Study Material

Several different posts have gone up in topic areas of interest. As I am still working out my posting (and overall) schedule, I am going to link to them by general topic here. Read at your leisure if interested., and comment, please. I will get back to these items as I am able over the next several posts.

Piracy

Courtesy of GCaptain.com, the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) has some strong advice (Here):

"Do not sail in the western Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, Somali Basin and Gulf of Aden. ISAF robustly endorses this position. It considers that sailing in these waters is highly irresponsible"

Arctic Policy

EagleSpeak discusses the USCG Commandant's recent testimony on Capitol Hill regarding USCG Arctic preparedness. A quote,:

"Our current Arctic capabilities are very limited. We have only one operational ice breaker. We do not have any coastal or shoreside infrastructure."

Then there is this port visit press release from the two days later, where the only mention of the state of the USCG icebreaker fleet is:

"The nation’s largest ice breaker, Coast Guard Cutter Healy"

From Dark Roasted Blend, some photos of the Russian Icebreaker fleet in action

Cutter Fleet

Chuck Hill over at CGBlog.org, discusses an item that I have followed closely, the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) program.

CGBlog also discusses how strategic communication (or lack thereof) can impact the future cutter fleet. This well-written piece also ponders how could USN and USCG fleet construction efforts be better coordinated (this overall discussion is also relevant to Arctic policy)

Maritime Interdiction

Chuck Hill also discusses how the Israeli Navy applied lessons learned in a high profile interdiction effort.

Please take a look at these links. We'll discuss these and other topics in the near future.


The views expressed herein are those of the blogger and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Commandant or of the U. S. Coast Guard.