ARLINGTON, Va. – The U.S. Coast Guard has a unique role in
the growing global rivalry with Russia and China, the service’s second-ranking
leader says.

In addition to Department of Homeland Security, law
enforcement and maritime rescue missions, Coast Guard assets are deployed with
the Navy in the Middle East, seizing illegal narcotics shipments in South
American and Caribbean waters and traveling the increasingly tense Indo-Pacific
region, said Adm. Charles W. Ray, the Coast Guard’s vice commandant.

In addition to interoperability with the Navy overseas, the
Coast Guard forms “a unique element of the joint force with the smaller
countries and navies of the world” because it is both a military and law
enforcement organization, Ray told the annual Surface Navy Association convention
here Jan. 15. “There’s something unique about a white ship with a racing
stripe,” he said, adding the Coast Guard operates at “the level below lethal
level.”

That role has become more significant because the “Great
Power Competition” has reached the High North, where “the Coast Guard is
the nation’s presence,” he said.

The Arctic region makes demands not seen in a long time.
When the medium icebreaker U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy sailed above the
Arctic Circle last summer, “she was literally off the grid for almost a month,”
Ray said.

“There’s not a lot of there, there, when it comes to comms
and navigation,” the deputy commandant added, noting the issue isn’t just
communications but domain awareness. As Arctic sea ice melts, previously
impassable sea lanes are opening during the summer to commercial maritime
traffic and naval vessels. “We’ve got to be aware of who else is up there,” Ray
said.

Designed to break 4.5 feet of ice continuously and operate
in temperatures as low as 50 degrees below zero, the Healy is out of service
for maintenance work until June. The nation’s only operational heavy
icebreaker, the much larger but aging Polar Star, can break ice 21 feet thick. Commissioned
in 1976, Polar Star is on its seventh tour of icebreaking duties in Antarctica.
Both vessels are homeported in Seattle, far from Arctic waters.

The Coast Guard wants to increase its icebreaking fleet with
six new polar security cutters. Congress appropriated $655 million in fiscal
2019 to begin construction of the first, with another $20 million appropriated
for long-lead-time materials to build a second icebreaker. 

While the Coast Guard has gotten funding to build five
classes of new cutters including icebreakers, Ray expressed concern about where
they all will be homeported and maintained in the future. “We’ve got about $2
billion in shore infrastructure backlog,” the admiral said.

ARLINGTON,
Va. — The U.S. Coast Guard is so bullish on the Insitu-built ScanEagle unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) that it is moving up the schedule of installing it on its Legend-class
national security cutters (NSCs).

The Coast
Guard awarded Insitu an ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance)
services contract to Insitu in 2016 to deploy the ScanEagle onboard one NSC,
the Stratton. Two years ago, the Coast Guard awarded Insitu a contract to
operate the ScanEagle on board all NSCs.

“Over the
past year and a half, we have begun integration on board all national security
cutters,” said Ron Tremain, vice president of Insitu Defense, a Boeing company,
who spoke to Seapower on Jan. 15 at the Surface Navy Association’s gathering
here.

“We had a notional
timeline to integrate over a five-year period and [Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl
Schultz] stated in his speech last year that he wanted to integrate it on board
all national security cutters by the end of 2020.”

“So that
expedited the program,” Tremain added. “We’ve installed it on five national
security cutters to date, and it will be installed on all national security
cutters currently built by the end of 2020.”

Insitu
installs the UAVs and their launch-and-recovery equipment and ground-control
stations on board the ships, he said. Insitu sends four-person teams to deploy
with each ship. They operate the entire system once on board. The teams are
fully embedded with their ship’s crew.

“The
ground-control station is fully integrated into the command-and-control
structure of the ship,” Tremain said. “The launch-and-recovery equipment is
roll-on/roll-off.”

A standard
pack-out for a deployment is three ScanEagle UAVs, he said. The sensor systems
include and electro-optical/infrared camera, a laser pointer, a communication
relay, an Automatic Identification System interrogator and Vidar (visual
detection and ranging, a surface search capability).

Retired Coast
Vice Adm. John P. Currier, head of JP Currier Consulting LLC and former head on
Coast Guard acquisition, told Seapower that the sensor data product from
the ScanEagle is provided to the cutter for analysis and action.

Currier said
that before deployment of the ScanEagle the NSC had a scan of 35 miles either
side of the ship with its organic sensors.

“With
ScanEagle on board, for good parts of the day, you’re up to 75 miles either
side of the ship as you’re moving through the sea space,” he said. “ScanEagle
is a game-changer.”

“We’ve
effectively doubled the search area of a national security cutter,” Tremain
said. “We’re he only company flying with Vidar, and we’re surveilling up to 1,000
square miles of open ocean per flight hour, and we’re identifying greater than
90% of the targets.”

Deployments
under the current contract have been made by cutters Monroe, James and Stratton.
Four were made on Stratton on the 2016 contract.

Tremain said
the ScanEagle teams have been credited with assisting in the interception on
nearly $3 billion worth of narcotics to date.

The current
$118 million ISR services contract is a one-year contract with seven options
for one-year extensions. Tremain said that with the expedition of the
installations the value of the contract will go up exponentially.

He said that
Insitu is integrating ScanEagle on a number of ships of other navies around the
world.

The Coast Guard also plans
to integrate the ScanEagle on the forthcoming Heritage-class offshore patrol
cutters.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Coast Guard will commission the fast-response cutter Daniel Tarr in Galveston, Texas, on Jan. 10, according to the Coast Guard’s 8th District.  

The Daniel Tarr is the 36th FRC delivered to the Coast Guard by Bollinger Shipyards. Vice Adm. Scott Buschman, Coast Guard Atlantic Area commander, will preside over the ceremony. 

Lt. Nicholas Martin is the Daniel Tarr’s commanding officer. 

Daniel Tarr, the cutter’s namesake, was one of four Coast Guard coxswains who served with the Marines during the amphibious invasion of Tulagi, Solomon Islands, in August 1942. Tarr enlisted as a surfman and later became coxswain of USS McKean’s Boat Number 1 prior to the invasion. 

On Aug. 7, 1942, Tarr, along with the other three coxswains, landed the first wave of the Marine Corps’ Raider Battalion on the beaches of Tulagi. In the following three days, they also delivered vitally needed equipment, ammunition and supplies. For their role in the landing of the Marines’ first wave and capture of Tulagi, the four coxswains were awarded the Silver Star Medal. They were the first enlisted men in the Coast Guard to receive the Silver Star Medal. 

The Coast Guard Cutter Daniel Tarr’s patrol area will encompass 900 miles of coastline for the 8th District, from Carrabelle, Florida, to Brownsville, Texas. Fast-response cutters are named after Coast Guard enlisted heroes and are replacing the service’s 110-foot patrol boats. These vessels feature advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment. 

MIAMI — The Coast Guard interdicted nine Cuban
migrants 25 miles southeast of Tavernier Creek on Jan. 2, the Coast Guard 7th
District said in a release.

Coast Guard Sector Key West watchstanders received a notification via radio of a migrant vessel with nine people aboard. The watchstanders directed the launch of a Coast Guard Station Islamorada response boat and diverted the Coast Guard Cutter Charles Sexton (WPC-1108) to interdict the vessel.

The cutter crew interdicted the vessel and
safely embarked the migrants.

One migrant was transferred into U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody after being brought ashore for more advanced medical care.

The remaining eight migrants were safely
repatriated to Cuba on Jan. 4.

A total of 52 Cuban migrants have attempted to
illegally enter the U.S. via the maritime environment in fiscal year
2020, which began Oct. 1, 2019, compared to 454 Cuban migrants in fiscal year
2019.  These numbers represent the total number of at-sea interdictions,
landings and disruptions in the Florida Straits, the Caribbean and Atlantic.

SAN DIEGO — The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf offloaded about 18,000 pounds of cocaine on Dec. 18 seized from known drug-transit zones of the eastern Pacific Ocean worth approximately $312 million. 

The interdictions were made between mid-October and early December by the joint efforts of the following five separate Coast Guard cutter crews: 

•        Northland was responsible for one case, or 3,328 pounds 

•        James was responsible for one case, or 1,609 pounds 

•        Harriet Lane was responsible for one case, or 5,037 pounds 

•        Thetis was responsible for one case, or 2,394 pounds 

•        Bertholf was responsible for three cases, or 5,851 pounds 

“This offload demonstrates another successful example of the ‘cycle of justice,’ said Vice Adm. Linda L. Fagan, Coast Guard Pacific Area commander. 

“This cycle begins with intelligence-driven detection and monitoring of illicit activities that then cue the interdiction and apprehension of smugglers and contraband, and ultimately leads to criminal prosecution. This ‘cycle of justice’ disrupts a ‘cycle of crime,’ which left unchecked, fuels violence and instability that corrodes our Hemisphere’s social and economic fabric, and directly contributes to historically high drug-related deaths in neighborhoods across North America.” 

Also in attendance for the offload was Preston Grubbs, the principal deputy administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Robert Brewer, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. 

“One of our key missions is stopping dangerous drugs before they reach our shores,” Brewer said. “Succeeding in that mission would not be possible without the tireless efforts of the United States Coast Guard.” 

Numerous U.S. agencies from the Departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security cooperated in the effort to combat transnational organized crime. The Coast Guard, Navy, Customs and Border Protection, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with allied and international partner agencies, play a role in counter-drug operations. 

The fight against drug cartels in the eastern Pacific requires unity of effort in all phases from detection, monitoring and interdictions, to criminal prosecutions by U.S. Attorneys in districts across the nation.

ARLINGTON, Va. — As the U.S. Coast Guard commissions more Sentinel-class fast-response cutters (FRCs) it can expand its presence in the Pacific and will increase its capabilities in the Persian Gulf. 

“We commissioned the 35th [FRC] in October,” Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl L. Schultz said Dec. 10 to an audience at the Navy League’s “Special Topic Breakfast” here, noting that the FRC program is greatly increasing the Coast Guard’s reach and capabilities. 

The Coast Guard plans to procure a total of 58 FRCs built by Bollinger Shipyards in Lockport, Louisiana. He said the last dozen or so were delivered with zero discrepancies. About four FRCs are delivered each year. 

Schultz said the Coast Guard will station three FRCs in Guam and four in Bahrain. Two are slated to join the service’s Patrol Force Southwest Asia in Bahrain in early 2021 and the other two will follow later. He said he plans to add two more for a total of six. They will replace six Island-class patrol boats in the Persian Gulf. 

FRCs recently were added to Hawaii. One of them made a 2,700-nautical-mile voyage to American Samoa on its own fuel, accompanied by a buoy tender as a support ship for refueling at its destination, demonstrating the reach and seakeeping qualities of FRCs. 

Schultz noted that the reach of the FRCs in Guam will enable to Coast Guard to counter the growing Chinese economic presence — including illegal fishing — in the Pacific island nations in Micronesia, many of which depend of fishing as a major economic benefit.  

“We can help them with fisheries,” Schultz said. “With these island nations, it’s a big part of their existence.”

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Coast Guard Cutter Heriberto Hernandez repatriated 26 migrants to the Dominican Republic on Dec. 9 following the interdiction of an illegal migrant voyage on Dec. 7 in the Mona Passage, the Coast Guard 7th District said in a release. 

The interdiction was the result of ongoing efforts in support of Operation Caribbean Guard and the Caribbean Border Interagency Group (CBIG).  

The crew of a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Air and Marine Operations marine patrol aircraft sighted the illegal migrant voyage, about 35 nautical miles south of Mona Island. The Coast Guard Cutter Reliance diverted to the scene and interdicted the 25-foot migrant boat with 22 Dominican men and four women aboard. 

“I’m extremely proud of our crews and our CBP partners who did an excellent job responding to this case and rescuing all 26 occupants aboard this grossly overloaded makeshift vessel,” said Cmdr. Beau Power, Sector San Juan chief of response. 

“The migrants were not wearing lifejackets and they were observed continuously bailing out water from their boat. Unfortunately, this is a common representation of what an illegal migrant voyage looks like each and every day, the conditions of the voyage are extremely dangerous and the migrants are always at risk of losing their lives at any given moment.”  

The crew of the Reliance transferred the migrants to the Heriberto Hernandez for their repatriation. The migrants were transported to Dominican Republic waters just off Samaná, where they were transferred to a Dominican Republic navy patrol boat. 

KEY WEST, Fla. — The crew of Coast Guard Cutter Thetis returned home Dec. 5 to Key West, Florida, after completing a 79-day patrol throughout the Eastern Pacific Ocean in support of U.S. Southern Command Joint Interagency Task Force South and the Coast Guard 11th District, the Coast Guard 7th District said in a release of the same date. 

The Thetis crew interdicted four suspected drug smuggling vessels seizing an estimated 9,300 pounds of cocaine and preventing more than a ton of additional drugs dumped by suspected smugglers from reaching the United States. The interdictions, which included two low-profile vessels in one week and resulted in the apprehension of 13 suspected smugglers and seizure of drugs with an estimated value of $165-million, were accomplished by working with multiple interagency partners to counter transnational criminal organizations and hinder the illicit flow of drugs, people and other dangerous shipments bound for the United States.  

“These interdictions were an all-hands effort working with Joint Interagency Task Force South, interagency partners and partner nations in the region,” said Cmdr. Randall Chong, commanding officer of the Coast Guard Cutter Thetis. “I could not be prouder of my crew for stepping up and successfully completing our mission.” 

During a port call in Huatulco, Mexico, Thetis crewmembers volunteered for a community relations event and built a playground at a school located in the mountains of the Oaxaca province. The Thetis crew provided children with a new, safe playground that will last them many years to come. 

In addition to its operational success, the Thetis crew completed damage control, seamanship, and navigation and shipboard helicopter operations and training with an embarked Coast Guard Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron MH-65 Dolphin from Jacksonville, Florida. 

Named for the famous Greek mythology sea nymph and mother of Achilles, the Thetis is a 270-foot Famous-class cutter, homeported in Key West and has a crew of 100. 

ASTORIA, Ore. — The Coast Guard Cutter Steadfast returned to homeport Thursday following a 60-day counter drug patrol in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, the Coast Guard 13th District said in a Dec. 5 release. 

The Steadfast crewmembers steamed over 10,500 miles, conducted over 100 readiness drills, enforced maritime safety and security and deterred illicit narcotics movements in the region. 

The 210-foot cutter provided maritime domain awareness and served as an on-scene law-enforcement asset while patrolling the Eastern Pacific Ocean. 

During patrol breaks, crewmembers volunteered for a number of community service projects.  

Crewmembers partnered with the community and the local Navy League to paint and refurbish the exterior of the local elementary school for children with special needs in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. 

Crewmembers also teamed with the Bacaanda Foundation to assist in the construction of a retaining wall that supports access to a primary school, creating a safe-walking path for children in Huatulco, Mexico. 

Steadfast crewmembers also represented the Coast Guard, among several other U.S. and Australian navy vessels, during the 2019 San Francisco Fleet Week Parade of Ships, and hosted more than 1,500 public tours. 

For the parade’s grand finale, in front of more than three million viewers, members of the Coast Guard’s Maritime Security Response Team repelled from a Coast Guard helicopter to the Steadfast’s flight deck just after the cutter passed under the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Steadfast is a Reliance Class cutter that has been home ported in Astoria since 1994. Previously, based in St. Petersburg, Florida, where the cutter earned the nickname “El Tiburon Blanco,” or “White Shark,” from drug smugglers for its notoriously effective law enforcement operations in the Caribbean. 

PHILADELPHIA — Members of Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay, Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Team New York, Customs and Border Protection, and multiple state and local police agencies increased maritime operations to deter illegal activity within the ports of Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, over the past three weeks, the Coast Guard 5^th District said in a Dec. 3 release. 

These combined joint agency efforts were focused on a period of heavy import and export before the holidays, accounting for more than $1.2 billion of commerce throughout the Delaware Bay watershed. 

During this time period, the Coast Guard and partner agencies conducted more than 470 hours of extensive joint operations that included the inspection of 235 vehicles before export, screening 150 ferry passengers and the pier side examination of 62 shipping containers. 

“The Delaware River contributes more than $77 billion dollars in economic value each year,” said Capt. Scott Anderson, Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay Commander and Captain of the Port. “These types of joint operations help unify law enforcement efforts in the port to disrupt, detect and deter illegal activities by sharing unique capabilities and resources between agencies.” 

In March 2019, an interagency task force seized 537 kilograms of contraband from a commercial vessel at the port of Philadelphia and in June 2019, nearly 20 tons of cocaine was seized, with an estimated street value of $1.3 billion. 

The Delaware River port facilities can receive more than 3,000 deep draft vessels each year. There are more than 70 private and public facilities capable of servicing bulk, break bulk and containerized cargos. 

Philadelphia is the largest North American port for the importing of paper, meat, cocoa beans and fruit. The Delaware River is also the largest energy port on the East Coast.