The Coast Guard Cutter Midgett and the Canadian coast guard ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier conduct a joint maritime security patrol in the Chukchi Sea on July 20, 2021. US Coast Guard photo.

Below is a D17 news release. If Midgett is in the Chukchi Sea, which is North of the Bering Strait and all above the Arctic Circle, this is no normal Alaska Patrol. Midgett also got to rendezvous with USCGC Healy, which is conducting a circumnavigation of North America (more Healy photos here).  (I don’t recognize the type boat below, presume it is one of Healy’s boats, any info appreciated.)

Coast Guard Cutter Healy crew members assist Coast Guard Cutter Midgett crew members while they climb aboard from the cutter boat in the Bering Strait, July 25, 2021. The Midgett is a national security cutter that ensures U.S. presence to assure U.S. sovereignty and resource security in remote Pacific regions. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Janessa Warschkow.

The Russian patrol ship Kamchatka, mentioned in the story, is pictured below. It is a member of the 1066 ton Purga class.

The Kamchatka border patrol ship (serial number 052) of project 22120 of the Coast Guard of the Russian Federal Border Guard Service crosses the Öresund Strait, heading from the Baltic Sea to the North, 08/20/2019 (c) frankmh

U.S. Coast Guard patrols U.S. Arctic

JUNEAU, Alaska — Crews aboard Coast Guard Cutters Midgett and Healy patrolled the Bering and Chukchi Seas off the coast of Alaska this summer to demonstrate the Coast Guard’s commitment to ensuring a safe and secure Arctic and to work respectively with Canadian and Russian counterparts on shared maritime interests. 

In late July, the crew of Coast Guard Cutter Midgett, one of the Service’s National Security Cutters, conducted combined operations and training with the Canadian coast guard Ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the Chukchi Sea, a joint patrol of the U.S.-Russia maritime boundary north of the Diomede Islands with the Russian Border Guard vessel Kamchatka, and a joint transit of the Bering Strait with the Coast Guard Cutter Healy, one of the service’s two operational polar icebreakers. In each case, Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak crews forward-deployed to Kotzebue, Alaska in an HC-130J Hercules airplane supported the operations.

The simultaneous presence of Healy and Midgett in the Arctic region signals the increasing demand for the merged icebreaking and maritime security capability required of future Polar Security Cutters.

Midgett is the Coast Guard’s eighth National Security Cutter and is homeported in Honolulu. Featuring advanced command-and-control capabilities, national security cutters are the flagship of the Coast Guard’s fleet, deploying globally to confront national security threats, strengthen maritime governance, and promote economic prosperity. While National Security Cutters possess advanced operational capabilities, more than 70% of the Coast Guard’s offshore presence is the service’s aging fleet of medium endurance cutters, many of which are over 50 years old and approaching the end of their service life. Replacing the fleet with new Offshore Patrol Cutters is one of the Coast Guard’s top acquisition priorities. The first Offshore Patrol Cutter is scheduled to be delivered in 2022.

Healy is a medium icebreaker capable of conducting a wide range of Coast Guard operations including search and rescue, ship escorts, environmental protection, and enforcement of laws and treaties in the polar regions. Uniquely equipped to conduct scientific operations, Healy is also the Nation’s premiere high-latitude research vessel. Healy is the only U.S. military surface vessel that routinely deploys to the ice-covered waters of the Arctic to provide access and secure national interests related to our maritime borders and natural resources.  Check here for photo updates from Healy’s Arctic deployment or subscribe to receive updates in your inbox here.

Project 22460, new version of Rubin. Armed with one 57mm gun and two 30mm guns (in the turret of the Taifun-VDV).

If you are interested in the Russian Coast Guard, I ran across a website that seems to have a lot of information. It is definitely a pro-Russian site. You may want to be careful about clicking on any of the photos, my software stopped a “malicious download.”

Obviously people like having the Coast Guard around. It seems the Coast Guard is again attempting to close “redundant” stations, in this case the seasonal station at Scituate, Massachusetts, situated between Boston and Plymouth. You can see the typical result here.

February 2020, we had a similar story.

Thanks to Paul for bringing this to my attention. 

CIMSEC has published a two part discussion of planning for Maritime Security Operations written by retired US Coast Guard Captain Andrew Norris.

• Part 1
• Part 2

Much of the discussion is about the inadequacies of the current planning guidance. It picks up in Part 2 with a discussion of the “Constraint-Restraint-Enabler-Imperative (C-R-E-I) Model.”

While written as guidance for the planner, it might also serve as a checklist for the operator, as he prepares execute Maritime Security Operation. Have constraints, restraints, enablers, and imperatives been identified and are they adequately understood? Has training in these consideration been adequate? Do I have everything I need to implement and exploit the enablers?