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Coast Guard stands up tactical response unit

The Coast Guard calls them special-ized forces: teams that can perform helicopter insertions against armed enemies, conduct scuba searches for mines and bombs or storm disputed oil platforms.

With an aim to become the nation’s lead maritime tactical response force, these Coast Guardsmen — members of the service’s new Deployable Operations Group, or DOG — are about as close to “special operations capable” as the Coast Guard gets.

On July 20, the DOG formally became a Coast Guard unit, established at a sunset ceremony at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.

“We have specialized forces that conduct the high-end portions of our missions. Could we say some of these capabilities are similar skill sets as special forces in [the Defense Department]? Definitely,” said Rear Adm. Tom Atkin, the DOG’s commander.

Like the Defense Department armed services’ special operations commands, the DOG draws together the service’s elite teams, those that handle anti-terrorism response, environmental disasters, port security and combat operations in the maritime milieu, according to service officials.

Its command cadre will oversee the Coast Guard’s response to operational contingencies both at home and overseas. Past events that have relied on DOG legacy units include the shuttle Columbia disaster; port security of Umm Qasr, Iraq; Hurricane Katrina; and the response to the Palermo Senator, a vessel that carried radioactive cargo — later found to be harmless roofing tiles — into the Port of Newark, N.J.,

The new command is necessary, officials said, to streamline the Coast Guard’s — and the nation’s — response to be disasters, whether they be natural or man-made.

“During Hurricane Katrina, we performed admirably. But response was a little more ad hoc than it needed to be. We weren’t always 100 percent sure each other’s [tactics, techniques and procedures]. If we’d had the doctrine and the force package in place, we would have been even more effective,” Atkin said.

The Coast Guard is unique among the armed services in that, as a military service in the Homeland Security Department, it has domestic arrest powers under Title 14 of U.S. Code.

But if law enforcement action turns into a matter of homeland defense, the Coast Guard can respond as an arm of the armed forces, falling under the Defense Department’s chain of command.

The Coast Guard’s dual-hatted role allows the DOG to better coordinate across the board with government agencies and the armed services, Atkin said.

“The goal is to maybe have some redundant capabilities but not duplicative,” Atkin said. “We’re not trying to be the [FBI’s Hostage Response Team]. We do want to be part of the maritime response capability for the nation and we believe we are building out the right capability.”

The idea for the DOG grew out of an internal assessment to the Coast Guard’s response following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Once the service began standing up maritime safety and security teams and deploying Coast Guardsmen overseas for port security and naval coastal warfare, officials believed the service’s law enforcement and combat arms units would be better served under one command.

Hurricane Katrina pushed the movement into high gear.

“The concept for the DOG is an old one, actually developed in a PowerPoint shortly after Sept. 11. But the timing wasn’t right and the plan wasn’t approved,” Atkin said.

When Adm. Thad Allen became commandant in 2006, he made the DOG’s development a priority, Atkin added.

“Whenever you have change, it always prompts the question: ‘What’s broke?’ It’s not that anything is broken. It’s how do we improve? Are we ready are we organized appropriately for 15 to 20 years from now?” Atkin said.

The command component of the DOG is temporarily housed in Arlington, Va., in an office building that has a classified communications room and office space for its 100-plus members.

But Atkin envisions the DOG’s permanent home to be somewhere near Washington D.C., but with training space.

“I just don’t see that a deployable operations unit should be housed in a suburban office building,” he said.

Units now under DOG command include Coast Guard’s 13 maritime safety and security teams, its National Strike Force environmental hazards unit, a Chesapeake, Va.-based maritime security response team, Naval Coastal Warfare Squadron Coast Guard members and the service’s tactical law enforcement teams.

Those units will remain at their current locations.

The DOG has no permanently assigned air assets, nor does it manage the training facilities and schools used to educate its members.

But this could change, Atkin said.

“Already we have aviation assets, like [Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron] that work with the MSRT,” Atkin said. “Right now, we’re asking ourselves, as we put together these adaptive force packages, what’s the right mix?”