Sea Control - Sea Control 219 - USCG Commandant Admiral Karl Schultz

Episode Date: December 27, 2020

By Walker MillsSea Control 219. Commandant of the United States Coast Guard Admiral Karl Schultz joins Sea Control’s Walker Mills to talk about the recent Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Strategic Fishing Strategic Outlook and the 2019 Arctic Strategic Outlook. Admiral Schultz discusses the balancing the Coast Guard’s missions and resources, innovation in the force and the Coast Guard’s role in great power competition.Download Sea Control 219 - USCG Commandant Admiral Karl Schultz Links1. “Arctic Strategic Outlook,” United States Coast Guard, April 2019.2. “Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing Strategic Outlook,” United States Coast Guard, September 2020.3. “White Ships for the Gray Zone,” by Capt. Walker Mills, USNI Proceedings, February 2020.4. “In the Arctic, Look to the Coast Guard,” by Capt. Walker Mills, USNI Proceedings, August 2020.5. “The Coast Guard Needs to Listen – Acoustically,” by LTJG Thomas Caero, USNI Proceedings, August 2020.6. “Bring Back Coast Guard Sub Hunters,” by David Van Dyk, USNI Proceedings, September 2020.7. “The U.S. Coast Guard Should Guard the U.S. Coasts,” by LCDR Brian Hayes, USNI Blog, September 21, 2020.Walker Mills is Co-Host of the Sea Control Podcast. Contact the Sea Control team at [e-mail].

Hey folks, Jared here. Walker Mills has landed our biggest fish yet, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Carl Schultz, who graciously agreed to a second recording session after some audio issues on the first go-round. Stay tuned for a broad-ranging conversation on IUU fishing, China, Russia, the Arctic, icebreakers, the Coast Guard's place in the national security strategy, and more. As always, when I advertise and strongly recommend our friends in the SimSec Podcast Network and our second podcast feed the bilge pumps you can find alex strack jamie and a pile of empty iron brew bottles on apple podcast stitcher spotify and wherever else you download your podcast it's a more low-key slightly less serious approach to current events in the maritime domain and naval

history check them out wherever you download your podcast this week's episode is a retrospective on bilge pumps 2020 finally from sea control to bilge pumps to project trident 2020 has been a banner year for simsec we need your help to carry that momentum supporting our right fight win holiday donation campaign via direct donations on our website or by making SimSec your preferred nonprofit on Amazon Smile so you can support us while you shop. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security. This week, we're talking with the 26th Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Carl Schultz, who needs very little introduction. Admiral Schultz is the Senior Officer of the

United States Coast Guard. Admiral Schultz, we're excited to have you here. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Captain Mills, it's exciting to be here with you today. I'm excited to talk about, you know, what the Coast Guard is doing across the globe, some of our recent strategies we put on the street, and how those all fit in and roll up into the national security picture of the nation. Sir, we're excited to have you. Today, we're going to be talking about the Coast Guard and some of the recent strategic documents, like you mentioned. Last year's Arctic Strategic Outlook and the recently released Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported Fishing Strategic Outlook. And just a note to our listeners, this is actually the second time that we're recording this podcast because the first recording was unusable. So thank you again to Admiral Schultz for giving us a second try at this.

So starting off, Admiral, I'd like to ask why you and your team have written these strategic documents. Arctic operations and fisheries policing are obviously not new issues for the Coast Guard. So what does it mean to release a strategic outlook and is the timing of these, the release of these documents significant in any way? walker let me let me take a stab at those before i do i gotta put a little clarifying the previous was not technologically usable i hope it wasn't content usable and your folks are sitting there saying what the hell did walker just say to the common out here it was so bad he couldn't come up online it was the technology issue sure sir on our end on our end i'm just kidding you walker hey listen no you're those are great questions and you know strategic documents Arctic Ops, IAU fishing, not new issues. That is absolutely true. You know, 150 years or so back in our 230-year history, we've really been a lead federal agency here on the front of

Living Marine Resource, law enforcement, on projecting upholding American sovereignty, national security, economic prosperity, and high latitudes, specifically the Arctic. You know, look at our early ties in Alaska and projecting north into the Arctic. I think our long-standing role in leadership in those critical areas is absolutely essential and probably never more important than our early years than it is today here. And that's about, you know, the Arctic being an increasingly competitive domain. Both China and Russia have declared the same. They've called it an area of strategic importance to both of their countries. China and Russia are both making investments. You know, in China's case, they're a self-declared near Arctic state. I think we've

the secretary of state say i'm not exactly sure what such a thing is but that's what they're calling themselves and you know they had one research vessel um the snow dragon one that they got from the ukrainians originally they built the second like sister ship and now they're talking about building around their way to build a heavy breaker what we might call the coast guard version of polar security cutter so they're serious about the arctic and i think they're paying attention this is china you know rare minerals that are on the ocean floor a trillion dollars of lead palladium other things there's a third of the world's untapped lng and somewhere in the mid to upper teens of petroleum products so the arctic is a resource rich environment for

china i think there's also you know when you think about china projecting you know um defense capabilities across the globe you know the arctic is a strategic approach vulnerability to the united states i know the north com commander pays considerable attention to that we see you know folks up there paying attention to our undersea cables in places like off of Kotzebue with we've cited fifth generation fighters in places like Eielson because of more Russian bear bombers controlling up there you know more frequently than yesteryear so I think there's a lot of things that make the Arctic important we saw in August Russia had a major military exercise up in the Bering Sea a little bit actually cost a little fracas or some of our United States

black fishing vessels, and we sort of had to noodle through that a little bit, and they were operating within their international rights, but there's a little bit better opportunity to inform that for future similar exercises, and, you know, again, with China, you know, they are investing, and that's the Arctic, the Antarctic, down in the Antarctica, additional research state, you know, increasing their footprints. Last year on the Antarctic continent was the first year the Coast Guard got back in the inspections business for these research stations. You know, there's no geography claims legitimate claims in antarctica and under the the treaty you know any station nation state can go look at another station saying we went out and saw three countries

um sites last year one being china one being italy and uh and that's important and then lastly i would say you know as i've traveled around the globe and my previous job as atlantic forces commander and you know two and a half years or so into this job as common you know a lot of the focus on the Coast Guard yesteryear was, in yesteryear in terms of recent years, was, you know, the counter-narcotics work in the Western Hemisphere, it was piracy that was going on in the Arabian Gulf and Horn of Africa, other parts of the world. I would tell you now what I'm hearing from, you know, other global navies and Coast Guards is this IAU fishing.

It affects sovereign interests, it affects economic interests, and it has the ability to really deteriorate fragile coastal states' abilities to protect their own sovereign interests and controls. And I think when you roll that up, it's a geostrategic political threat a little bit. So to me, I think these strategies were very timely. The Arctic One was an update on a strategy that was rolled out about six years ago. Generally, these strategic outlooks are sort of envisioned to have about a 10-year shelf life on them.

I felt like enough had evolved and changed here since my predecessor put one out that We sort of wanted to tweak the lines of effort a little bit. That Arctic strategy is focused on enhancing capability to operate effectively in a dynamic Arctic. That's the first line of effort. Strengthening the rules-based order, LOE, line of effort number two. And the third is innovate and adapt to promote resiliency and prosperity. Those are a little bit different adaptations of our first outlook. So that's kind of how we are in terms of the whys and where we see ourselves going here, Walker.

And I want to start with the IIU piece. I know you talked about both that and the Arctic, and you've said in the past, and I hope I'm not misquoting you here, that IAU fishing that's illegal, unregulated and unreporting fishing is more than just a boat with illegal tuna, that it's really a national security issue. And you spoke to this a little bit in your last answer that some of our partners and allies in the region, I know in the Western Hemisphere are engaging with this and are kind of worried about it. Do you think that this issue is gaining more visibility, both in the United States and abroad? And perhaps why is that? Yeah, I think that's a very true statement. I think the last decade in particular, IAU fishing has gained visibility. And really, I think it's rolling into to be a national security issue.

Fishing disputes have become front and center in broader territorial disputes. We see conflict with China and the Vietnamese, conflict with China and the Philippines around disputed land masses, you know, that weren't, there may be spits of land in the past that are now land masses with, you know, capabilities built out on them. We see some nations using military force to protect their own fishing fleets on what they claim is their waters or disputed waters. I think the second part of that is, you know, global fish stocks continue to decline, and about 93% of the world's fish are overfished, exploited, and that tension is only going to increase. You know, we look at about half the world's population, global population, rely on fish as their annual source of protein, animal protein. And partner nations across the globe are becoming increasingly concerned that this illegal, unregulated, unreported fishing threatens their food security and their economic stability. So there's a lot there. Distant water fishing fleets, large-scale efforts, you know, that 350-ship fleet that was operating off the Galapagos Marine Reserve has since changed their area, you know, working up and down the coast of South America, up off of Peru, down off of Chile.

There's a lot there. They leave trash behind. I think some of them, you know, are operating, you know, in the shadows. Their AIS and their real positions don't necessarily correlate. I think they intimidate local fishing operations. We sent the National Security Cutter Burtok that was doing a counter drug patrol in the eastern Pacific Ocean down there at the request of the Ecuadorian government, channeled up to our partner, U.S. Southern Command Admiral Fowler's team to go down there and do a little bit of surveillance. They were escorted by an Ecuadorian offshore patrol or a larger patrol vessel, and we got them into the fleet, and we pointed to a dozen-plus vessels that we said, hey, there's a couple things here you might want to take a look at. It's an Ecuadorian sovereign interest, but we help them sort of define what might be some target-rich things to go ask some questions about and get smart around.

And I think really, lastly, you know, if you look at this IUU illegal illicit phishing, it normalizes illegal behavior and really increases the vulnerability to transnational organized crime. We've seen ties to, you know, to human smuggling and other things, other than the fairest things, narcotics. I think IUU phishing, if not attenuated or addressed, is really a pathway to other threatening behaviors, you know, that occur in the global maritime conference. Sir, that's a really interesting way to think about it as an on-ramp or kind of a slippery slope to other forms of transnational crime. And I know down here in South Com with Admiral Fowler, we've definitely been paying close attention to there was the mostly Chinese fleet that you mentioned that was near the Galapagos. And I think it's moved on a little bit now. I want to ask the IUU Fishing Strategic Outlook specifically names China as one of the largest contributors to IUU fishing around the world. Do you think the Coast Guard's role in combating IUU fishing and supporting our partners like the Ecuadorians that you mentioned, do you think that's part of what the Pentagon and the State Department are calling great power competition?

Yeah, Walker, that's a very good question. And I would tell you, when we put our strategic outlook, IUU strategic outlook on the street, it was not intended to be a counter China strategy. That said, you know, you're absolutely correct. China is arguably the number one violator IUU. They have the largest distant water fishing fleet. We talked about those 350 vessels that were operating off the east coast of South America, you know, near the Galapagos and up and down the coast. that's 9,000 plus miles from China and you know they don't exercise a lot of flag state oversight of those vessels so those ships go out there they do their thing you know those aren't all Chinese flag vessels but most of them show the characteristics of Chinese flag ships and some of them have you know cut some deals backroom deals with uh with probably some of the flag states along the eastern seaboard or excuse me the western seaboard of Latin America and um you

know they're operating in the shadows they may be flying an Ecuadorian flag but it's really a little bit of a shell game they're going on so for us you know what we what we focus on is all IU fishing the fact that China has this 4,500 size IU fleet that they claim and then by extension when you look at these Chinese characterized ships that are really under Ghana flag Ecuador flag other parts of the world, that may roll up to be 17,000 ships. I think there is a great power component of this. You know, one of the things that my experience shows me is, you know, China doesn't necessarily appreciate being called out for bad behavior. But if there is bad behavior, if it's coercive antagonistic behavior, it's overexploiting other people's sovereign waters

and exclusive economic zones, we don't have to look too far outside the South China Sea to see some of their fisheries, their clamming, what it's done to the seaports, ravished it and things like that. And they've outfished some of their own regional domestic water. So where do you allow that to go unchecked? And what is the deleterious impacts to other sovereign nation states? I think about this pushing into the Pacific. You get down there to a place like Oceania, which is Pacific Island nations. And across the board there, it's probably a fair statement to say about 50% of each of those pacific island nations gdp is some form of fashions derived from the sea and uh you know you start to look at china rolling in there as part of their one belt one road initiative you

stroke a check for some port access and dual use there you start to you know ravage those fishing areas here if you don't manage that proactively suddenly those island nations become pretty dire situation pretty quick here a little bit so i think what what we want to do is we want to illuminate the fact that iu fishing is a global threat we want to assert a coast guard leadership role i made the statement you know we can't be the world's fish cops because we don't have enough capacity but we can be a leader we can bring in ngos non-governmental organizations academic institutions that have an interest here there's a big data collection analyzation piece of this an ai piece that we need to partner with others we can find like-minded nation states i want to

work with on this you know when you really walk back to that china conversation china taiwan together about 60 of the world's distant water fishing you know when you add spain you add in korea and you add in um japan they're about 10 each you know we're the sixth largest we're down around 1.4 1.5 china's just so far volume wise into this a number of ships that it's uh there's a potential here where there's I think there's a great power piece to talk about how they spread out their influence how they spread out you know behaviorally shaping the norms for free and open oceans here a little bit in sustainment of natural resources there's a lot there and what we want to champion is hey if they're operating legitimately if they're exercising flag state responsibilities

over their fleet which we don't see a lot of that 9,000 miles from China up the up the coast of south america we don't see a lot of that off the african continent we're here to say um you know something that's hard or difficult is an excuse for a nation state being responsible and i would tell you right now i don't see china being a very responsible flag state for their distant water fleet no it definitely makes sense sir um that we're kind of seeing iuu fishing is is a threat a security threat a sovereignty threat but also economic and ecological threats around the globe So you name it, it's a bunch of different things, but it's, it is a burgeoning threat that I think will have, you know, global impacts if it goes unchecked there. But I want to pick up on something you mentioned, sir. So Taiwan, Japan, Spain, allies and partners of the United States are also contributors to IU fishing in a big way, not nearly in the same league as China.

Do we treat their fleets any differently when we find them engaging in malign behavior? You know, I think like all of our law enforcement and regulatory missions, you know, we want to consistently apply, you know, international standards and global expectations. So I think it gets down to how are those big IAU or big distant water fleets, again, the Chinas, the Taiwans, the Japans, the Spains, the Koreas, how are they behaving? And then we adjust our sort of our fire center behavior a little bit. You know, for us, there's U.S. fishermen. And, you know, as a flag state, we hold our fishermen accountable to our regulatory measures and, you know, the regional fishery management organizations. We expect them to comply with that. So if we're not careful here, you know, about a third of the seafood that comes into the U.S. market, we import about a third of our seafood.

There's a high propensity that that could be coming in harvested through IEU means across the globe here a little bit. So there's an economic disadvantage to American fishermen if we don't equitably look at, you know, not just China, but all those potential IEU violators. What we want to do is find the like-minded partners. We want to shine and illuminate, you know, the floodlight, the spotlight on this IEU behavior. And we will galvanize those like-minded partners. We'll bring in the NGOs, the academia to really paint the awareness of the domain. And I think at the end of the day, you know, this is not about halting fishing if the fishing is illegal, if it's done by responsible flag states. You know, we clearly aren't trying to impugn on people's legal behaviors. What we're trying to do is illuminate bad actors. No, I think that's really important to remember, sir, that it's, you know, even when we're talking about stuff in the South China Sea or stuff in the Galapagos, it has economic impacts on domestic U.S. interests, because a lot of that seafood might come back to the United States or could come back to the United States. just one thing on that walker so there's that impact to the united states united states fishermen but then you know those that fish that's harvested off the india on the eastern

pacific ocean off of south america that fish is not landing down in ecuador that fish is not landing generally in chile or peru it's it's processed at sea it's shipped back to feed the markets you know back in beijing and mainland china and stuff so there's you know who's winning at the end of the day for this it's you know it's china meeting an essential demand for seafood and meeting their export demands you know if it was a local nexus where you know you were catching it at sea through port state measures responsible state measures it was landing it was accounted for there was transparency in the process it was bolstering the you know the economy of ecuador economy of chile peru there's probably some different conversations in there this is you

know, behaviors that look very lopsided in terms of winners and losers in the mix there, you know? Sure. So it seems like it's kind of a balancing act between, you know, it's like you said, it's not a counter China strategy, it's a counter IUU fishing strategy, but China has a big role to play in that and they're going to feature heavily. I think so. And I think it will actually, China claims to be looking at managing their fleet and shrinking down their fleet. But, you know, I think that's in a very, you know, looking through a single straw and what's a much broader kaleidoscope set of problems and challenges they have as a flag state. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, what their reaction to this. Again, we are not targeting China, but when you're the largest, you know, distant water fisherman out there and there's some behaviors that are already suspect,

I think there's going to be a lot of China conversation as we engage on this front. Absolutely. And so I want to pivot a little bit to the Arctic strategic outlook. which obviously you already talked about a little bit in the introduction. But would it be fair to say that if the IUU strategic outlook has a little as it's kind of a, it's not a counter China strategy, but it has that flavor that the Arctic strategy has a little bit more of a Russia flavor or is a little bit more informed by some of the actions that are going on in the Russian Arctic? Yeah, no, I think Walker, that's probably fair. I mean, again, I want to walk it back to say it was not a anti-Russia strategy.

strategy. It was not an anti-China strategy, you know, as a self-declared near Arctic nation. But I think it is definitely strong overtones of great competition aspects of the strategy. You know, I talk about the Arctic and I always say that presence equals influence. And we have not had a lot of presence in the Arctic. You look into the Coast Guard Arctic, high latitude Arctic and Arctic capabilities. You know, we used to have two 19 vintage 44 year old polar icebreakers, the Polar Star, Polar Sea. Polar Sea has been out of service now a good part of a decade, if not longer, and she's a hangar queen providing parts to keep the Polar Star operational. And we have a medium icebreaker, the Healy. She's kind of a medium plus, but the Healy does science work.

The Healy has been to Antarctica, but not as a heavy breaker. Maybe under, you know, extreme circumstances, we'd use her down there, but she's really suited more for Arctic work. We have very little capacity and now you say you look at a russia and you know there's a lot of different numbers but russia has dozens of icebreakers you know we have domestic icebreakers that operate in the great lakes that operate up in new england break out you know rivers up in new england break out new york harbor for the movement of petroleum products so sometimes in the roll-up of the russian icebreakers there's some smaller breakers but they've legitimately got a handful of nuclear-powered icebreakers they just onboarded you know one ship that i think is 560 plus feet

the arctica it's got 175 percent the horsepower it's a nuclear powered ship of a of a u.s carrier it's got that much power it can break through a lot of ice at a sustained speed it is a big capable machine and it's one of i think three or four that they're building they're also building lng powered icebreakers so russia's serious they are heavily investing in the arctic as a pathway to a re-emerging, rising Russia. And I think they look at, you know, China as a key component of maritime trade across the globe.

You know, a ship that goes out of Shanghai that today transits to the Suez Canal to deliver cargoes to Europe, you can knock 11, 12 days off that transit across the Northern Sea Route if you have icebreaking capability there. So what they're looking to do is, you know, build out a lot of capability,

very capable ships, pretty good numbers. and you're going to see the northern sea route essentially be a toll road you know from a shipping standpoint as i've interacted with global shipping companies over the course of my career it's efficiency it's time space distance it's bigger ships fast speeds pack as much cargo you know that's where they make the money is on on the efficiency so the northern sea route i think at some point will look attractive if it's ice free and i think that's where russia's going you know they're also militarizing old facilities and bases up there, siting aircraft up there, troops.

I think there's a lot of interesting things. I say this cautiously. I say, you know, X number of years down the road, is that a decade? Is it 15 years? You know, you may see some of the freedom of navigation ops that are prevalent in the East and South China Seas really unfolding in the Arctic, in the Northern Sea Route.

You know, Russia is making some claims and on who traverses through there under what ground rules. And I think that's going to be a potentially contested space a little bit. Who is the U.S. tempering force there? The only U.S. capability for icebreaking resides in the United States Coast Guard. What we are doing that's very positive, cut steel on the first polar security cutter come calendar year 21, a couple months into the calendar year.

By 2024, we'll launch and take delivery of that first ship, And it's hopefully one of at least three heavy polar security cutters. We're having a broader conversation about maybe some Arctic security cutters, maybe a medium-sized icebreaker. But we've got to up our game. It goes back to that presence equals influence. We need more presence in the Arctic, ability to be up there on a persistent presence with a ship or a ship plus on a given day. We need to bring the Coast Guard back out to be an Atlantic-based Arctic. We haven't operated in the Atlantic in a couple-plus decades.

We used to have a lot of icebreakers years back, and we had a presence off of Greenland. When you look across the eight Arctic nations, you know, us in Canada, you have Pacific interests there, arguably Russia, but all the other Arctic nations are Atlantic-based. So the game for us is a balanced game across Atlantic and Pacific. It's about more capacity. And, yeah, Russia's a big player in that. So from a great power competition, Russia kind of emerges front and center. But I would tell you, I don't underestimate China's desires that, you know, we talk about one belt, one road. There's the polar silk road. It really is about far reaches on the high latitudes, Antarctica and Arctic, that we need to pay attention to what China's doing as well.

To me, it really sounds like there's a kind of, I don't want to say a capacity gap, but the Coast Guard has held back a little bit in terms of what we're able to do and the presence that we're able to have up there in the high north because of the lack of breakers. And I think recently the Heli, one of the two that you mentioned, had a fire, and now the Polar Star is kind of getting redirected to the Arctic mission away from Antarctica. And so is the answer just to build more cutters, or are there other things that we can do? A clear part of the answer is more capacity, and that is clearly ships or cutters. So, yes, we need more capacity to have a sustained presence in the Arctic and more off the Antarctic continent as well. You mentioned the Healy, the medium breaker, and she did. She had a fire in one of her propulsion generators, the number two propulsion generator. She's currently up in the shipyard in Mirror Island, California, up in the upper San Francisco Bay.

And they are in the process. They've removed the 235,000-pound piece of gear. That's how big this piece of gear is. It was sitting in the Coast Guard shipyard in Baltimore, built in a special facility, looked like a big conics box, around that piece of gear. You know, the folks that had acquired the ship back in the late 90s, you know, had the forward presence of mind to say, hey, if we had a major propulsion casualty on there, you know, there's none of these spares out there. We bought a spare propulsion generator. We shipped it by barge to meet up with the cutter in the shipyard, and now we're doing that swap out. So Healy is on schedule, on track.

we will get her back in the fight again she's our medium breaker sort of science ship but uh it is absolutely a conversation about ship capacity we also got to work with northcom and other stakeholders private sector about improved communications when the heli operates north of the arctic circle you know pressing north of 66 north communications are challenging up there so we're looking uh at additional low earth satellite opportunities and other means to you know put the ship on the grid when she's operating up there you know we get enough connectivity no she's safe but normal shipboard business they're essentially in a black hole those days are operating north the arc circle so as we're building out ships there are other things

we can be working on in the interim you need we need to pay attention we talked iu fishing but migratory species with some impacts of global climate change you start to see some move north for for fisheries you know when i was in greenland the greenlanders talked a little bit about their fleet's operating a little further north each year and stuff so there's a lot of things we're paying attention to you know we talk about the arctic you know one of the things we talked last time a bit about climate change and how is that affecting things you know it probably wasn't lost on you or your readers but back here um you know a couple months ago we had one of the largest environmental disasters in the ark in the russian arctic north of siberia it was 20 000 tons of

diesel fuel from a tank at a uh at a power plant that collapsed when the permafrost under it you know due to climate change essentially gave way and uh the the effects of that spill i think i read something and it could be further but the last thing i read on that said the reach of that spill was more than seven miles from the point of origin you know that's a spill on the sort of the consequence or size of the exxon valdez up in valdez alaska back in 1989 that really was a monumental effort for us to recover in the coast guard it really changed you know our regulatory framework off oil pollution act of 1990 open 90 that was a seminal big moment so there's a lot of things in the arctic that we that we really got to pay attention to capacity in terms of ships

better communications how do you respond to environmental disasters you know we offered help to the russians they said they had it here it's uh but i suspect you know all arctic nations need to be paying attention to the climatological changes that potentially put things at risk tomorrow that weren't at risk before in terms of causing environmental problems and stuff no sir i mean you definitely jumped the uh jumped my gun a little bit that was my next question about the impacts on the uh the coast guard operations in the arctic because of uh climate change but you know i think you pretty much covered it you know it seems like if you know we're opening up the northern sea route and the in the northwest passage but and if nothing else

we probably see more increased economic activity up there which i would imagine would then pull more Coast Guard presence and Coast Guard responsibilities with it. That is the most immediate nexus. You know, when you have more accessibility, you know, diminished ice coverage on a longer period of the calendar year, you know, you start to look at these expeditionary cruises, you know, companies like Silver Street is up there really marketing. Obviously, the cruise industry is in a strategic pause here with the COVID complications that's hit that industry hard.

But there's a lot of new ships being built for these expeditionary cruising opportunities in Alaska. You know, you got, you know, folks that have the means and these yachts, ice belts, ice reinforced hulls operate up there. There will be activities that pull the Coast Guard in increasing levels of, you know, capacity up there. you know back in you know what was it it was about 2012 time frame when shell had invested somewhere north of four billion south of five billion dollars to go try to uh you know harness oil from the chucky sea and the beaufort seas fairly shallow you know the gulf you're down drilling you know it's like a moonshot a mile below the the ocean surface when you're up there in the chucky you're 100 150 feet down fairly shallow water but boy it's an arduous short

season environment they found out just how tough that was you know as the winter comes in quick and comes in hard so there's a lot of things that environmental change in the Arctic will trigger but I think the the one of the key takeaways it's going to increase demands on the Coast Guard up there so we absolutely got to press in with newer more capable more reliable ships in greater quantities we got to build the cadre of of ice trained Coast Guard operators not a lot of those are ranks when you know you got one ship that makes one trip south to the Antarctic every year the Polestar in the Healy maybe makes a trip or, you know, a trip and a partial trip, you're not developing a lot of expertise in the service. So we've got to up our game in terms of talent,

development, and capacity. No, I'm definitely sympathetic with that, sir. I want to switch gears a little bit again. Some of our listeners know that we're expecting a new tri-service maritime strategy document from the Coast Guard, Navy, and Marine Corps altogether. Is there anything you can tell us about the Coast Guard's contribution to that strategy and how it might impact the service? Yeah, I would say this. I think, you know, to my DOD, Navy, and Marine Corps brethren here, we have been full participants at the table in shaping that. I'm very excited about it. You know, the Navy's got a lot of things in the mix right now. You know, there's talk of the 500-ship Navy that's generated a lot of media here, and they're working on their fleet

modernization, FMS, FMFS, I think it's called or whatever, you know, it's their sort of their study, their plan. So I think the tri-service strategy is somewhere in the mix of strategic thinking and documents that may fall out here in the coming weeks and hopefully go public. But I would tell you, I think it builds, the strategy captures and builds on the already strong relationship between the three armed forces, sea services, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. I think it calls out opportunities for greater integration and coordination together. It really talks about leveraging our complementary authorities and capabilities. And then how do you sort of roll that up across this? You know, I talk a lot,

not necessarily with you previously, but I talk about this continuum, you know, from cooperating through competition to lethality. And I think this rolling the three SEVA services into the same site picture really gets into that into that zero to 180 degree continuum i think the coast guard excels in that you know zero to somewhere 140 160 degrees where you're you're cooperating you're competing you know below the level of armed conflict maybe some gray zone ops i'll leave to my dod brethren you know that that lethality piece you know how do you go to war with a great power competitor you know we'll be in that aspect and that slice of the uh the mix but it's you know supporting the war plans and specific roles, but I think this tri-service strategy does a good job

of really, you know, highlighting the bridge we provide between State Department diplomacy and DOD lethality, and I think it captures that, you know, it's not, you know, I read into that maybe more than the words the, you know, the reader off the street would see, but to me, it starts to show those linkages, we're unique, you know, we do not reside in the Department of Defense, we sit over in DHS and that's the right place for us as a law enforcement agency and an armed service you know with with law enforcement authorities Posse Comitatus keeps the DOD services out of that game you know we're a multi-mission organization that derives Title 10 authorities as an armed force Title 14 Coast Guard organic authorities we're a named member of the National Intelligence

community community since 2002 for 18 years so title 50 so we can you know we work law enforcement intelligence and there's a strict firewall between national intelligence but we play in both of those worlds that's a unique capability that we bring to this tri-service fight and um you know i think the thing as we talked a little bit earlier about oceania and some other places is i think we bring you know something that competes with china would check that we bring human to human interaction we will come in and train, you know, the island of Palau law enforcement agencies on fisheries enforcement, helping protect their sovereign interests. We do a lot of that down in the theater. You're residing right now down in South America. We're seeing tremendous results. You know,

the Colombians just ran the sixth iteration of Operation Orion, and they're partnered with more than two dozen regional partners. So you have a Latin American-led operation, like language, like cultures, Coast Guard, Navy feeding into that, but that's been remarkably successful. I think we've done, like I said, the sixth iteration, about 45-day surges. I think they rolled up somewhere around 50 metric tons of cocaine here. And we had two cutters, not last month, but in October, make port calls in Cartagena. Yeah. The Coast Guard's had to think of that, and, you know, President Trump, from 1 April through the end of the calendar, at least, has, you know, challenged department of defense department of homeland security to up our game a little bit this

enhanced counter-narcotic operation that admiral fowler and out of south admiral fears are leading and you know i normally commit four ships on any given calendar day to be working in the south com aor doing counter-narcotics works we've punched above that we've been about 150 percent of that most of the last couple years the ask was for us to even get deeper in the game we're almost 200 percent of that on some days to really put as much coast guard firepower and then when you got additional Navy ships there. You know, we put a law enforcement attachment, eight to 12 person team on a combatant, on a cruiser, on a DDG, Arleigh Burke cruiser, that enables that ship to do law enforcement. You know, that circumvents the posse combatatus restriction because the Navy

ships attack, patrol the United States Coast Guard, and then we execute the end game. They also got an SH-60 maybe on that cruiser, on that DDG, maybe it's an LCS, got a couple of littoral combat ships in the theater. I'll put a precision marksman on there. So that 60 Navy helicopter can actually use airborne use of force, shoot out the engines on a fast boat, smuggling drugs because they got a Coast Guard marksman on board. So it's a lot of creative ways we can link the services together. And I think the tri-service strategy, walking back to that previous question, really does a nice job of sort of accentuating how important it is that we are integrated. No, sir. I think you're completely right about the Coast Guard's role in the cooperation continuum, or the competition continuum, rather. You know, you could call it, you know, white hole diplomacy or white hole competition or some other kind of catchphrase. I know that you know that I support that based on the last conversation that we had and some of the stuff that I've written.

And one of the things that you mentioned, you talked about that the Coast Guard offers human-to-human contact, which I totally agree with. Something I want to ask you is I saw last month the Coast Guard finished some testing with unmanned autonomous systems near Hawaii. You know, we see, and I'm sure our listeners are really familiar with the Navy's always talking about unmanned and autonomous systems. But I think it might come as a surprise to some people that the Coast Guard also is looking in the same direction. Is there anything you can tell us about that? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. If you think about the Coast Guard and you think about that space, that domain, from an end user, clearly we want to enable our operations, domain awareness, the ability to collect and track, you know, sail drones. We've done some testing off of Hawaii here, and that's led by our Coast Guard Research and Development Center, which is home-based up in New London, Connecticut.

We did some things, you know, we operate, you know, hundreds of small boats, and we have a relationship with Metal Shark that builds these 29-foot response boats. We have a response boat version, an autonomous vessel that we've been testing off Hawaii here. So we're doing some things with, you know, the sail, board, drone type things, do some things with autonomous vessel. We're doing our own things. We're doing, you know, UAS, ScanEagle deployed upon every national security cutter that's deploying on counter-narcotics, South China Sea, wherever we're flying them. We don't want to sail a ship without a UAS on the back. I just took a fascinating brief from Rand who took a look and said, boy, this, you know, unmanned capability really looks like a rich enabler to the United States Coast Guard. I couldn't agree with that any further.

I've challenged my team to put together a work group a little bit, extrapolate some of that common sense thinking from the Rand report and say, how do we start thinking and looking around the next corner? The flip side of that is, you know, outside of being an end user of those capabilities, we're a regulatory agency. So as you think about unmanned ships plying the International Commons, Maritime Commerce, you know, we have a lead role there. So the Coast Guard Commandant, by position, you know, leads the U.S. delegation at the International Maritime Organization, IMO, in London. So we've got to, you know, really be on the leading edge of how do you regulate unmanned capabilities capacity when it comes to the water. You know, the airspace is a little bit different, and we do some things in that domain with counter UAS, counter unmanned aerial systems, you know, detection and even taking them out of service. But on the waterfront, there's a user piece, and then there's a regulatory piece. It's an increasingly important discussion in my headspace and working with my team on that.

A, we've got to lead regulatory-wise, and B, we've got to enable intelligence-informed Coast Guard operations using some of the smarter technology that are out there to help us replace things that take a ship and many people to do when you might be able to do it with a piece of unmanned technology. No, that's definitely something that would not have occurred to me, and I'm sure it occurred to some of our listeners, but that the Coast Guard is really on both sides of the unmanned systems coin. And certainly a way to project more presence and make up for some of the lack of cutters, if you will. Give you one little anecdote on that, you know, on the counter unmanned capability. You know, one of the things that a lot of folks don't understand is Coast Guard's got six island class patrol boats, 110 foot patrol boats stationed on the Arabian Gulf. We have a Coast Guard 06 captain there who is the patrol forces Southeast Asia patrol commander. He reports to the 5th Fleet Commander up through the CENTCOM changing command. But, you know, when you think about operating and doing maritime security response operations on the Arabian Gulf,

you think about an increasingly challenging, difficult, meddlesome, aggressive Iran with a lot of unmanned technologies and drones and things. We've been sort of on the forefront there. Some of the work we've done with our Navy partners, they're encountering some of the things that Iran's thrown at us in terms of air, aerial, unmanned aerial stuff has really made us a leader. Back here domestically, the FAA Act back in, I think it was 2018, you know, authorized some counter UAS capabilities towards the Department of Homeland Security. We've got a lead role inside the DHS umbrella here on counter UAS capabilities. So we rolled out Coasties to the U.N. General Assembly in New York, to the New York Marathon, to be able to provide some counter-U.S. capability and capacity. That's really interesting, sir. Something I want to pull on is what about undersea unmanned vehicles?

Is that something that the Coast Guard is able to work on? And partly I'm asking, I read a kind of a provoking essay recently in the USNI Proceedings Magazine, I think it was a Coast Guard officer, was arguing that the, well, there are two actually, one arguing that the Coast Guard should do acoustic listening in the subsea domain, and the other arguing that the Coast Guard might want to get back into the submarine detection business. And that may not have been going on since the Second World War. You know, it's interesting, Walker.

I think one of the things when you're looking at a service of 42,000 active duty men and women, and when you roll up about 6,000 reservists and, you know, 8,500, 9,000 civilians, we're less than 55,000 strong. So the nearest service to us is, you know, three and a half plus times our size in the Marine Corps. I guess, arguably, I'm leaving the Space Force out because, really, with the addition of Space Force, we're the fifth largest service. So thank you, Space Force, for that. And we will hold that title for a while before they eclipse us on numbers. But for us, I think sometimes, you know, doing a lot of everything and not doing anything well comes at the risk of picking those things, you know, with 11 statutory missions that take us to the high latitudes and take us to the Indo-Pacific and enable, you know, 30.1 million jobs and $5.6 trillion of economic activity on our domestic waterways. You know, we removed a quarter million people from cruise ships when the COVID crisis really started heating up in March and April. Some of them were on ships that didn't even originate their voyages in the United States, but other countries weren't letting them come off.

And we did what America does, you know, American exceptionalism. We brought a solution to that, and we had to work at the local municipal level with port authorities, with law enforcement authorities, first responders. We've got to be careful. So to your question, you know, the underwater stuff, I'm interested in that. You know, we got some smart folks looking at that. I would tell you right now, I think the site picture with unmanned aerial, some of the, you know, unmanned surface water things, that's probably sort of, the aerial, we're in the thick of it. and we're actually i took a brief yesterday i wear a hat called the interdiction committee chairman so that's the counter narcotics interdiction partners and i had that team in here for a principals meeting and one of our partners customs and border protection air marine operation you

probably heard that term being a south com guy but they're they're taking a look at uh they fly right now mq9 maritime guardian you know it's the same mq9 using the sandbox for a lot of different DOD missions. There's a maritime version, and we've had some decent success with that. There's now kind of a big wing version. I think they've adopted the big wing to some of the sandbox missions that DOD has done, but we're trying to bring that to the waterfront. You know, a maritime guardian with a longer wing can up its endurance about 275 percent. You can almost have 40 hours of persistent on-station surveillance. That would be monumentally game-changing in our counter-narcotics mission or surveilling areas it's going to have a de-icing capability um the

bigger wingspan allows you to launch and stronger crosswinds and stay you know operate higher with a better sight picture so we've those are the places where i think more immediately we need to continue our focus we have some uas pilots in the coast guard and ground sensor you know operators and i think building out some of that is probably closer aboard in my wheelhouse of concerned than maybe getting into some of the underwater i'm not disinterested i just got to be careful how many things we bite off and we scratch at versus picking a few things and doing well i set a trajectory back um my first year in the job at the state of the coast guard down and down in la and said hey we're going to put uas we're doing two a year you know it was our paces i want to get

all uas on every national security cutter in the next 18 or so months and we're meeting that but That was, you know, a doubling down. Inside our fiscal budget situation, you know, you got to kind of suppress your appetite with reality a little bit here. So that's kind of how I see some of those things like underwater submarine stuff. We got out of that, you know, the radar men business and the sonar domes on our 378 foot high endurance cutters when we built the national security cutters. Remarkably capable, but we didn't put that capability back on board. So recently, another essay in proceedings, this kind of goes off what you were just saying, which is an argument I'm sympathetic to. A Navy officer actually argued that the Coast Guard should focus more narrowly on policing the coastal waters and the domestic waters of the United States.

And so I think this kind of speaks to your previous answer of, you know, how do you balance those, the Coast Guard responsibilities at home and domestic waters and abroad? You know, we've got Coast Guard cutters deployed in the Arabian Gulf. I just read that there's more going to Guam, you know, so how do you balance the obligations that you have with the resources that you have? Yeah, that's a great question. And I think my predecessors and my successors will probably find that to be one of the most vexing questions that confronts a common on and his or her senior leadership team is, you know, small organization, 11 statutory missions, finite amount of capacity, high demand, low density, as you say, a little bit inside that, you know, inside the Pentagon circles. you know we juggle we balance that i would say the coast guard that we're on the trajectory to build these 11 national security cutters you know the ninth we'll do a shakedown cruise we'll do a commissioning here in february and she'll shake down and do some work probably along the eastern

seaboard and down off the east side of south america we haven't operated off in argentina but other places where there's some rich partnership opportunities with the argentinians an IUU, and there's a counter China piece to that. We're building out a fleet of 25 offshore patrol cutters. And, you know, one and two are under construction, the Argus and the Ingham there. And that's exciting. Those fast response cutters, you know, the 154 foot ships, you mentioned a couple of third ones going to Guam, the second one just got there. All those capabilities at the end of the day, we're building a Coast Guard that's going to be globally deployable. You know, we got the high-end ESF, Deployable Specialized Forces, operating in the Arabian Gulf.

We're going to send the first two replacement ships to those tired 110s that are in the 5th Fleet over there. First two ships will go over here in the spring with two more following in the fall, two more the next calendar year of 22, so we'll recapitalize that. So I would tell you, we're not walking back from our domestic responsibilities, But what we're trying to do is match, you know, the really unique blend of authorities that the Coast Guard brings. Title 10, we talked earlier, you know, as an armed force. Title 14, Coast Guard regulatory, Coast Guard law enforcement, you know, named member of the national intelligence community, tremendous agile, adaptive human beings, strong partnerships. We have 60-plus bilateral agreements across the globe from counter-narcotics to fisheries to search and rescue. You know, we bring a lot, I think, to the national security conversation. I think we're a unique instrument in national security.

So, you know, pulling us back, saying we ought to be a domestic coastal Coast Guard, I would tell you, that's not the Coast Guard the nation's been signaling that it wants us to build there a little bit. We will continue to support and, you know, provide security around those 355 or so domestic ports, the 25,000 miles of waterways. You know, technologies are making us more efficient in the search and rescue domain. You know, we rescue 20,000 plus mariners every year. But, you know, EPIRBs, emergency position indicated radio beacons and those technologies, you know, hopefully we put ourselves out of that search and rescue business at some point. commercial sisters commercial salvers i think the real game for the coast guard is is having global capability you know matched with domestic responsibilities what we do well and where it's struggling for it struggles for walker sometimes is when we go back and defend our what we do on

the hill you know they look at a coast guard ship and they say what's that ship do we said well there's some of this and some of that and some of this and that it's hard to put a budget model against it. But I think that's where our secret sauce is. It's in our adaptability, our agility, our ability to force package different things together. So I don't refute, you know, the author that talks about bringing the coast guard closer on, but I would tell you, we will continue to make sure, you know, that young individual's grandmother, if she goes on a cruise ship, goes on a ship that's safe, environmentally secure and sound when it operates in and out of the U.S. port, we'll make sure the crew is trained so if there's some kind of catastrophe at sea you know grandma can get off

safely to a lifeboat or we can medically you know fly somebody off we will not diminish our domestic responsibilities we are a border security agency you know we've seen an uptick in activity at the southwest maritime border right now you know if you go back to the mid-90s you know 95,000 folks haiti cuba haiti you know came out of haiti by sea came out of cuba in the same calendar span in the early part of you know the of the 1990s 94 95 we get tapped with that right now immigration that sees down a little bit but we still have dominicans running across the mona pass into puerto rico that's daily workforce down they're not big numbers so i think we will hold fast to our domestic organizational requirements and roles while we build out, you know, this

capable Coast Guard gift-enabled OPCs and NSCs that can go places maybe you can't sail a gray hole. There's a different, it connotates a different signal when a white-hulled Coast Guard ship that sort of looks like model maritime governance, looks like, hey, lifesavers, fisheries enforcers, that opens up some doors, I think, in parts of the world. And then one of the things I'll sort of close out the question with is, you know, I did a presentation over at NDU this morning, National Defense University, and I popped the slide up, and it was really focused on Southeast Asian partners, you know, South China Sea, East China Sea. And I looked at, you know, six different ships. There was a Philippine Coast Guard, China Coast Guard, Makamala, which is, you know, the Indonesians. It was the Malaysian Maritime Authority. It was, you know, another one there. But all Whitehall ships, iconic Coast Guard-like racing stripes on them. They're building out Coast Guards. You know, Vietnam started building the Coast Guard in 98. some of the other countries are as recent as 2016 2015 you know the indians the philippines they go

back you know decades here you know the philippines a half century plus but they are looking at the threats that confront maritime nations and it looks like law enforcement it looks like protection of fisheries it looks like the ability to rescue folks it looks like border security i would tell you i think the coast guard not to to to to you know dismiss the the author's article but i would tell you that our coast guard is is global our coast guard is a role model we're helping those you know asean nations the 10 asean nations you know we're really building up their fortitude to confront to china the the vietnamese have former are getting a second former 378 foot high endurance cutter through excess defense articles the philippine navy has three of those same ships

The Sri Lankans have a former 210 of the 378, and then we go in and we help them maintain, we help them build out their organic staff and capacity. I think that's where the Coast Guard really rolls up and adds the most to the national defense of the nation here, the national security strategy. You know, the NSS, the NDS, those are the places we can complement and do our work with inside the Department of Homeland Security. That is, you know, the entire spectrum of things that Coast Guard can do. We don't have to be a domestic Coast Guard or a global Coast Guard. I think we can be both. No, sir. I think I'm in violent agreement with you. And I think for the reasons that you just described and the breadth of Coast Guard responsibilities and missions that are accomplished with kind of a paucity of resources, it's really difficult, I would think, for myself, certainly, but also for our listeners and readers to have anything but admiration and respect for what the Coast Guard does. Your point there, Walker, though, and I think it's important, I'll just jump out for a second, is the paucity of resource. That's where it's hard. If we took the posture and say, until we got a new dollar to go do the mission, we won't go do no new missions.

That's the struggle that I confront all the time. It's, you know, sometimes it's, let's go do the mission and then show the value of the mission and hope we can, you know, get some third-party validators of the importance of that mission. You know, it's, you know, doing about a billion dollars of support to the geographic combat commanders across the globe. And that started with some support to the counter-narcotics mission back when Casper Weinberger was the Secretary of Defense and they put DOD in charge of detection and monitoring, sort of the genesis of the SOUTHCOM mission set today, one of their mission sets. You know, we initially got $300 million towards that work in 87 or so. in 2000 it bumped up ted stevens from alaska was a chair of the armed services committee the full appropriations committee rather and coast guard cst our authorized committee he got us a bump to 340 in 20 years there hasn't even been a cost of living adjustment so we get the same

340 million but today we're doing about a billion dollars of work supporting the co-coms i'm working very hard to to raise the awareness of that and say hey with a little bit more support i can give me some more Coast Guard. So back to your point about the Posse recently, what's harder for me sometimes is to continually push my Coast Guardsmen, our Coast Guardsmen to take on more. And, you know, and that, you know, that risk to force, risk to mission kind of thing, you're walking that fine line. You know, you hope we can sell the value of the Coast Guard and then get the commensurate operations and support resources and the capital funds to do right by the people and put them on the platforms that do right by the mission. So that's where it gets to be a

harder question is you know how stretch how much can you stretch this Coast Guard how far can you go in terms of staying and being a ready Coast Guard that the nation needs without a little bit more fiscal relief that's where I spend a lot of my time Walker the last thing I'll tell you is my number one priority on day one 1 June 2018 and my number one priority on or about 1 June 2022 will be I'll be talking about Coast Guard readiness and the need for more operational support dollars to to raise the bar on readiness. That's where we win or lose in terms of being the Coast Guard

the nation needs here. Again, with nothing but respect for the Coast Guard, I don't envy your job, but to have a service that's actively seeking new roles and pushing itself out to support also the Department of Defense,

you know, and I think it's really impressive what the Coast Guardsmen and women of the United States are able to do. I love my job, and I'm glad you don't envy it because you're smarter than me

and you could probably get my job just to ask me. So at least let me ride it out to 1 June 2022, all right, Walker? All right, sir, before I put in that transfer. Okay, unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Admiral Carl Schultz, Commandant of the United States Coast Guard, for joining us on the Sea Control Podcast.

Admiral, is there anything that you and your team are currently working on that our listeners should be looking out for? Or could you give us a hint as to when that tri-service strategy is going to drop? Yeah, I would tell you I am eager for it to drop. I think that is a decision that the SECNAV and my sea service colleagues probably control the Pentagon. I am eager for it to hit the streets and happy with the product today. Let me just leave you with a thanks for having the chance to chat across some of our Coast Guard mission sets and global responsibilities. And let me thank you, Captain Walker Mills, for your service.

And, you know, as a former South Com J3 and having just spent some time with Admiral Fowler yesterday, I want to compliment the men and women of the U.S. Southern Command. And I've watched what you've been doing down there through JTF Bravo in response to Hurricanes Etta and Iota that have really hammered, you know, Nicaragua and parts of Honduras, El Salvador. I talked to the Secretary of the Navy in Mexico the other day, Admiral Ojeda, and, you know, parts of Mexico continually were getting rained the other day when we spoke. So, you know, the value of the SOUTHCOM team in terms of 31 nations and territories in the hemisphere that you support and the partnership we enjoy in your role on that, just really appreciate what you do and then sort of getting outside of your job description and bringing some some thought leadership here to these kind of podcasts thanks for uh thanks for that and thanks for pulling the coast guard into that it's been a joy to talk to you today well thank you sir and we'll make a note that uh it's that it's not the coast guard that's holding

up the release of the tri-service maritime strategy i think don't make that too broadly because i'll get i'll get poked in the eye for that but we're ready to roll my marine corps and C&O buddies are good. Schultz is all on board with it. I hope it hits the streets. Thanks. Okay. Thank you, sir.

And thanks again for joining me. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. And we'll see you next week. Sea Control is produced and edited by Keegan Ingersoll, Ed Salo, and William McQuiston. I walked up to the barroom counter Way, hey, put it in the alley There I met with Greasy Annie Put it on your shimbo now

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