United States Exclusive Economic Zone – Pacific centered NOAA map. https://www.gc.noaa.gov/documents/2011/012711_gcil_maritime_eez_map.pdf

For some time, I have thought that Coast Guard forces are under represented in the Pacific. Pacific Area’s responsibilities have grown. Because of the great distances in the Pacific they have greater need for ships with greater endurance, but rather than gaining long range ships, they now have fewer. Pacific Area has never had even half of our larger patrol cutters, but at one time they did have ten of our 12 WHECs.

When I retired in 1991, Pacific Area had ten WHEC and five WMECs, 15 large patrol ships. Now they have six National Security Cutters and three WMECs, 9 large patrol ships. The plan was that the first four OPCs would go to Pacific Area, presumably replacing at least two of the existing WMECs, but what will happen to the OPCs contracted to Eastern is still not clear, but near term there is no chance we will see more than one, which would presumably replace one WMEC. In short there is no chance we are going to see a significant increase in the PAC AREA large cutter fleet any time soon as a result of construction.

If you look at the distribution of the US EEZ as depicted above.

• Total US EEZ: 11,351,000 km²
• East Coast EEZ: 915,763 km²
• Gulf Coast EEZ: 707,832 km²
• Puerto Rico EEZ: 177,685 km²
• Total LANT Area EEZ: 1,801,280 km² 15.9%
• Total PAC Area EEZ: 9,549,720 km²  84.1%

The US EEZ in the Pacific Area is about 5.3 times as large as the US EEZ in the Atlantic Area, but the Pacific Area has only 28% of the Coast Guard’s large patrol cutters.

PAC AREA could have more cutter time for operations in the Western Pacific and Alaskan waters, without adding cutters, if LANT AREA took full responsibility for the Eastern Pacific drug interdiction effort. There are good reasons, that might be desirable, not the least of which are that LANT has the assets, the Eastern Pacific has the heaviest drug trafficking, and while it is counter intuitive, LANT AREA assets are actually closer to the Eastern Pacific drug transit zones than PAC AREA assets. But there is also an organizational reason.

COMBATANT COMMANDS

The DOD and the Navy do not divide up the world the way the Coast Guard does, so the DOD and Navy commands charged with doing drug enforcement operations in both the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific end up talking to both PAC and LANT Areas.

US Atlantic Fleet includes all the even numbered fleets: 2nd, 4th, and 6th. The Pacific Fleet  includes all the odd numbered fleets: 3rd, 5th, and 7th.

It would simplify coordination if a single Coast Guard Command was responsible for coordinating all drug enforcement operations in 4th Fleet, and that single command should be LANT AREA. This would also ease coordination in wartime.

US Navy Fleet Organization