U.S. Coast Guard crews patrol the Rio Grande near Mission, Texas, in October 2025 as part of Operation River Wall. U.S. COAST GUARD
“After overseeing a purge of Pentagon advisory committees last year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is adding a new one to the list, focused on homeland security and defense.
“Announced in the Federal Register Sept. 11, the Homeland Defense Board aims to fill a gap Hegseth sees in providing military guidance to homeland security missions.
“’The specific, integrated advice required by the SecWar regarding the military’s mission of defense of the Homeland and Homeland security cooperation is not available from any other Federal advisory committee, government agency, or alternative source,’ establishing documents state.”
The Coast Guard is mentioned only once.
The large-scale deployment of National Guard troops to U.S. cities to support law enforcement; the ongoing deployment of troops to the southern border; and the aggressive move into drug interdiction missions traditionally executed by the U.S. Coast Guard have all blurred the lines between the mission sets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. The establishing memo suggests the new board will create a bridge between the two that didn’t previously exist.
This might be an avenue to providing more visibility for the Coast Guard’s role in defense and for obtaining more Navy support for drug interdiction.
It may allow the Coast Guard to have more interaction with services other than the Navy; after all, the Army is still legally responsible for Coast Defense and if we detect an attack underway, we may need to ask for help from an Army or Air Force base.
It’s not clear if the Coast Guard will have any representative on the board.
“Also on the board will be one civilian and one field- or mid-grade officer from each military branch and ‘such other members as the SecWar or the Deputy Secretary of War may appoint or designate,’ establishing documents state.”
but that may only refer to DOD/DOW military services.
I hope DoW is being careful and deliberate with the decision to have their components seemingly take the lead with alot of the execution of interdiction ops, which has never occurred before. If the congressional makeup for the next session changes, you can be sure democrats will scrutinize the legality of these actions and if any violations of USC delineation occurred regarding warfighters participating in these ops outside of their statutory missions.