
Craig Hooper suggests that the Navy could benefit from a cooperative effort with the Coast Guard in this Forbes article.
“Even as the Navy embraces robotic craft, early at-sea experience counts. Independence matters. To help maintain a small population of early career officers with experience in early command at sea, the Navy may be wise to procure a set of “navalized” patrol boats based upon the Fast Response Cutter platform, and use them to advance unmanned technology while working with the Coast Guard on certain tasks.
“Adding marine-ized sensors from the F-35, anti-drone technology, a bare-bones combat system and unmanned command-and-control capabilities onto a proven Fast Response Cutter hull offers the Navy a useful asset that the Navy and early-career naval officers can employ alongside Coast Guard units. By leveraging the Coast Guard’s existing small boat doctrine, operational concepts and logistical support network, the integration and leadership challenges facing the Navy’s struggling small craft commands can be reduced.
“By building capabilities to work together, both Services can advance their priorities while offering early-career officers relevant opportunities to command at a sea.
If I had to venture a guess, it would be that Junior Officers posted to shore installations are less likely to reprimanded for bad decisions than those on small boat units with small boat crews. It’s easier to hide in the numbers of personnel on shore than at sea.
( https://www.dcms.uscg.mil/Portals/10/CG-1/leadership/docs/pdf.jona.pdf?ver=2017-03-27-133808-843 )
I would be opposed to this as our officers would suffer at the expense of the Navy. Why create a problem with our officer corps to solve theirs? Also, if you’ve ever done any joint ops, there is a huge cultural difference between USCG and USN in how we approach things.