Allen takes the helm of a Coast Guard stretched thin by a declining fleet and expanding security missions

Adm. Thad W. Allen has seen his share of the spotlight in recent years. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then-Vice Adm. Allen directed the service’s response along the eastern seaboard as commander of the Coast Guard Atlantic Area. He became chief of staff of the service in May 2002.

Allen was once again thrust into the public eye when President George W. Bush selected him to lead the federal disaster relief efforts along the U.S. Gulf Coast last fall following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. On May 25, Allen was named the 23rd commandant of the Coast Guard, succeeding Thomas H. Collins.

Allen assumes command of a service stretched to the limit by the added security responsibilities at home and maritime security operations abroad brought on by the global war on terror and the war in Iraq, all the while burdened by its reliance on obsolescent ships and aircraft. Much of the service’s fleet is outdated. The downtime for vessels and planes is increasing, driving up maintenance costs at the time the Coast Guard is purchasing the $24 billion Integrated Deepwater System, comprising new cutters, aircraft and accompanying intelligence and communications networks.

Meanwhile, the force is growing, partly to accommodate its role in the nation’s maritime security efforts, which become broader after 9/11. Since 2001, Coast Guard strength has risen 15 percent, an increase of 6,200 military and civilian personnel.

A 1971 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Allen, the son of a World War II Coast Guard veteran, has served in two cutters and commanded a third, and was director of the Seventh Coast Guard District. In an interview with Managing Editor Richard R. Burgess, Allen discussed the service’s growing charter and the “daunting” challenge of improving security of the nation’s ports. Excerpts follow.

How has the Coast Guard changed in the five years since 9/11?

ALLEN: We’re more diversified. We’re more focused on all hazards and threats, and much more sensitized to an environment of transnational threats. Natural disasters are looming out there. The resources we’ve gained and some of the policy decisions that have been made through the Maritime Transportation Security Act [signed in 2002 to create a national maritime security system and require federal agencies, ports and vessel owners to upgrade security] and so forth have positioned us in a much broader spectrum of operations.

How is the Coast Guard going to be different by the end of your term?

ALLEN: I hope that we will be in full production of a lot of the cutters and aircraft we desperately need to operate our service. We’re working hard for the Deepwater program. We readjusted our requirements and timeline last year and have a new implementation plan.

Do you foresee any funding adjustments in the Deepwater program?

ALLEN: There are going to be year-to-year fluctuations based on what funding Congress actually appropriates. But, at this point, we’ve got those program requirements locked down. I don’t envision a major re-baselining of requirements. In fact, continuous change with the requirements could be very injurious to the entire project. We’re going to be offered a new logistics system in association with the Deepwater acquisition. We need to look at how to unify the entire logistics process across all of our platforms.

What was your reaction to the recent Government Accountability Office’s Deepwater report, which noted progress in resolving problems and recommended continued close monitoring of the program?

ALLEN: We’re buying an entire portfolio of cutters and aircraft and the networks that connect them all. We look forward to [the Accountability Office] coming in and giving us a hand. We will work hard addressing the issues that they’ve raised.

What do you see as your greatest challenge?

ALLEN: We have fundamentally repositioned the Coast Guard and its missions since 2001. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina really relate to being always ready. We’re taking a close look at the Coast Guard force structure — our equipment, how our people are trained and the support systems — and whether we need to tweak certain parts of the Coast Guard to make sure we’re optimized to meet all hazards and threats.

You were head of federal relief operations after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Did that affect your outlook on how the Coast Guard should operate?

ALLEN: Katrina opened a window on a greater application of our forces within the Department of Homeland Security and the federal government. We have some great opportunities to do what I would call adaptive force packaging that would enable the department to create a formidable capability to be applied before and after an event like Katrina.

We can be more responsive across a wider range of threat responses than we have been in the past by marrying up Coast Guard deployable forces with assets — like urban search and rescue [and] deployable medical assist teams — that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) traditionally provides. We can also team up with our partners in Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

What do you think is the role of the federal government in disaster relief?

ALLEN: In the U.S. Constitution, all powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the states. Quite frankly, first response to a natural disaster or any catastrophe in a local community is the local community itself, first at the county or parish level, and then at the state level. If it’s beyond the capability of the local first responders, the federal government comes into play by flowing needed resources to assist them.

[Homeland Security] Secretary [Michael] Chertoff and Dave Paulison, director of FEMA, have all made it very, very clear: Natural disasters are the first responsibility of the first responders at the state and local level. We’re not there to pre-empt them.

How does the Coast Guard’s relationship within the Department of Homeland Security compare with its former situation under the Department of Transportation (DoT)?

ALLEN: We were always greatly respected and admired in DoT. In fact, we still have a very close relationship with Secretary [Norman] Minetta whom we really cherished as our service secretary [Editor’s note: Minetta announced his resignation June 23]. That said, if you look at the alignment of mission sets between Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and even FEMA, there’s a much greater congruity between our missions, capabilities and competencies within [Homeland Security] than we had within DoT.

The Coast Guard was widely praised for its performance in Katrina. Do you see that carrying over into increased public and congressional support?

ALLEN: We hope we get support on the Hill for our requests based on their own merit. That said, the visibility of our operations in the last year probably has brought the value we bring to the American people into greater focus to the folks up on the Hill. We like to think that it shouldn’t take a Katrina to get that kind of performance out of the Coast Guard. We would like to do that every day for this country.

What advantages does the Coast Guard bring to national homeland defense and the global war on terrorism?

ALLEN: The national fleet concept that has evolved over the last several years puts the Coast Guard and Navy’s force structure together to create the best set of capabilities that this country needs. We’re getting more expansive in how we view that. There are all kinds of opportunities out there: the supporting plans, the national strategy for maritime security related to maritime domain awareness, global maritime intelligence integration and so forth.

We look forward to very close collaboration with the Navy. Beyond that, you’re seeing a much closer relationship between the Coast Guard and the combatant commanders regarding the forces we provide to them and the competencies we bring to the fight. I think that needs to grow and get much stronger, too.

What is the value of the National Fleet concept?

ALLEN: The ability to leverage each other’s work and achieve a commonality of systems. A good example is the 57mm [Mk110] deck gun that will be common to both Navy and Coast Guard combatants. The two services are jointly crewing [the Sea Fighter] ship looking at the potential applications for a high-speed craft. We work together in the Persian Gulf. Our law-enforcement detachments work on Navy combatants. It’s a matter of taking the two forces — the world’s best Navy and the world’s best Coast Guard — and making them the world’s best maritime force.

Is the Coast Guard able to sustain its drug-interdiction efforts despite the new missions you have taken on?

ALLEN: We have. Some people are surprised at that. We’re going into our fourth year of record seizures of cocaine. In some cases, we’ve done it with fewer hours on scene in terms of available cutters and aircraft flight hours. A lot of the success has to do with more effective employment of our assets based on intelligence, a huge force multiplier for us. Drug interdiction will continue to be a challenge because a lot of our assets, especially maritime patrol aircraft, are getting old and face limitations on their use.

Why is intelligence better now than it was a few years ago?

ALLEN: There’s a better integration of the Coast Guard’s interdiction efforts with organizations like Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South — the drug-interdiction force headquartered in Key West, Fla. — and their ability to take information and sensor data from national and international sources and from our domestic law-enforcement agencies and — within the parameters prescribed by law — apply those to best effect. We need to create a collaborative environment where information is shared and resources are moved around as the information develops. Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South is a compelling model on how to conduct maritime interdiction.

Is port security getting the needed attention?

ALLEN: Port security is a daunting issue in that we have so much coastline and most of the world is covered by water. Access to the ocean is not nearly as restricted as it is to air or space by technology. There are overlapping and layered legal structures we have to deal with in terms of freedom of navigation, right of innocent passage and so forth.

It is a challenge to create a maritime security regime that allows coastal states to be able to sense and act against threats that are approaching their shores. We want to do that as far offshore as possible. It involves maritime domain awareness: being able to sense what’s out there, separate legitimate compliant traffic from noncompliant traffic, and intercept targets of interest and board them. That’s a tall order. It’s not going to happen overnight, but we have to make substantial, incremental progress every year.

Port security is one part of a layered defense structure. It’s going to take better nonintrusive inspection technologies for containers, increased presence and more facility inspections. The transportation worker identification card will allow us to vet and enroll people with biometrics and to control access to sensitive parts of terminals and waterfront facilities.

We’re coming out with a new Coast Guard maritime strategy that will support the national strategy for maritime security. It will reflect what we need to do over the next four years in terms of legislation, rule-making at the international maritime organization, things like carriage requirements for long-range tracking.

Given the problems with two of the Coast Guard’s three ocean-going icebreakers, will the service sustain an icebreaking capability in the future?

ALLEN: I think the country needs it. There’s a study due out from the National Academy of Sciences this fall that’s going to engender a policy debate about how the nation should position itself vis-à-vis operations in the Arctic and Antarctic. There are significant issues popping up now about implications of a shrinking ice cap in the arctic regions and the implications of greater access to the north shores of Alaska, Russia and Canada. The timing is probably right to have a national discussion about our needs in icebreaking capability.

Do you have enough of the right people with the right skills?

ALLEN: When you’re a multimission outfit, responsible for any one of a number of missions on a particular day, you can always make your case for more people. We have significantly more people than we had on 9/11. We’ve had great support from the administration and the Congress at increasing our end-strength. We have to ensure that work force has the right competencies and training, and that our people are managed as individuals through the lifecycle of service to the country. For example, boarding technologies change over time. We’re looking at vertical insertion, for example, as a means to put boarding teams on deck.

Does the Coast Guard have anything comparable to the Navy’s Human Capital Strategy that addresses shaping the work force for the future?

ALLEN: We’ve done ratings reviews, clapped some ratings together and defined new ratings. We are looking at manning ships with multiple crews for the Deepwater concept. We have experimented with multiple crewing with the 179-foot coastal patrol ships on loan from the Navy until fiscal year 2008. We’ve been working with a manning strategy called Future Force 21 for a number of years. I’m going to ask our human resources folks to build a successor strategy to Future Force 21 that supports the new Coast Guard Maritime Strategy.

The Coast Guard has received highly favorable press coverage in recent years. Is it motivational to your people?

ALLEN: I think so. We get immense job satisfaction doing what we do — it’s the value of our missions to the American people and the diversity of the missions throughout a lifetime in the Coast Guard. I like to tell people that after 9/11 Alan Jackson put out a great song, “Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning?” about what happened and what everybody thought on 9/11. If you’re in a ship that’s taking on water or if you’re on an aircraft that’s had to ditch, your world stops turning for you. I like to tell everybody that we restart worlds. We’re in an organization that actually gives people back their lives.