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?
“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?
While there is much to talk about regarding ABC’s report, including how statements were taken out of context, whether initial estimates of the discharge rate would have any effect on the fines ultimately levied against BP; whether the inaccuracy of those estimates had in any way reduced the urgency of our response, whether this was about a cover up or simply a media outlet sulking because they were not given access to the best available video.
The thing I found truly gratifying was the view of the blogger and of those who commented on the blog. They trusted the Coast Guard because we had been honest in the past, even, and especially when, it wasn’t pretty.
“I am having a seriously hard time believing that the US Coast Guard, which was at the time under the command of Admiral Thad Allen, was the responsible party withholding this information from the public for BP.”…..”US Admirals, Navy or Coast Guard, don’t put companies before citizens during crisis and emergencies – which is what ABC is basically trying to imply with this reporting.”
Yes, it is a gun but it is also a day/night electro-optic sensor system that can help with SAR, law enforcement, navigation, man-overboard. When the Webber Class Cutters are delivered they will have a new gun system, but it is really much more.
The new system includes the familiar 25 mm chain gun that currently arms 378s, 210s, and 110s but it is mounted on a stabilized system with an on board electro-optic system that appears to have many uses beyond directing the gun.
The Mod2 is a product of BAE Systems Minneapolis, MN, but it is designed by Rafael, Haifa, Israel and it incorporates Rafael’s Toplite electro-optic system that includes 4-axis gimbal stabilization, forward looking infra-red radar with three fields-of-view, a low contrast, low light level color television camera and an eye-safe laser range finder.
Navigating at night, you can pick out a point that would be invisible to the naked eye and get a bearing and range. Looking for a man in the water, the IR will help you find him. See what is happening on suspected smuggler as you approach at night, or document illegal fishing activities. The electro-optic sensors can be slewed separately from the weapon, so we don’t have to point the weapon to use the sensors.
Israel calls the mount the Typhoon and uses the mount on boats as small as the Super Dvora and Shaldag class patrol boats which are slightly smaller than our own 87 ft WPBs. The Israelis also mount small missiles like the Spike-ER on the Typhoon in addition to the gun which extends the range of the system from 2,000 meters for the gun out to 8,000 for the missile. Here is a video of the system in operation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2kLdFW8EMc ( You’ll have to copy and paste, I could not get it to link properly.)
The Israeli navy moved to stop a convoy of 6 ships attempting to break their naval blockade of Gaza. Looks like there are at least 10 dead. Someday, the Coast Guard might be doing the same sort of thing. Put yourself in the Israeli Navy’s position. Was there a better way this might have been handled?
Now this is what we really need, a death ray for our cutters.
“The LaWS is essentially a laser upgrade to the MK 15 Close In Weapon System (CIWS), a.k.a. the Phalanx gun, a radar-guided autocannon that is already installed on Navy surface combatants. According to NAVSEA, the system tested fired a laser through a beam director installed on a tracking mount, which in turn was controlled by a Mk 15 CIWS. That’s the basically same system that controls the Phalanx.”
Read the whole story at the link here. We do already have the CIWS on our WHECs and National Security Cutters and expect to have them on the Offshore Patrol Cutters.
When the new Bernard C. Webber class Fast Response Cutters are commissioned, I hope we will use the traditional designation for this type, “WPC” rather than “WFRC.” The “PC” type designation is widely recognized. Using “WFRC” would have people outside the CG (and probably more than one inside) scratching their heads.
There is a long history of WPCs in the Coast Guard. Currently we have the three WPCs of the Cyclone Class that were originally built for the Navy, that are virtually the same displacement as the Webber class. More importantly, before that, we had the 33 units of the 125 ft Active class, and the 17 units of the 165 ft Thetis Class like the Icarus and Triton, that were also the same size as the Webber Class.
PCs are typically a bit larger than PBs, making them clearly distinct from the 87 ft WPBs and the 110s WPBs that will remain in the fleet until replaced.
It may seem trivial, but this is about both a historical link to successful cutters of the past and the integrity of a designation system that goes back almost 100 years.
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