The
United States Coast Guard is a military, multimission, maritime service
within the Department of Transportation and one of the nation's five armed
services. Its core role is to protect the public, the environment, and
U.S. economic and security interests in any maritime region in which those
interests may be at risk, including international waters and America's
coasts, ports, and inland waterways. The Coast Guard provides unique
benefits to the nation because of its distinctive blend of military,
humanitarian, and civilian law-enforcement capabilities.
Beginning
with a military skirmish with France in 1798 and continuing to recent
operations in the former Republic of Yugoslavia--including every war in
between--the Coast Guard has helped defend the nation in combat. Today,
Team Coast Guard stands ready with an active-duty force of 35,000 men and
women, augmented by the 8,000-member Coast Guard Reserve, the
34,000-strong all-volunteer Coast Guard Auxiliary, and a civilian
workforce of 5,500.
Strategic
Goals
To
continue its services to the public, the Coast Guard has set five
strategic goals. Following are brief summaries of each:
Safety:
Eliminate deaths, injuries, and property damage associated with maritime
transportation, fishing, and recreational boating.
National
Defense: Defend the nation as one of the five U.S. armed services.
Enhance regional stability in support of the National Security Strategy,
utilizing the Coast Guard's unique and relevant maritime capabilities.
Maritime
Security: Protect America's maritime borders from all intrusions by:
(a) halting the flow of illegal drugs, aliens, and contraband into the
United States through maritime routes; (b) preventing illegal fishing; and
(c) suppressing violations of federal law in the maritime arena.
Mobility:
Facilitate maritime commerce and eliminate interruptions and impediments
to the efficient and economical movement of goods and people, while
maximizing recreational access to and enjoyment of the water.
Protection
of Natural Resources: Eliminate environmental damage and the
degradation of natural resources associated with maritime transportation,
fishing, and recreational boating.
These
strategic goals are used for tracking program performance and making sound
resource decisions. They also offer a blueprint for thinking broadly about
the Coast Guard's ability to influence future national security issues
positively and meet the needs of a seafaring nation. Following is a more
detailed explication of the programs and policies related to the
achievement of the service's strategic goals.
Safety
The
Coast Guard's motto is Semper Paratus--(Always Ready), and the service is
always ready to respond to calls for help at sea. The Coast Guard answers
every one of those calls.
In
1998, the Coast Guard responded to 38,700 calls for assistance--from
recreational boaters in distress to freighters sinking in gale-force
winds. During that same year--on operating expenses of just $346
million--the service saved more than 4,000 lives and $2.5 billion in
property.
Search
and rescue (SAR) is perhaps the Coast Guard's best-known mission area, and
the service is recognized as the world's leader by the international SAR
community. When the rescue alarm sounds, the Coast Guard is ready to
confront the inherently dangerous maritime environment, frequently going
into harm's way to save others. The Coast Guard works closely with other
federal, state, and local agencies, and with foreign nations, to provide
the fastest and most effective response to distress calls. It also
maintains a vessel-tracking system called AMVER (automated mutual
assistance vessel rescue) that allows it to divert nearby commercial
vessels to render assistance when necessary.
During
the past decade, the number of lives lost each year in boating accidents
and on commercial vessels has declined significantly. The Coast Guard's
Marine Safety Program promotes safety through both its regula-tory and
inspection roles, inspecting merchant vessels and licensing their masters
and crews. The Coast Guard has established a goal of achieving a 20
percent reduction in: crewmember deaths and injuries on U.S. commercial
vessels; the risks of major loss of life on passenger vessels; and the
number of collisions and groundings in the waters under Coast Guard
jurisdiction. The Coast Guard Auxiliary provides free boating safety
courses and courtesy marine examinations for recreational boaters.
In a
dedicated effort to prevent future mishaps, the Coast Guard investigates
maritime accidents. Prevention of accidents is the first priority, but
when prevention is not possible Coast Guard men and women are there to
respond. As an international leader, the Coast Guard works with other
nations and agencies--like the International Maritime Organization, for
example--to promote higher safety standards for commercial vessels and
their crews.
National
Defense
For
more than 200 years, the Coast Guard has been one of the nation's armed
services. Throughout its distinguished history, the Coast Guard has
enjoyed a unique relationship with the Navy. By statute, the Coast Guard
operates in the joint arena and functions as a specialized service under
the Navy in time of war. It also has command responsibilities for the U.S.
Maritime Defense Zone, countering potential threats to American's coasts,
ports, and inland waterways through numerous port-security,
harbor-defense, and coastal-warfare operations and exercises.
In
1995, the Secretaries of Defense and Transportation signed a memorandum of
agreement that assigned four major national-defense missions to the Coast
Guard in support of the U.S. military commanders-in-chief (CINCs). These
missions--maritime intercept operations, deployed port operations/security
and defense, peacetime engagement, and environmental defense
operations--are essential military tasks assigned to the Coast Guard as a
component of joint and combined forces in peacetime, crisis, and war.
In
recent years, the nation's CINCs have requested--and have been
provided--Coast Guard cutters to conduct maritime-intercept operations,
carry out peacetime-engagement missions, and perform other essential
warfare tasks for all three forward-deployed Navy fleets: the Fifth Fleet
in the Arabian Gulf/Middle East; the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean; and
the Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific. In addition, Coast Guard cutters
have recently supported NATO operations in the Baltic Sea. However, the
Coast Guard deepwater fleet is aging and in urgent need of replacement
The
U.S. Coast Guard's physical assets (cutters, aircraft, and shore
facilities) have been undercapitalized for years. Only one of the 41
countries throughout the world with similarly sized navies or coast guards
has an older physical plant. To remedy the situation the Coast Guard has
initiated what is called the Deepwater Capabilities Replacement Project.
Instead of proposing a traditional one-for-one asset-replacement program,
the Coast Guard is working with industry to develop a system of systems in
an effort to ensure effective--and cost-effective--interoperability among
all of its Deepwater assets and with the Navy/Marine Corps team. The
eventual Integrated Deepwater System (IDS) will encompass all of the Coast
Guard's major cutters, aircraft, and sensors, providing the capabilities
required to perform all of the Coast Guard's essential deepwater missions.
IDS procurement is designed to achieve maximum operational effectiveness
at minimum total ownership costs.
The
IDS will take into account the National Fleet Policy Statement--signed by
the chief of naval operations and the commandant of the Coast Guard--which
makes sound fiscal and operational sense for America by ensuring that
Coast Guard and Navy assets are complementary and not redundant.
The
Coast Guard's role as a unique instrument of national policy and security
is becoming even more important in missions outside U.S. coastal waters. A
central focus of the U.S. national-security strategy is to promote
democracy abroad, to build trust and friendship among emerging
democracies, and to promote economic prosperity at home and overseas. Many
of the world's maritime nations have forces that operate principally in
the littoral seas and conduct missions that resemble those of the Coast
Guard. Because its mix of assets and missions makes it such a role model,
there is an ever-increasing demand for the Coast Guard to assist these
foreign naval and maritime forces through training and joint operations.
The service's close working relations with other nations not only improve
mutual cooperation during joint operations in which the Coast Guard is
involved but also support U.S. diplomatic efforts in general.
Maritime
Security
Since
1790, the Coast Guard has served as America's principal and often only
"law of the sea" agency. Originally established by Alexander
Hamilton as the Revenue Cutter Service, the Coast Guard began with the
mission of enforcing import tariffs. Since then, however, its
maritime-security responsibilities have expanded incrementally, and almost
always synergistically, to include the enforcement of all federal laws at
sea--from stopping pirates to enforcing vessel-safety regulations and
fisheries conservation laws to interdicting drug and migrant smugglers. As
the only U.S. military service with law-enforcement authority, the Coast
Guard apprehends foreign fishing vessels engaged in poaching, interdicts
overcrowded boats carrying illegal immigrants, and stops unsafe and
inebriated boaters.
Today,
U.S. national-security interests can no longer be defined solely in terms
of direct military threats to America and its allies. Working under the
necessarily broader current definition of national security, the Coast
Guard is seeking to reduce the risk from terrorism to U.S. passengers at
foreign and domestic ports and in designated waterfront facilities, but it
faces the extremely difficult challenge of enforcing increasingly complex
laws against highly sophisticated adversaries. Coast Guard boarding teams
deal continuously with violations of multinational fisheries agreements
and foil high-tech attempts to smuggle drugs into the United States.
The
influx of illegal drugs is one of America's foremost current
maritime-security problems. As the nation's leading maritime agency in
protecting the U.S. public from the drug threat, the Coast Guard plays a
key role in implementing the president's national drug-control policy.
Despite the vast complications in enforcement, the Coast Guard performs
this new task with only modest additional funding. A tremendous number of
assets are required to patrol the long coastlines of the United States and
the even greater expanse of waters encompassing the maritime "transit
zones" used by drug smugglers. This six-million-square-mile area,
roughly the size of the continental United States itself, includes the
Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Eastern Pacific.
To
carry out its drug-interdiction mission the Coast Guard has established
Campaign Steel Web, a multiyear strategy aimed at reducing the flow of
illegal drugs into the United States. In 1999, the Coast Guard interdicted
more than 111,689 pounds of cocaine, keeping more than 505 million cocaine
"hits" off America's streets and out of its schools. The street
value of the cocaine seized, estimated at $3.6 billion, exceeds the Coast
Guard's entire operating budget for 1999. Not incidentally, the Coast
Guard seized 28,872 pounds of marijuana during the same period.
The
protection of U.S. living marine resources--primarily through the
detection and deterrence of illegal fishing activity--is another of the
Coast Guard's historic mission areas of responsibility that continues to
expand. Beginning with the protection of the Bering Sea fur seal and sea
otter herds and continuing through the vast expansion, following World War
II, in the size and efficiency of global fishing fleets, Coast Guard
responsibilities in this mission area now include enforcement of laws and
treaties in the 3.36-million-square-mile U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
Approximately
110,000 commercial fishing vessels operate from U.S. ports, netting
commercial catches, in an industry worth some $20 billion, that in the
early 1990s came to almost 4.7 million metric tons per year. The United
States can anticipate increased enforcement responsibilities in this field
as the world's fish stocks decline and more pressure is put on the Coast
Guard to protect U.S. fisheries resources. To carry out these added
responsibilities the Coast Guard will continue to patrol the millions of
square miles of ocean that make up the EEZ and the high seas. This is a
daunting challenge for an agency with a finite number of assets available
for the patrol of such a vast area of water.
The
world's population is anticipated to increase in the next two decades by
nearly two billion people. Ethnic and sectarian strife will likely
continue to fuel sudden and uncontrolled migrations of large numbers of
people, putting increased demands on limited resources. The flood of
illegal migrants in overcrowded boats onto America's shores is not only a
threat to human life but also a violation of U.S. and international laws.
Coast Guard migrant-interdiction operations are for that reason as much
humanitarian efforts as they are law-enforcement missions. In fact, the
majority of alien migrant-interdiction cases handled by the Coast Guard
actually begin as search-and-rescue missions, usually on the high seas
rather than in U.S. coastal waters.
Between
1980 and mid-1999, the Coast Guard interdicted more than 292,200 migrants
from 44 countries, and it has recently seen a marked increase in organized
alien smuggling ventures, especially from Cuba and the People's Republic
of China.
In
its efforts to increase U.S. security against illegal migration, the Coast
Guard constantly monitors maritime transit zones to interdict illegal
migrants, saves lives by rescuing people from sinking vessels, provides
humanitarian assistance to those discovered in poor health, returns
illegal migrants to their home countries, and trains other nations to play
a stronger role in discouraging illegal migration into the United States.
Mobility
Prior
to establishing the Revenue Cutter Service in 1790, Secretary of the
Treasury Alexander Hamilton sought ways to protect the vital cargoes
carried by the American merchant marine--the foundation of the colonial
economy--and collect the taxes generated by those cargoes. As a preventive
measure, he proposed the creation of a federal agency (the Revenue Cutter
Service) to protect American shipping from the wide range of coastal
hazards, including rocks and shoals, threatening ships at sea.
President
George Washington signed the ninth Act of Congress in 1789, making the
Lighthouse Service--another of the several predecessors of today's Coast
Guard--responsible for the establishment and maintenance of maritime aids
to navigation. The importance of this mission might be illustrated by the
example of highways without lanes, in which an oversized truck might be 60
times larger than the small passenger car next to it--and where vehicles
were free to travel in any direction they chose, at any speed. These
roadways would obviously be much more hazardous if some drivers had
absolutely no training.
Just
such a freeway exists on U.S. waterways, however--and 95 percent of all
U.S. commerce travels over it. The U.S. Marine Transportation System
consists of a bewildering and complex mix of waterways, ports, and
intermodal landside connections, which collectively allow the nation's
various modes and types of transportation to move people and goods to,
from, and on the water.
As
the nation's lead agency for waterways management, port safety and
security, and vessel safety inspection and certification, the Coast Guard
maintains a continuous and clear focus not only on the prevention of
marine accidents but also on the response measures needed to cope with
manmade and natural disasters. The Coast Guard also is responsible for
patrolling the safe and efficient navigable waterways system needed to
support domestic commerce, facilitate international trade, and ensure the
continued availability of the military sealift fleet required for national
defense.
A
fleet of Coast Guard buoy tenders maintains the "signposts" and
"traffic signals"--more than 50,000 federal aids to navigation,
including buoys, lighthouses, day beacons, and radio-navigation
signals--on the nation's waterways. The Coast Guard is currently reaching
full operational capability for the Differential Global Positioning System
network that will provide boaters and mariners with the most accurate
navigation system available.
Like
plowing snow-covered roads, Coast Guard domestic icebreakers keep shipping
lanes open for commercial traffic in winter. In congested harbors, the
Coast Guard coordinates the safe and efficient movement of commercial
vessels through its Vessel Traffic Services system.
With
global maritime trade forecasted to double and perhaps triple in the next
two decades, larger numbers of ultra-large, deep-draft, and minimally
crewed ships--many of them carrying hazardous cargoes--will ply U.S.
waters and economic zones, along with new supersized cruise ships capable
of carrying 6,000 or more passengers. Because the potential for disastrous
environmental harm and loss of life from even a single incident will
continue to grow exponentially, the Coast Guard is working on even more
effective systems for preventing (and rapidly responding to) marine
accidents.
Protection
of Natural Resources
The
Coast Guard's role in environmental protection dates back more than 175
years to the 1822 Timber Act that tasked the Revenue Cutter Service with
protecting government timber from poachers.
The
Coast Guard is still protecting the country's valuable natural marine
resources; today, however, the principal dangers are overfishing and
foreign poaching. In the fight to protect the biomass within the U.S.
Exclusive Economic Zone, the Coast Guard is working on numerous
fronts--patrolling the closed fishing grounds off New England, for
example, so that depleted species have an opportunity to return to
harvestable levels. In the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard helps protect
endangered sea turtles from being caught in indiscriminate fishing nets.
Through close cooperation with other federal and foreign agencies, the
Coast Guard also is gaining ground against the use of high-seas driftnets
in the Pacific Ocean. And Coast Guard cutters remain on constant patrol in
the Bering Sea to prevent foreign vessels from poaching in the fish-rich
Alaskan waters.
The
Coast Guard also has pioneered the fight against water pollution. Its
Research and Development Center developed a technique to
"fingerprint" oil to identify the source of a spill. Today, the
Coast Guard's National Strike Teams are on-call 24 hours a day to respond
to accidents and spills in the marine environment. The service also
enforces federal regulations on, and is actively working to reduce, the
dumping of refuse and sewage from vessels of all types. Through a public
education program called Sea Partners, the Coast Guard is promoting the
importance of a clean marine environment and is, in addition, working
closely with foreign nations and international agencies to reduce the
number of marine accidents (and resulting spills) by establishing and
rigorously enforcing improved safety standards for commercial vessels and
their crews.
The
results of these efforts have been demonstrably successful. The ratio
between gallons spilled vs. million gallons of oil shipped has been
significantly reduced, from an annual average of 14 gallons spilled (for
the years 1983 to 1990) to only five gallons during the years 1991 to
1998--a 64 percent decrease.
To
reach the longer-term goal of virtually eliminating environmental damage
to U.S. waterways, the Coast Guard pursues an aggressive three-pronged
approach encompassing prevention, enforcement, and response. The service
has partnered with the maritime industry to develop new safety standards
for commercial vessels and their crews, and enforces those standards
through rigorous testing and thorough investigations into marine accidents
and spills.
The
Coast Guard's website is www.uscg.mil.
U.S.
Coast Guard Academy
Located
in New London, Conn., approximately halfway between New York City and
Boston, the Coast Guard Academy has an undergraduate enrollment of 850 men
and women. Selection to the Coast Guard Academy is based on an annual
nationwide competition, a process unique among the service academies.
There are no congressional appointments to the academy, and geographical
quotas do not play a part in admissions decisions. The superintendent is
Rear Adm. Douglas H. Teeson, USCG.
Degrees
and majors: Cadets may choose from eight major fields of study:
electrical, civil, mechanical, and marine engineering and naval
architecture; government; management; marine and environmental science;
and operations research. Each graduate receives a Bachelor of Science
degree and a commission as an ensign in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Costs:
To defray the cost of uniforms and educational equipment, a $3,000 deposit
is required upon entrance; $300 of this sum is required at the time a
cadet accepts a full appointment.
Financial
Aid: Each cadet receives about $600 per month for uniforms, equipment,
textbooks, and other training expenses.
Admissions:
Eligibility requirements include satisfactory SAT or ACT scores, good
scholastic records, and demonstrated leadership potential. Each candidate
must pass a medical examination before acceptance. New classes begin in
July of each year.
Application
Information: Applications, which are due by 15 December, are available
online at http://www.cga.edu or by contacting:
Director
of Admissions
U.S. Coast Guard Academy
31 Mohegan Avenue
New London, CT 06320-8103
or
by calling: (860) 444-8501
(800) 883-8724
Email: admissions@cga.uscg.mil.
Website: www.cga.edu
Leadership
Development Center
In
1998, the Coast Guard Academy created this educational center of
excellence for the entire Coast Guard--military and civilian, officer and
enlisted. The LDC consolidates into a single, rich learning environment
several prominent Coast Guard schools from around the country, including
Officer Candidate School, Chief Warrant Officer Indoctrination School,
Chief Petty Officer Academy, Command and Operations School,
Officer-in-Charge School, Key Civilian Orientation Program, and the
Leadership and Quality Institute.
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