Patience and Humility

So…I accidentally reposted my 2022 essay and not my 2023. My bad.

Thanks for all the kind comments but I deleted the previous post…

The Need for Coast Guard-Specific Joint Professional Military Education

INTRODUCTION

            United States Coast Guard authorities span much of the United States Code (USC). As stated succinctly in Title 14 USC, we “shall be a service in the Department of Homeland Security, except when operating as a service in the Navy.”  Title 10 includes the Coast Guard as one of the six “armed forces,” and a 2008 memorandum of agreement between departments specifies how our capabilities and resources are used to support National Military Strategy.  During a law enforcement mission, a Coast Guard or Navy operational unit can shift tactical control between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense (DoD) to align with legal authority.  The Coast Guard plays a unique role between State diplomacy and Defense lethality in the maritime domain: formally educating our members will increase Sea Service effectiveness.

            The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of October 4, 1986, pushed the other services toward the joint force we know today and brought standardization to Joint Professional Military Education (JPME).  JPME was established after World War II due to new demands for collaboration across the ground, sea, and air domains.  Today’s JPME falls under the purview of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and consists of five levels:¹

1. Preparatory JMPE, taught to undergraduates and during primary military education.
2. Phase I, taught at intermediate and mid-grade levels.
3. Phase II, taught at senior levels.
4. Single-phase programs, offered at select institutions.
5. General/field officer course

            DoD offers JPME course quotas to Coast Guard members across all five levels.  I completed Phase I through the Air Command & Staff College and have talked to numerous Phase II graduates.  All interviewed thought the DoD JMPE I course was highly beneficial, providing perspective on the Coast Guard as an instrument of national power.  However, all agreed it primarily focuses on the host service’s role in joint warfighting, satisfactorily covers the other DoD services, and mentions the Coast Guard.  Further, the DoD JPME curriculum does not – and probably should not – delve into DHS history, mission, authorities, strategy, and organization.

The Coast Guard needs a service-specific, DoD-accredited JPME I course.

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

The Coast Guard traces its roots to August 4, 1790, and the creation of the Revenue Cutter Service.  Over the next two centuries, the service merged with the Life-Saving Service, Lighthouse Service, and Bureau of Marine Inspection & Navigation.  It has operated within the Departments of Treasury until 1967, Transportation until 2003, and currently Homeland Security.  We were the Nation’s only maritime armed force until 1798: “simultaneously and at all times a military force and federal law enforcement agency dedicated to maritime safety, security, and stewardship missions.”²  Notably, 6 USC § 468 designates the italicized missions below as “non-homeland security”:

1. Marine Safety
2. Search and Rescue
3. Aids to Navigation (ATON)
4. Living Marine Resources (domestic fisheries)
5. Marine Environmental Protection
6. Ice Operations
7. Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security (PWCS)
8. Drug Interdiction
9. Migrant Interdiction
10. Defense Readiness
11. Other Law Enforcement (foreign fisheries)

DHS was created in the wake of September 11, 2001, to integrate efforts across (as of this essay) 22 different agencies and their unique authorities.  DHS was refined over the next decade in response to its Second Stage Review, the Security Accountability for Every (SAFE) Port Act, Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, the 9/11 Commission Act, and the first Quadrennial Homeland Security Review.³  DHS missions include:⁴

1. Counter Terrorism and Homeland Security Threats
2. Secure U.S. Borders and Approaches
3. Secure Cyberspace and Critical Infrastructure
4. Preserve and Uphold the Nation’s Prosperity and Economic Security
5. Strengthen Preparedness and Resilience
6. Champion the DHS Workforce and Strengthen the Department

I performed drug interdiction missions with other DHS agencies while assigned to Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON), and our hangar was next to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Air and Marine Operations (AMO). However, we did not have a sense of camaraderie or train together as aircrew within the same department when back home.  Yet, my maintenance team found opportunities to work with AMO through a shared sense of purpose, sending parts down range on their aircraft and sharing our test equipment with their maintainers. 

I am a DHS plank owner but have yet to receive formal training on DHS doctrine and, therefore, better understand DoD to this day as an organization. Efforts to coordinate mission schedules and collocate operational units face significant headwinds.  With no Congressional act as a forcing function, we must systematically elevate our service’s understanding of and, therefore, ability to coordinate with DHS through a service-specific JPME I course.

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

            No document more clearly explains the Coast Guard’s defense role than the current tri-service maritime strategy, Advantage at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power, signed by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Chief of Naval Operations, and Commandant of the Coast Guard.  This document guides the National Fleet Board, their National Fleet Plan, and seven commonality working groups:⁵

1. Permanent Joint Working Group (PJWG): weapons, sensors, and communications equipment standardization.
2. Small Boat Commonality Integrated Process Team: comparisons of small craft capability to ensure commonality.
3. Naval Logistics Integration Working Group: improve naval logistics integration via best practices.
4. Transit Protection Program Working Group: analysis of transit escort operations to ensure High-Value Asset escort coordination.
5. Strategic Laydown Working Group: alignment of strategic homeporting and basing efforts.
6. Arctic Working Group: alignment of Arctic strategy and policy.
7. Intelligence and Information Sharing Working Group (IISWG): coordination of intelligence sharing and equipment commonality.

My current role as chief of the Coast Guard’s Navy Type/Navy Owned (NT/NO) Combat Systems Management Division (CG-453) aligns with the PJWG.  Since being established in 2021, we have been updating the documentation that supports system lifecycle management in both services’ planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) processes.  As a joint team, we identified gaps in joint naval operational capabilities (NOC) agreements, updated Navy resource sponsor memos, and aligned Coast Guard in-yard need dates (IYND) to the realities of major system acquisitions.  Along the way, we codified the current equipment populations, mapped system end-of-support dates, and forecasted future sustainment costs to align operational capabilities decisions with projected joint operating environments. 

I thought my primary focus coming into the job would be organizing information and processes across the 15 offices we touch, but I was surprised how much of my time has been spent educating members of both services about each other.  Any U. S. Coast Guard Academy graduate can tell you that we are “the hard nucleus around which the Navy forms in times of war,” but few can name the joint bodies, doctrine, or systems that enable it.  DoD JPME is not going deep enough on Sea Service integration, and there is no Coast Guard-specific JPME to fill in the gaps.

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE

I’m also a Coast Guard Minerva Implementation Team member, a similar but much smaller effort akin to DoD and DHS integrated data environments.  DoD aims to connect all armed forces sensors into a unified network, with each service bringing a piece of the architecture.⁶  Our team is shifting programmatic focus from stovepiped systems management to integrated governance across sensors, networks/datalinks, storage, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and visualization.   

Because the Coast Guard resides on the DoD Information Network (DoDIN), we follow their and not DHS information assurance policies.  We must safeguard defense information while simultaneously exchanging data with other federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and private sector (FSLTTP) partners.  Minerva, therefore, has requirements to exchange unclassified data with DHS’s Integrated Multi-Domain Enterprise (IMDE), classified with DoD, and highly classified with the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS). 

Not only are our authorities and operations uniquely positioned, but also our information systems architecture.  Though the details are beyond the classification of this essay and the scope of JPME, the nuanced role of the Coast Guard is not.

CONCLUSION

            DoD JPME is insufficient for educating Coast Guard members on their homeland security and defense dual roles.  A Coast Guard-hosted JPME Phase I course would be more thorough on our integration with DoD through the Navy and broader on our relationships across DHS.  Preserving the course’s DoD JPME certification would prevent us from creating an entire curriculum across all five levels and likely improve the education of the Coast Guard’s role to the other armed forces. 

A deeper understanding of the Coast Guard’s role would increase Sea Service effectiveness and preserve our unique culture. Therefore, the Leadership and Development Center should partner with National Defense University’s Coast Guard chair and the Force Readiness Command to begin the front-end analysis for a Coast Guard-specific JPME Phase I course.

ENDNOTES

1. Watson, Cynthia Ann (2007). Military education: a reference handbook. Contemporary military, strategic, and security issues. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 22. 
2. “Home,” United States Coast Guard (USCG) Historian’s Office, accessed April 20, 2023, https://www.history.uscg.mil/home/history-program/.
3. “Creation of the Department of Homeland Security,” Creation of the Department of Homeland Security | Homeland Security, June 3, 2022, https://www.dhs.gov/creation-department-homeland-security.
4. “Strategic Planning,” Strategic Planning | Homeland Security, December 16, 2022, https://www.dhs.gov/strategic-planning.
5. National Fleet Plan 2023.
6. Lingel, Sherrill; Hagen, Jeff; Hastings, Eric; Lee, Mary; Sargent, Matthew; Walsh, Matthew; Zhang, Li A.; Blancett, David; Zhang, Li A.; Blancett, David (2020-01-01). “Joint All Domain Command and Control for Modern Warfare: An Analytic Framework for Identifying and Developing Artificial Intelligence Applications”.