The Coast Guard’s New Frontier In The War On Drugs

By Phillip Thompson

Phillip Thompson, a Marine Corps veteran, is a senior fellow with the Lexington Institute, a public-policy research foundation in Arlington, Va.

"It just goes to show you that we can get the job done if we have the money to do it," said Coast Guard Food Service Specialist Third Class Victor Rivera as he flipped through a Coast Guard trade magazine.

Rivera was reading an article describing a recent Coast Guard effort, dubbed Operation New Frontier, that dramatically illustrated how effective the service can be in the war on drugs when the scales are balanced. Rivera, currently assigned to the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Nunivak in San Juan, P.R., said that, as a participant in New Frontier, he is convinced the Coast Guard could make a huge dent in the drug trade if the entire service were given capabilities similar to those demonstrated during the operation.

New Frontier, one of two Coast Guard "end-game initiatives," was conducted—mostly in secret—last fall and was one of the Coast Guard’s first efforts at using armed helicopters designed to stop high-speed smuggling boats—known as "go-fast" boats—laden with narcotics headed for the United States. During the operation, two concepts were tested: the use of armed helicopters; and the use of high-speed, over-the-horizon pursuit boats. The Coast Guard used the MH-90 Enforcer helicopter—armed with M240 machine guns and .50-caliber Robar sniper rifles—during the pursuit of several boats.

The leased MH-90 proved to be quite the equalizer. The Coast Guardsmen participating, previously unable to coax, persuade, or force their aging, larger, slower cutters to keep up with the go-fast boats, found themselves now capable of stopping a smuggling boat dead in its wake.

"These guys were running right past our cutters and were waving as they went by," said Lt. Cdr. Chris Adair, who works in the drug-interdiction division of the Office of Law Enforcement Policy at Coast Guard Headquarters. But the MH-90 changed that, in some cases by firing warning shots across the bows of smuggling boats. If that failed, the helo snipers were prepared to fire shots into the outboard motors of the vessels.

Experimental Concert

In addition to the helicopters, the Coast Guard also tested its own version of the go-fast boat, somewhat awkwardly called the "Over-the-Horizon Cutter Boat," which worked in concert with the armed helicopters.

The experimental boats are "souped-up versions" of the Coast Guard’s standard rigid-hull inflatable boats, Adair said. The cutter boats differ in that they are equipped with onboard radar and navigational systems—for over-the-horizon operations—and with twin inboard/outboard turbocharged diesel engines.

To intercept a go-fast boat, the Coast Guard tested a variety of nonlethal devices and technologies, Adair said, including "sting ball" grenades—which produce a loud bang and bright flash and shower their victim with tiny pellets of rubber that cause considerable pain but do not penetrate the skin.

"It’s basically a pain-and-shock appliance," he said.

Crews also tested the use of pepper spray and of 40mm "foam batons"—which were fired from the M203 grenade launcher, Adair said. Reports on the foam baton showed the weapon to be "mighty effective."

To physically stop a boat, Coast Guardsmen planned to use sturdy "entanglement nets" to foul the propellers of fleeing boats. The nets, known as Single-Loop Entanglement Devices, or SLEDs, were tested, but with little effect. Adair attributed that to the fact that the nets had been deployed from helicopters, a difficult task.

The nets also may be deployed from cutter boats, but not without a considerable amount of risk to the boat crews. "You have to cross the front of the go-fast to drop the net in the boat’s path," Rivera said. "You have to be careful of the other boat."

Before Operation New Frontier, according to the service’s own statistics, the Coast Guard had about a one-in-10 chance of stopping a go-fast. During the operation, the Coast Guard scored a perfect "six of six" in pursuits and apprehensions. The operation resulted in the overall seizure of nearly 12,000 pounds of marijuana and more than 3,000 pounds of cocaine. Twenty suspects were arrested.

By all measures, Operation New Frontier was a major success and should help the Coast Guard in its annual funding battles in DOT (the Department of Transportation) and on Capitol Hill. Adair said that the Coast Guard is proceeding with plans to make the air and boat concepts tested in New Frontier part of its normal operations.

The Coast Guard also is purchasing the Italian-made Agusta A-109 helicopter to enhance its drug-interdiction capability, Adair said. The multimission Agusta will most likely be employed for short periods of time aboard cutters for specific missions, at least initially.

Meanwhile, tests will continue on the prototype cutter boat concept to ensure that the final product will be capable of operating in tandem with an armed helicopter at maximum range, about 60 nautical miles, Adair said. Another technique now under consideration, he said, is the "fast-roping" of boarding teams onto suspect vessels from helicopters, but testing of that concept has not yet started.

The Need for Speed

The second end-game initiative also involves a boat, called the Deployable Pursuit Boat (DPB). Like the cutter boat, the DPB is essentially an offshore racing boat, said Adair, who heads the pursuit-boat program. The 38-foot Fountain racing boats—the Coast Guard is testing four—are outfitted with twin 420-horsepower turbo diesel engines and are capable of speeds in excess of 50 knots. Each boat is armed with a prototype light machine gun, the M240. The boats have two-man crews and can carry up to four boarding team members.

The DPB program differs from New Frontier in that the pursuit boats do not operate with helicopters, and are not launched from cutters. Instead, they operate in pairs (for the time being, at least) and are deployed from two Stalwart-class ocean-surveillance ships owned by the Military Sealift Command, the USNS Persistent and the USNS Vindicator. The ships, previously used in the Caribbean to track drug-running aircraft with their air-search radars, now serve as launch platforms for the pursuit boats operating in what is called the Transit Zone, a six-million-square-mile area of ocean that includes the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Eastern Pacific.

The ships, which are manned by civilian crews, carry Coast Guard boat crews and command-and-control personnel for what so far has been "limited scope" testing, Adair said. That means that, like the armed helicopters and cutter boats, the pursuit boats operate only in international waters.

Adair said the pursuit boats give the Coast Guard an over-the-horizon capability to achieve "end game"—the "pursuit, interception, and stopping" of go-fast boats. But the optimum tactical use of the boats is still a long way from perfected. In fact, the program was launched primarily as a stop-gap measure to keep the Coast Guard from breaking a promise to Congress that it would deploy some type of platform with an end-game capability by fiscal year 2000.

The first two Fountain boats were deployed with the Persistent, with the other two scheduled to deploy with the Vindicator. The Persistent boats have yet to succeed in stopping a go-fast boat, Adair said—but he stressed the nascent nature of the program. "We hope to eventually merge the deployable pursuit boat with the cutter boat, then merge that with the armed helicopter and integrate that with a cutter," he said.

A Long, Long Way
From the “New Frontier”

In the Caribbean, the 110-foot Nunivak is still involved in drug interdiction, but in operations that are a very long way from the New Frontier missions.The cutter’s current drug-interdiction missions usually are accomplished two ways: (1) by aggressively patrolling areas known to harbor smugglers, and boarding suspicious-looking vessels; or (2) by coordinating with other federal agencies, such as Customs or the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), to intercept a boat known to be smuggling narcotics.

"A lot of the new techniques [tested in New Frontier] are too new for us out here," said Lt. Jose Jimenez, commanding officer of the Nunivak, an Island-class patrol boat that was commissioned in 1986, and is nearly as old as some of its crew.

With no onboard helicopter, the crew still carries out its law-enforcement duties the old-fashioned way: chasing down boats, then boarding them. This is an inefficient method, because smugglers can either dump their illegal cargo into the sea, which they often do, or simply cruise into the territorial waters of another nation to elude the Coast Guard’s grasp.

The Island-class boats were designed primarily as law-enforcement platforms, but they lack certain basic characteristics essential to success. One is speed. At 20 knots, the Nunivak is hardly a match for go-fasts—the crew is quick to point out, though, that in heavy seas the speed of the go-fast boats is neutralized. "They can’t go as fast in heavy seas," said Quartermaster Third Class Tom Hawkins. "That’s where we catch up, because we don’t have to slow down in heavy seas."

Antiquated communications is another drawback. During a five-day law-enforcement patrol in early June, the Nunivak participated in an abortive DEA sting operation designed to collar two cocaine traffickers. The plan was to intercept a boat loaded with cocaine in international waters near the coast of the island of St. Kitts. Two DEA agents—working in collaboration with two DEA agents aboard the Nunivak who came aboard in Antigua with an officer from the Antiguan Coast Guard—would act as buyers who would load the cocaine aboard a motor vessel, then cruise to a rendezvous point, where the drugs would supposedly be transferred to a smaller go-fast boat. What the suspects did not know, of course, was that the Nunivak and the DEA agents would be waiting at the rendezvous point.

No Eyes, And Faulty Hearing

By 1040 the Nunivak was in the vicinity of St. Kitts, and the agents maintained contact with their colleagues on the suspect vessel via cell phone. The cutter’s radio reception waxed and waned, however, making it difficult to communicate with San Juan. The Nunivak’s own cellular phone was inoperative, and the DEA agent’s phone was suffering from the spotty cellular coverage in the Caribbean.

Complicating the matter was a lack of continuous real-time surveillance. The Nunivak could not track the boat by radar, and there was no "eye in the sky"—a surveillance aircraft—available for the operation. Consequently, determining the position of the suspect boat amounted to guesswork.

"A lot can go wrong," Jimenez said. "The key is constant surveillance, preferably by an aircraft. This pond is huge, and without good surveillance it’s hard to find someone."

His own radar provides some help, but not much, Jimenez said. The cutter’s surface-search radar does well at picking up metal, but not the plastic or fiberglass hulls characteristic of many of the go-fast boats. Moreover, because the go-fasts ride very low in the water, it is that much more difficult to detect them.

Other than the radar, Jimenez said, his sensors are limited mostly to visual means: binoculars, night-vision glasses, and an infrared camera. "The lack of sensors does make it hard," he said. "They [the smugglers] can see us, avoid us, or outrun us."

Thus limited, and with no aircraft coverage, Jimenez was forced to rely on reports from San Juan, where the operations office received position updates from the DEA, or via cell phone with the DEA agent aboard the drug boat.

"Wouldn’t have this problem with [satellite] phones," Jimenez said—optimistically adding, though, that funding for satellite communications " … is supposedly getting approved."

He said that the ideal surveillance situation is to have an aircraft high overhead—a Navy E-2C Hawkeye, for example—with a satellite link to ensure constant communications. Of course, the Nunivak had neither, and the result was a frustrating, daylong waiting game as the cutter’s crew and the DEA agents waited for the word to proceed to the rendezvous point.

When the word finally came that the suspects were aboard the go-fast and on their way, the Nunivak closed on the rendezvous point, only to miss the small boat. Still unable to communicate efficiently, the Nunivak searched in vain for hours, not knowing that the suspects had already been "taken down" and were en route to Antigua.

When Jimenez finally got the word, his only option was to return the DEA agents to Antigua, then replenish his fuel supply, 50 percent of which had been used on the drug mission. Jimenez found this somewhat ironic, given the fact that Coast Guard Commandant Adm. James M. Loy has cut back Coast Guard operations in recent months due to high oil prices. "We’re supposed to be cutting back, but here we are, burning fuel," Jimenez said.

A Changing Attitude

Like other Coast Guard commanding officers, Jimenez recognizes the financial constraints on the service—the same constraints that forced Loy to cut back operations, and that, unless funding is significantly increased, preclude a rapid upgrading of Coast Guard capabilities.

Jimenez said he agrees with Loy’s difficult decision to tell Congress that the Coast Guard cannot be expected to accomplish all of the missions imposed on it without additional funding. "The Coast Guard has changed over the last couple of years," Jimenez said on the bridge of his patrol boat. "Before Admiral Loy, there was this … attitude that ‘we can do it. Just keep throwing it at us and we’ll keep doing it.’ But in the last couple of years Admiral Loy has put a stop to that and said that if we can’t support an asset, we are not going to do the mission." That’s pretty strong medicine, Jimenez admitted, but absolutely necessary.

Rivera said much the same thing during the June patrol. "Most people don’t realize it, but I’m fighting a war every day," he said. n

utting off our funding obligations to the outyears, the Navy will be forced to make some very tough choices on someone else’s watch."

The American Shipbuilding Association issued a three-page critical assessment to express its "dismay" with the DOD report and the "flawed assumptions" and unrealistic numbers contained therein. "This plan will not maintain a 300-ship Navy unless the Department of Defense is prepared to make huge investments to keep old ships operating well beyond their intended economical service life," Brown said. "This practice would, in fact, place America’s Sailors and Marines at greater risks with technologically obsolete and maintenance-intensive ships."

"It’s disappointing" Brown told Sea Power, "that DOD would rather play number games rather than be forthright with their requirements so that Congress could help restore the nation’s seapower fleet."