operations and engineering section chief, noted some mobile training also involves non-security forces, “such as maritime captains who primarily ferry customs officials out to boats for inspections. We also can bring in subject-matter experts from throughout the Coast Guard as mobile instructors, as needed.”
Coast Guard officials said MTB can deliver a complete package of training to small groups, multi-agency audiences, or several nations in a regional forum. Instructors often utilize lesson plans in the host-nation’s language for infusion into that nation’s training program, including an international training handbook outlining courses taught. While attendance in the resident courses requires a strong level of English proficiency, mobile courses often are taught in the host-nation’s native language, using contract interpreters provided by the U.S. Embassy.
Funding for individual students comes from about 50 sources, including countries that pay from their own budgets. Others use Foreign Military Sales (FMS) money, such as Bahrain, which sends three students a year through the International Maritime Officers Course (IMOC). And each U.S. Embassy is given a specific amount of money each year for host-nation training and determines how some of that is allocated.
While responsible for courses of instruction, ITD plays no part in choosing the nations or students receiving its training.
“We’re the executors, so it certainly isn’t us,” Holt said. “To get a student into resident training or to get a mobile team deployed, the individual nation will identify a need to the applicable U.S. COCOM [combatant command]; if COCOM approves it, the DIA [director of International Affairs] is approached and determines who comes and who doesn’t. We obviously have a finite amount of personnel and assets we can provide on both resident and mobile.”
Petty Officer 1st Class Rene Gonzalez, a maritime enforcement specialist from U.S. Coast Guard Training Team East in Portsmouth, Va., demonstrates the proper way to apply pressure to the thumb of a handcuffed subject on Chief Petty Officer Wayne Gangstad from U.S. Coast Guard Training Team West in Alameda, Calif., during pressure-point training with a multinational group of students as part of Exercise Tradewinds 2011. Tradewinds is an annual exercise designed to build relationships and enhance stability and interoperability throughout the Caribbean region. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class George Degener
More than one-third of ITD’s total complement are officers or senior civilians. According to Holt, there are 21 primary MTB deployers, although all nine ITD unit management personnel also occasionally deploy, as do resident program trainers. Those assigned to the MTB average 210 days overseas each year.
“On the enlisted side, there are specific coded billets from which we draw our trainers; we want qualified personnel with previous training and experience,” Holt said, adding the senior officers and civilians have service afloat before joining the international training unit. “For the active-duty folk, this is a one-off assignment; there’s no real career path currently in the Coast Guard for this. And we’re really the only organization within the Coast Guard specifically dedicated to international training.”
That level of experience is vital to the division’s mobile training, given its small complement and the scope and importance of the task before them. MTB personnel receive training in counter-terrorism, force protection, survival skills, and advanced training in their specialty fields, as well as being cross-trained in several Coast Guard missions. Many also are sent to language immersion training before deploying abroad in teams.
While there is no requirement for a nation to send its top maritime personnel through both resident and mobile training, the two components were brought together under the ITD as complementary parts of the U.S. Coast Guard’s global training mission.
“Normally, a team comprises four people, including a team leader – some officers, some senior enlisted. A team leader goes through a rigorous qualification process and once designated is a position of authority. So I may have an E-6 [petty officer first class] as chief of a mission to Tanzania with a CPO [chief petty officer/E-7], a lieutenant, and an E-5 [petty officer second class] with him. But as the mission chief, he’s in charge. Anyone of senior rank may be new to such missions,” Holt explained.
“Those teams also have high visibility in the nations they help, often meeting with the U.S. ambassador, as well as the head of state or chief of defense of those nations. About a year ago, Gen. [Carter F.] Ham, commander of AFRICOM [U.S. Africa Command], stopped by and spent an afternoon with one of our teams, watching their training sessions.”
While there is no requirement for a nation to send its top maritime personnel through both resident and mobile training, the two components were brought together under the ITD as complementary parts of the U.S. Coast Guard’s global training mission.