“The Coast Guard capitalizes on the unique authorities and capabilities of interagency partners to bring a unified, whole-of-government effort to defend our nation from threats posed by illicit actors. …”

According to Papp, the service has interdicted more than 500 vessels transporting shipments of cocaine from South America since 1995, including the arrest or detention of nearly 2,000 smugglers. “Over the last five years, Coast Guard cutters and LEDETs operating in the offshore regions of the transit zone have removed more than 500 metric tons of cocaine, with a wholesale value of nearly $17 billion,” he said.

 

The National Fleet

Indicative of how closely the Navy and Coast Guard work together, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert and Papp signed a “National Fleet Policy: A Joint United States Navy and United States Coast Guard“ policy statement in March 2014. The document looks at both the Navy and Coast Guard forces as a singular fleet, with a spectrum of capability.

Rear Adm. William C. McQuilkin, director, Navy Strategy and Policy Division, and U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Peter J. Brown, assistant commandant for Response Policy, who are serving as co-chairs of the new National Fleet Board, wrote of the National Fleet Plan that “… the Policy provides direction and guidance for our services to achieve interoperability for 21st century maritime and naval operations.”

The board is investigating ways the two services can better support one another.

The Navy and Coast Guard “… are operating as one team to safeguard our nation’s security, citizens, interests and allies,” stated McQuilkin and Brown. “Our commonality is the sea, and together we have forged a strong National Fleet in support of our nation’s interests.”

The board will meet semi-annually and will update the plan each year. In some cases, both services share the same equipment and use the same procedures. The procedures for a visit, board, search, and seizure team are the same regardless of service. But there are many candidates for alignment. Counterparts from each service will be training together more, sharing the same classroom instruction, and conducting more “cross-decking” of personnel to glean experience and lessons learned from each other.

“We will look to streamline our parts acquisition process as we institutionalize Naval Logistics Initiatives in Navy and Coast Guard logistics training and education venues,” wrote McQuilkin and Brown. “We will examine and develop Arctic lessons learned and incorporate them into training and education throughout our services.”

The National Fleet Plan sets out to achieve several specific objectives:

• Current and evolving operations: Establishing a USN-USCG Arctic working group to collaboratively implement action items within service strategies and generate initiatives for further cooperation.
• Integrated logistics: Identify commonality of ship/aircraft parts, geographic logistics points, and coordinate maintenance and readiness sustainment work.
• Training: Identify interoperable maritime skill-sets like pilot training, information dominance, explosive ordinance disposal, diving, electronic warfare, intelligence, and tactical operations.
• Command, control, communications systems: The Permanent Joint Working Group (PJWG) will plan and coordinate USN and USCG acquisition of C3 systems.
• Sensors: Pursue common sensors such as fire control radars, electronic warfare systems, and electro-optical sights integrated into gun weapons systems.
• Engineering systems: Improve agreements between Navy Sea Systems Command and USCG to expand and leverage research and development efforts applicable to advancing science and technology.
• Weapons systems: Explore interagency commonality for stabilized small arms mounts, maintenance and sparing of weapon systems, and joint weapons certification.
• Platforms: Explore interagency commonality in items such as propulsion systems, unmanned aircraft systems, and readiness training courses.

Working groups have been assigned to each of these focus areas and will develop solutions under the auspices of the National Fleet Board.

 

Multinational Exercises

To achieve interoperability, the Coast Guard participates in multinational naval exercises like the biannual Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, fleet exercises held in waters off Hawaii and the coast of California, and Tradewinds in the Caribbean.

With 22 nations, 25,000 personnel, 49 ships, six submarines, and some 200 aircraft, RIMPAC 2014 was the world’s largest international maritime exercise. The CGC Waesche was one of the participating ships, and took a leadership role serving as commander of Combined Task Force 175, which included ships from the People’s Republic of China, Brunei, Mexico, France, and New Zealand.

RIMPAC brings allies and partners together in a unique training experience to kindle and continue cooperative relationships that are so critical to the safe and secure presence of maritime forces on the world’s oceans. The multinational exercise included ship-handling, boarding exercises, replenishment at sea, and live-fire gunnery and missile shoots.

Waesche was part of a Japanese-led task force conducting a two-day mass casualty and search and rescue exercise, in conjunction with the humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) exercises. The cutter also participated in maritime interdiction operation exercises involving the Chinese navy.

“Seeing all the different countries in the area and working so closely with them is such a unique opportunity because normally we don’t get to work in an environment with so many different nations,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Dennis Phillips, a boatswain’s mate aboard Waesche.