Proceedings Of The Marine

SPR 2014

Proceedings magazine is a communication tool for the Coast Guard's Marine Safety & Security Council. Each quarterly magazine focuses on a specific theme of interest to the marine industry.

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21 Spring 2014 Proceedings www.uscg.mil/proceedings This layered approach to security begins in foreign ports where the Coast Guard conducts port assessments, using the International Port Security Program to assess security and antiterrorism measure effectiveness. Well before ves- sels arrive in U.S. ports, screening and targeting operations yield critical information about vessels, crews, passengers, and cargo destined for the United States. Maritime patrol aircraft provide broad surveillance capability, enabling cut- ters to respond to potential threats, launch boats and aircraft in adverse sea states, and maintain a presence through all weather conditions. To prevent and respond to potential threats approaching our coasts, shore-based Coast Guard helicopters, patrol boats, and small boats monitor, track, interdict, and board ves- sels. In our ports, the DHS components including the Coast Guard, along with federal, state, local, and tribal partners, working in concert with port stakeholders, maintain a safe and secure port environment by patrolling U.S. waters and guarding critical infrastructure, conducting vessel escorts, and inspecting travelers, vessels, and facilities. Challenges Abound Maintaining effective border security is a huge challenge for several reasons, not the least of which is keeping watch over a geographic span of 95,000 miles of coastline and 7,500 miles of land border. 1 But even that huge expanse only includes the physical borders of the United States, which is what most people envision when describing our borders. To fully understand the actual expanse and complexity of border security requires an understanding and appreciation of the maritime environment. The U.S. has a 12-mile territorial sea, another 12 miles of contiguous zone, and 3.4 million square miles of exclu- sive economic zone to monitor and control. Through these waters transit a huge volume of legitimate commercial cargo and recreational vessels. U.S. ports and waterways handle more than 2 billion tons of domestic and international cargo each year. 2 In 2010, cruise ships calling in U.S. ports carried nearly 15 million passengers. 3 To handle the commercial and the growing recreational maritime interests, the U.S. Coast Guard maintains a world-class aids to navigation sys- tem to keep waterways navigable. Beyond our jurisdictional waters is a 6 million square-mile swath of ocean between South America and the United States through which transit hundreds of tons of illicit drugs and thousands of illegal migrants toward the U.S. every year. Unfortunately this activity also returns millions of dollars in illicit profts and contraband weapons back to transnational criminal organizations. 4 Regardless of the cargo, this illicit maritime traffc comes in a variety of modes, including: • the ubiquitous go-fast vessels operating primarily in littoral waters and often blending with legitimate recre- ational traffc; • typical fshing vessels and coastal freighters with hid- den compartments; • stealthy self-propelled, semi-submersible and fully sub- mersible vessels designed and built solely for smug- gling. Smuggling tactics are limited only by the smuggler's imagi- nation and include any number of tricks such as creating secret compartments within vessel hulls and inside tanks, towing a submerged tube, and dissolving cocaine in fuel or other liquids for later recovery. Smugglers travel far offshore outside the expected range of law enforcement, move through territorial waters to take advantage of enforcement seams that result from varying jurisdictions and sovereign limitations, hide in plain sight by mixing with legitimate traffc, move at night to avoid detection, and cover their vessels with tarps in daytime to blend with the ocean. The very nature of criminal enterprises gives them a decided advantage; smugglers get to choose the time and place of the activities and they needn't follow any of the rules. Further, law enforcement assets must overcome the tyranny of time and distance to reposition in a timely manner in response to actionable intelligence — all this with aging assets and limited force levels. CGC Valiant crew members offoad more than $48 million in illicit drugs at Coast Guard Base Miami Beach, Fla. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Offcer Sabrina Elgammal. Petty Offcer Ryan Johnson, a marine science technician, observes the state of an oil-impacted beach during a shore- line assessment in Grand Isle, La. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Offcer Caleb Critchfeld. Spring2014_FINAL.indd 21 3/21/14 11:13 AM

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