Here is a link to some interesting photos from our Chinese friends along with some comments regarding a convoy operation off Somalia.
The surprise, for me, was to see the mass of suspected pirates, not one or two, but a swarm of small boats.
Here is a news report that Indonesia is going to establish a Coast Guard. This is more evidence that the importance of an independent Coast Guard is being recognized. Interesting that Japan as well as the US are sited as being willing to help set up the new service. Japan’s Coast Guard of course, traces its roots back to our own, when the occupation forces under MacArthur were reshaping Japanese institutions. Clearly the Japanese have a vested interest in the security of Maritime commerce through the Straits of Malacca, but I had not previously heard of them offering security assistance and training. On the other hand, during WWII, then Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, was about the only place where Japan’s vision of a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” actually seemed to be cooperative.
Here is an interesting article discussing how the Iranians are using shell corporations and changes of name and ownership to disguise their control of ships being used to circumvent sanctions. This would seem to have important implications for any attempt to maintain Maritime Domain Awareness, and identify potentially hostile ships attempting to enter US ports. As we attempt to do this, let’s make sure it is more effective than the TSA’s “no fly list.”
“Trust But Verify.” It was a phrase from the Cold War, but it is still good advice. The Deepwater Horizon disaster has shown that the federal government may have put too much trust in the oil companies and certainly had little or no ability to verify. The regulators are in a position of having to depend on the organizations they are regulating for the information needed to regulate.
The regulators apparently need a lot more in house information about best practices for deepwater drilling. If the government intends to effectively regulate deep ocean drilling, it needs the ability to go there and see for themselves. They need to be able to test equipment like blowout preventers in the actual environment where they are supposed to work. They need to have responses to equipment failure prepared and tested before there is an actual failure. They need a place where whistle blowers will be heard and their honest concerns addressed.
Whether the capability is invested in Coast Guard, MMS, or some other entity, the government needs the capability to take action, independent of the oil companies. The next question would be, who pays for it? The oil companies of course. They should pay to be policed.
A note from a Canadian source (broken link) reminding us how the actions of the Coast Guard once caused an international incident.
The Coast Guard Compass reports a memorial service for Chief Boatswains Mate Richard Patterson on June 16.
Frequent Contributor Bill Welles has a good article recounting the incident if you would like to know a bit more.
Sounds like BMC Patterson might be a good namesake for a Webber class cutter.
On 1 June, Peter Stinson asked “Can we build a shared experience for all Guardians?” We were not able to reach any consensus except that we needed a better appreciation of our history.
Thinking about this, I tried to come up with 10 things every Coast Guardsman should know about the history of the service. Actually this was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Mining the Coast Guard historians official site I found myself in a bit of a quandary. Too many details. Maybe too much history to distill into only ten line items. There were organizational milestones, individual achievements, innovations, desperate fights won and lost, new missions and missions that have disappeared.
I’m still working on my list, but I thought I would throw it out for your comment. What should every Coast Guardsman know about our history?
Thought some of you might be interested in another view of our actions.
Here is an interesting development with possible Coast Guard implications:
“The company (Northrop Grumman) has received a $517 million Army contract to build up to three of the huge military airships, called the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles (LEMV). Such airships would serve as surveillance stations at 20,000 feet (6,096 meters) above sea level and could stay on watch for as long as three weeks at a time.”
When I first saw the video of the Bertholf’s trial of the Phalanx Close In Weapon System (CIWS) against a small fast surface target, I was a bit disappointed to see the wide dispersion of projectiles, knowing how small a cruise missile, seen end on, would be, but it didn’t think a lot about it. This blog post (post is not longer available, Chuck) has caused me to look at the trials in a different light, and I find it a bit disturbing.
Paired with the video of the Bertholf’s trial is one of a new Navy Guided Missile Destroyer engaging unmanned fast surface drone targets. His conclusion is that apparently we still have a problem with reliably stopping small boats.
I imagine both exercises were considered successful, and undoubtedly the targets in both videos were hit several times. Being on one of these boats would have been very dangerous, but the fact remained that the boats seemed to loose none of their speed or maneuverability.
I would like to be able to say that the failure to stop the boats was due to exercise artificialities, that there was an intentional offset in bearing or range so that we avoided hitting the target, but that does not seem to be the case. Or perhaps we were using practice ammunition that could not penetrate the target which service ammunition would have?
Several years ago the Navy had a landmark exercise in which a Carrier Battle Group was set upon by a swarm of small boats that got a mission kill on the Carrier. Ever since that exercise and the attack on the Cole, they have started paying attention to this type of attack. Countering swarms of small boats was a primary mission driving the creation of the of the new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The Iranian Revolutionary Guards expect to use swarm tactics.
I pulled the videos out separately if you would like to get a better look at them. Here is the Bertholf’s trial, which, judging by the delay from the gun firing until the fall of shot, appeared to be at ranges beginning at about 3000 yards and ending at about 1,000 yards.
Here is the video of the USS Howard (DDG 83)’s layered defense exercise of 25 September 2005 using 5″, 25 mm, and .50 cal in addition to the CIWS, which began at a bit over 7,200 yards.
Realistic testing and training, along with a realistic assessment of your probabilities of success are essential to good tactical decision making. Why weren’t we able to stop these boats?
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 