Peacemaking: The High Seas Gunfight

In the missile age, it is noteworthy that with the exception of a single torpedo attack - we continue to see a series of gunfights of various natures define military combat at sea. Navy Times reported yesterday that just two weeks ago, the US Coast Guard engaged in one such firefight.

A boarding team from the medium endurance cutter Escanaba got in a shootout with suspected drug smugglers while attempting to board a vessel in international waters near the coast of Nicaragua Sept. 14, the service said in a statement.

The Coast Guardsmen were perusing a go-fast vessel in Escanaba’s over-the-horizon small boat and were closing in when the suspects began shooting at the team. The Escanaba’s crew members immediately returned fire while the coxswain began evasive maneuvering and continued the chase, according to the Coast Guard statement.

The suspected smugglers then entered Nicaraguan waters, and the boarding team lost contact with them.

The USCGC Escanaba (WMEC 907) seized 963 pounds of cocaine that was jettisoned from a vessel 21 miles south of Providencia, Colombia on Sept. 17, 2010 - just three days after this incident. In that incident, the suspects beached their vessel and fled on foot, evading capture.

There is a huge human centric training discussion in the action described by Navy Times that I am skipping - not because I don't recognize it exists, rather because I think the US Coast Guard actions in this case once again verifies my belief that our people are well trained to react to this situation appropriately.

But the question is do we equip them right? My favorite piece of the often maligned Deepwater Program isn't any of the aircraft or cutter programs, rather the Coast Guard's Long Range Interceptor & Short Range Prosecutor programs. I have no information regarding the specific equipment the Coast Guard is purchasing as part of these programs, but at the conceptual level I appreciate the value the Coast Guard is placing on these systems - and in my opinion, the Navy does not have a good reason not to be making a similar focus on small deployable manned boats.

It is important to note the nature of operations has not changed - but what has changed is the frequency in which maritime security operations is putting small boats of navy and coast guard personnel in close proximity to small boats with armed men. For example, yesterday it appears that Turkey became the latest nation to position their warships right off the coast of some piracy port in Somalia to intercept pirates as they departed for the sea. That operation looks very similar to what the FSD De Grasse (D 612) was doing off the Somalia coast a few weeks ago.

In all of these cases we continue to find maritime security operations using small boats - sometimes with helicopter assistance and sometimes not - in situations where a deadly gunfight can break out. Within the context of the emerging irregular warfare threat matrix to be faced by naval and coast guard forces in the maritime domain - are we putting our people in the best position to insure their safety during small boat operations?

In the context of daily activity, I think it is pretty obvious small boat operations during daily Maritime Security Operations is where our people are the most vulnerable - and the necessity to protect people becomes an even bigger challenge when our naval ships intended to specifically address the MSO function (like LCS is expected to do) are being fielded with smaller crews, because the loss of even a single sailor has greater impact to the operation of a ship.

There is a school of thought that argues unmanned surface vessels represent the solution to these issues. I don't believe that is true, and a focus on unmanned technologies would be a distraction in understanding the value of more capable small manned deployable boats.

Unmanned vessels can give naval forces at the small boat level a higher level of warfighting capability - but must do this at the cost of greater peacemaking capabilities at sea. An unmanned small boat takes up the space of a manned vessel, and when most of the activities of small boat operations require a human touch, you lose capability with an unmanned technology.

For example, how does a robot help with this problem - or put another way, how much worse would this situation have been had the US Navy been using an unmanned small boat instead of a manned small boat?

Thirteen people aboard a skiff drowned Monday in the Gulf of Aden as the crew of the U.S. destroyer Winston S. Churchill attempted to assist the disabled vessel, a military statement said.

The skiff was found drifting in a Gulf shipping corridor on Sunday.

When U.S. Navy personnel couldn't repair its engine, the ship was towed toward the coast of Somalia and assistance was offered to the 85 people on board -- 10 Somalis and 75 Ethiopians.

"While transferring humanitarian supplies to the skiff, the passengers rushed to one side and the skiff began taking on water, quickly capsizing and sinking rapidly, leaving all 85 passengers in the water," according to the U.S. Navy.

The Navy said the destroyer crew immediately began search and rescue operations. Thirteen passengers drowned and eight were missing, the Navy said. Sixty-one passengers were rescued.

Unless the small unmanned surface vessel has a gun that can shoot lifeboats and flotation devices from its stern, you have sacrificed capability by replacing a small manned craft with an unmanned vehicle.

This discussion goes to the nature of warfare evolving in the 21st century. A few observations:

Naval surface vessels are trending toward gun warfare in the 21st century. Naval surface vessels represent the only human peacemaking capability at sea - underwater and aviation capabilities can not substitute in the primary functions of peacemaking, even as the greatly contribute to the battlespace awareness in peacemaking. Peacemaking is a primarily human activity.

Naval surface vessels are the most vulnerable vessels in warfighting. Naval warfare has not changed since WWII, warfighting in the missile age at sea is still primarily done by aircraft and submarines. Warfighting is a primarily technological activity.

So I ask again... when looking at the activities our forces, do we equip our people in a way that aligns activity with capability? When I look at programs like the Littoral Combat Ship and think about what kind of Coast Guard cutters we need in the 21st century, I'm not always convinced we are aligning our technology choices with activities as well as we could be.