The Japanese recently released the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that had rammed two Japan Coast Guard vessels. They probably thought that tempers would cool, but it looks like the Chinese aren’t satisfied. They have sent three of their fisheries patrol vessels to the disputed waters to defend what they see as their rights.
French shipbuilder DCNS apparently has designs on our Offshore Patrol Cutter Project. The picture is pretty, but the text is in French. Translation anyone?
Coasties frequently compare the size of their service to the New York City Police Force. The Marines think they are a small service, but Coast Guard is only one fifth their size. We usually only see comparisons with Navies in terms of how old our ships are, but how do we stack up in terms of numbers of people?
Would it surprise you to know that with over 42,000 active duty Coast Guardsmen, we have as many, or more people, than the British or French Navies?
The following list is not exhaustive and I can’t guarantee it’s 100% accurate (Wikipedia), but it is representative of the personnel numbers for some significant Navies around the world. As near as possible I’ve only included active duty. In some cases, even when not marked, the figure includes Marines.
U.S. Navy: 330,729
People’s Republic of China : 250,000
Russia: 161,000
India: 56,000
Japan: 46,000
(North) Korean People’s Army Naval Force: 46,000
France: 42,550
Spain: 47,300 including Marines
Republic of Korea (South): 68,000 including 27,000 Marines
Royal Navy: 39,100 including 7,500 Marines
Italy: 35,200
Chile: 25,000
Pakistan: 24,000
Republic of China: 23,000
Argentina: 17,200
Germany 17,000
Australia: 12,500
Netherlands: 10,000
Canada: 9,000
The US Navy is shrinking. We seem to be included in Navy planning more than in the past, but it still seems the services potential as a “naval reserve” frequently goes unrecognized and the potential of relatively modest expenditures to enhance that role are not considered.
The GAO did a study of US anti-piracy efforts and the results are not good.
“…from 2007 to 2009, the most recent year for which complete data were available, the total number of hijackings reported to the International Maritime Bureau increased, ransoms paid by the shipping industry increased sharply, and attacks spread from the heavily patrolled Gulf of Aden–the focus of the Action Plan–to the vast Indian Ocean.”
Seems we don’t know how much piracy costs or how much our countermeasures cost. We have made some progress in international cooperation, but we haven’t done very well at coordinating efforts within the US government.
At least one commentator thinks the process of learning to work internationally may be more important than the actual results. He also kicked off some additional discussion here and here, including discussion of how this reflects on the Cooperative Strategy 21. (It does look like the Brits are showing some initiative.)
The Coast Guard has already been deeply involved in this issue, from LEDETs on scene to recommending best practices to mariners, and if it ever to be successfully addressed, it will be part of the solution.
Earlier I suggested we look at buying three 90 Meter (297ft) Offshore Patrol Vessels newly built by BAE built for Trinidad and Tobago, that they no longer want.
It just occurred to me that there might be an option to lease or charter the vessels rather than an outright purchase, perhaps with a rent-to-own or purchase option. These vessels might be specifically tagged as temporary replacements for the Acushnet and as rolling replacements for two of the most problematic ships (378 or WMEC) until all the true replacements are completed
This option might allow us to avoid the AC&I complications.
Reading the reports of the murder of Texan David Hartley by “pirates” (legally this is not piracy) on Falcon Lake on the border between the US and Mexico, I’ve seen no mention of the Coast Guard in connection with the case, perhaps because we haven’t been allowed to search on the Mexican side of the Lake.
The 25 mile long, three mile wide lake is artificial, resulting from the damming of the Rio Grande, but the resulting waterway is in some ways analogous to the Great Lakes. It also appears to be a ready route for smuggling people, drugs and guns. Do we have any units on Falcon Lake? If not, should we?
The idea of “influence squadrons” has been kicking around the Navy for a while now. The idea is an expansion of the “partnership” stations that the Coast Guard has participated in (here), (here), and (here). Information Dissemination offers some background and has a proposal for implementing these concepts and he sees the Coast Guard as an integral part of it.
Specifically he suggests that we test the concept off the Horn of Africa (Somalia and adjacent territory) by deploying an influence squadron in October of 2011. In addition to the LEDETs and Deployable Operations Group personnel you would expect, he would like to include, “The USCGC Bertholf (WMSL 750), which will work in cooperation with regional Coast Guards to establish fishery protection operations and training around Somalia.” He did not mention the Fast Response Cutter, but vessels like these were including in the original concept of the influence squadron and they are the type of small ships that we might offer our allies in the area through the Foreign Military Sales program (aircraft) (boats). This not only helps the ally, increasing the total size of procurement can lower the unit cost for the Coast Guard as well.
In “New Fiscal Year Reflections ” there is also a call for the Navy to “put its money where its mouth is” in terms of implementing a cooperative strategy or support someone who will (the Coast Guard).
“Either the US Navy needs to make the strategic commitment to the low end and have this reflected in shipbuilding with vessels more appropriately sized for engagement with Coast Guard sized fleets of regional partners, or advocate for a larger US Coast Guard to take up that responsibility as part of the National Fleet. Including smaller vessels as part of the US Navy fleet isn’t a tactical choice as it is framed by Naval leaders; it is a strategic choice the US Navy decided against, despite the rhetoric of their own strategy.”
Reuters is reporting some new countermeasures are emerging in response to piracy in the Indian Ocean. .
First there is the idea of providing a “panic room” where the crew can take refuge, preventing the pirates from taking them as hostages before help can arrive and the second is the possibility of contracted security or, “private navies.”
“The ships will be armed with deck mounted machine guns, more formidable than anything currently used by the pirates. They may also have unmanned drones and a small airship for surveillance.”
Using the engine room as a “panic room” made possible the recapture of the Antigua-Barbuda-flagged, German–owned vessel M/V Magellan Star by U. S. Marines from USS Dubuque (LPD 8).
Referring to “panic rooms” or “citadels” the article talks about the “need to be bullet-proof, contain food stocks, communications equipment and ideally a system to immobilize the ship.”
I don’t think anyone is armoring bulkheads to make them bullet proof, but water tight bulkheads and substantial chunks of steel like engine blocks can provide a lot of protection.
Provision for comms is important. In the case of the Magellan Star the only communication was by cell phone and the battery died just before the Marines assaulted, meaning it was several hours before the Marines were able to let the crew know they had been rescued and the Marines had to damage the ship the to reach the crew.
There is a one hour previously recorded interview of CDR E. A. Westfall, CDR, USCG, Commanding Officer of the USCGC ESCANABA (WMEC 907) at this location. Cdr Westfall touches on a number of things including the recent exchange of gunfire with a suspected drug runner we talked about earlier, the Haiti disaster response, the importance of speed and endurance as ship characteristics, and the 76mm gun. (DER, thanks for the reminder.)
There is also a continuing dialog on the interview and related topics at the US Naval Institute site.
(Please forgive me for using this space to make a proposal that, if accepted, might result in diverting significant funds from the Coast Guard, but I believe this is important. I also know that the Coast Guard is adaptable and has survived major mission changes in the past–plus probably no one will listen.)
We have been waging the “War on Drugs” for decades now. Nixon declared war in 1971, but it started much earlier than that, and it would be hard to argue that our efforts have been successful.
US drug consumption finances terrorism in many parts of the world. Our anti-drug efforts often cause anti-American backlash. Mexico is in crisis and narco-terrorism is starting to spill over the border. To avoid the definition of insanity–continuing to do the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results–we need to do something different.
It’s not enough simply to make drugs more expensive, which is our current strategy. Like all economic activity, distribution of illegal drugs can be discussed in terms of elasticity of demand and supply. The attempt to stop the maximum amount of product assumes that Demand is elastic and that supply is not. That is, it assumes that the drug consumers will choose not to buy drugs if they become more expensive and that the suppliers will not create additional supply to offset losses by passing the higher cost along to the consumer.
This assumption is dead wrong because people who are addicted don’t make good financial decisions, and as the price goes up more criminals are attracted to the trade.
My suspicion is that supply is highly elastic, meaning as the price goes up, supply will expand rapidly, and as price goes down, supply is going to fall off rapidly. On the other hand, I suspect demand is not highly elastic. Those that want their fix will pay anything, while others would not buy it if the price fell to zero.
Whenever you hear officials talk about the “War on Drugs,” they inevitably talk about taking a multi-layered approach to interdiction, as if that were obviously the best approach. Perhaps in terms of intercepting the maximum amount of product it is. But if the intention is to actually stop the trafficking in drugs, I think there may be a better way. (I am talking here only about hard drugs that represent a serious health hazard, because I’m going to suggest a radically different approach that would require a much more hard nosed approach on the part of the justice system.)
If we look at it from the smuggler’s point of view. There are lots of steps and lots of people involved. Bringing the product to market is a multi-step process, including growing or manufacturing, shipping to storage, warehousing, one or more additional legs of the journey to market, warehousing at the destination, repackaging, wholesale distribution, and ultimately retail sale. In most cases, because this is big business, the individuals responsible for each step are different and each makes a profit even if we successfully intercept the product at some step further down the chain. In addition there are management, facilitators, and agents who profit fro the trade. The risk is spread out so that the risk for any one highly profitable step may be less than 1%. No wonder this is a thriving business.
If the idea is to actually stop the trade in drugs, its not enough to interdict a small portion of the drugs at each step in the distribution chain. We have to break one link in the distribution chain (and really, it only needs to be one), by convincing the people involved, that the risks outweigh the rewards and they should go into another line of work. If we adopt a multi-layered approach, we are trying to convince people all up and down the supply chain that they all should go into a different line of work. This isn’t necessary since breaking one link will stop the process and it dilutes our efforts. We need to target precisely and divert all the money and effort we now spread over many forms of drug enforcement to attack the most vulnerable link in the distribution chain.
What is that link? The retail representative, the one person in the chain who has to advertise that he is in the drug distribution business. We have to make the probable consequences of being a drug dealer so unpleasant that no right thinking criminal would choose that line of work. What will be the result? First the drug dealers share of the profit will go up as the risk increases. There will be attempts at “mass marketing” by internet sales that will have to be addressed, but if there are no direct sellers, wholesale demand will dry up at the same time supply competition will increase, destroying the profitability of the business.
Ultimately drug lords will have to get another job–like stock broker.
How do we go about this? Make taking drug dealers off the street a number 1 priority, then apply mandatory sentences of say 20 years. Overcrowd the prisons? I don’t think so. Once we start applying this vigorously and consistently, being a dealer will no longer be worth the risks, but if we need a bit more space in the prisons, start treating marijuana abuse like alcohol abuse. We need to establish priorities and apply them ruthlessly in order to destroy the traffic in hard drugs.
Need a moral basis for hard time for drug dealers? Every sale is an attempted murder. If they haven’t killed someone already, its just an accident. Its a serious crime and it deserves to be taken seriously. More importantly, without dealers, the entire organization will crash.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 