DefenseMediaNetwork has republished a story that originally appeared in “U.S. Coast Guard 225th Anniversary publication, a special edition of Coast Guard Outlook.”
I’m looking forward to Bill Wells comments.
AP is reporting that a Yangtze River cruise ship has capsized, and it appears most of the 458 people reported aboard were lost, with the notable exceptions of the captain and chief engineer. The cruise was from Nanjing to the southwestern city of Chongqing, and many of those aboard were elderly.
“Waters Deep” by Eileen Mahoney
“In Ocean waves no poppies blow
No crosses stand in ordered row
Their young hearts sleep beneath the wave
The spirited, the good, and the brave,
But stars a …constant vigil keep,
For them who lie beneath the deep,
‘Tis true you cannot kneel in prayer,
On a certain spot and think he’s there
But you can to the ocean go
See whitecaps marching row on row;
Know one for him will always ride,
In and out with every tide,
And when your span of life is passed
He’ll meet you at the ‘Captain’s Mast’
And they who mourn on distant shore,
For sailors who will come home no more,
Can dry their tears and pray for these
Who rest beneath the heaving seas,
For stars that shine and winds that blow
And whitecaps marching row on row
And they can never lonely be,
For when they lived They choose the sea.”
It is Memorial Day. If you are looking for a reminder of Coast Guard history, you might want to check out some of the links on the Heritage page.
The Naval Institute has posted a guide to museum ships.
They are not all Coast Guard, not even a majority, but there are a number of Coast Guard ships on the list.
May 29, the Commandant will be answering questions posted on his Facebook page. Coast Guard Compass has the details and some background.
USNI is reporting the Navy is launching a new system that they hope will allow bottom up innovation including answers to specific command problems.
Looks interesting. It does require a Navy e-mail address to join.
Perhaps if it works the Coast Guard could use the same system.
Gun crew on board USCGC Point Comfort (WPB-82317) firing 81mm mortar during bombardment of suspected Viet Cong staging area one mile behind An Thoi.(August 1965)
Good discussion of the maritime dimensions of “small wars” here.
Insurgencies, failed states, piracy, terrorism all look pretty much like law enforcement and require similar resources. It requires maritime “boots on the ground” in the form of patrolling vessels to do VBSS, including those that can operate in shallow water . The Navy has shown little interest in this type of warfare. Certainly their resources for these types of operations are limited.
When Operation Market time began in 1965, the Navy had 880 ships in the fleet including 287 cruisers, destroyers, and frigates, but that did not mean they did not see a need to bring in 26 Coast Guard 82 foot patrol boats and build 193 Swift boats. Currently the US Navy has about 273 deployable ships including about 100 cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and LCS, plus 13 PCs and the first of their 85 foot Mk VI boats plus a few smaller boats.
It is the nature of these conflicts, that the Navy will never be able to divert all its assets to address the threat. They will continue to worry about and employ assets to counter other threats.
This is an area where the DOD might want to consider funding Coast Guard forces to be available for contingencies to supplement the Navy’s resources. After all the Coast Guard is the country’s primary repository for knowledge about these types of missions. A decision might be based on a poll of the six Combatant Commander’s views of their requirements. It would not be necessary to be able to meet all these contingencies simultaneously, although two trouble spots is certainly a possibility, but choosing the most demanding could provide a good baseline.
Navy photo, experimental ship Stilleto
This sounds like it might be something the Coast Guard might be interested in.
PSS CDS receives critical data from multiple sensors and offers two-way sharing of information and commands across both classified and unclassified domains. Intersect™ Sentry is an automation and analysis tool that creates alerts from a variety of intelligence, sensor and reconnaissance data streams according to parameters defined by the user. Both systems have been successfully demonstrated in support of joint and coalition maritime operations.
Whatever that actually means, it sounds good, and it fits on something WPB sized.
gCaptain has a story, written by a Coastie, about a man with a love for the Coast Guard, who seems to exemplify the quote attributed to Woody Allen, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
An awful lot can be achieved by simple persistence.
Cyclone-class boats before the modernization program in formation. Courtesy of U.S. NAVY
Influential defense columnist David Axe has written a piece picked up by Reuters that advocates that the Navy buy Webber class PCs instead of Littoral Combat Ships as replacements for the Cyclone class patrol craft currently homeported in Bahrain.
“It just so happens that Bollinger Shipyards, the same Louisiana shipyard that built the Cyclones, is building Sentinel-class boats for the Coast Guard that are roughly the same size as the Navy vessels, far more modern and reasonably priced at just $70 million a boat.
“If the Navy bought 10 fewer Littoral ships and acquired 10 new patrol boats for $70 million apiece instead, it would represent a net savings of more than $3 billion in ship construction costs while also boosting national security.
While I can’t totally agree with Mr. Axe, making the Webber class dual service would almost certainly provide some benefit to the Coast Guard in terms of training, future modernization, and long term sustainability.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 