The Coast Guard has stood the watch along U.S. coasts since the earliest days of the Revenue Cutter Service, protecting against myriad threats large and small. As the current National Security Strategy directs the U.S. military to refocus on countering peer and near-peer threats, the time is ripe for the Coast Guard to field coastal defense cruise missiles (CDCM) to both defend the homeland and prevail in a war at sea.[1]
The Coast Guard is no stranger to adapting to the demands of great power competition. After the United States’ entry into World War II, the service quickly instituted a beach patrol along strategic parts of the U.S. coast. Paramount among the patrol’s duties was “to detect and observe enemy vessels operating in coastal waters… as a basis for naval action against the enemy.[2] Advances in technology now allow U.S. enemies to influence events ashore well beyond sight of the U.S. coast and the Coast Guard will need to rapidly integrate modern detection and engagement systems as well as leverage the capabilities of the national intelligence community to ensure its ability to identify, monitor, and, if required, engage threats over the horizon from the coast. While there is considerable ground to make up, as the development of land-based cruise missiles in the United States has long been stymied by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF prohibited the United States from deploying any ground based missiles, including those with non-nuclear warheads, with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (approximately 310 to 3,450 miles).[3] While supportive of de-escalation between the United States and Soviet Union in its time, the emergence of new competitors in China, and the resurgence of Russia, along with their suite of sea denial technology, rendered the INF severely outdated.[4] The recent U.S. decision to withdraw from the treaty now frees the development and fielding of ground based cruise missiles. The recent launch of a ground-based Tomahawk missile demonstrated that such a system could be rapidly developed based on preexisting systems and could serve as a model for a future road mobile CDCM.5
Fielding CDCMs provides the Coast Guard with a one-two punch as the service pivots to counter near-peer threats. First, CDCMs would provide the Coast Guard with a credible deterrent to potentially adversarial naval forces. Strategically located near major ports on each coast, a battery of U.S. Coast Guard CDCM Transporter Erector Launchers (TEL) could defend against naval surface threats and be postured to respond to emergent homeland defense missions requiring more firepower than typically found aboard Cutters. Being road mobile would complicate adversarial targeting during a major conflict by enabling the CDCM batteries to operate from both prepared and field expedient positions along the coast while simultaneously providing the ability to surge additional missiles and launchers along anticipated threat vectors. Second, the CDCMs would offer the Coast Guard an organic, rapidly deployable option to increase the lethality of cutters supporting combatant commanders. Designing the TELs to fit inside the hangers of Legend-class national security cutters (NSC), or the soon to be delivered Heritage-class offshore patrol cutters, integrate with the cutter’s fire-control systems, and fire from their flight deck would greatly increase the ability for cutters to contribute in a war-at-sea scenario, offset shortcomings in desired increases to U.S. fleet strength, and align with distributed lethality concepts.[6]
Why CDCMs and not permanently installing missiles on board cutters as some have proposed?[7] CDCMs provide symmetric counters to the sea-denial systems of U.S. competitors while increasing the freedom of movement of U.S. surface combatants operating near the homeland, freeing them to conduct other missions or enable the Unites States to have additional axes of attack against an adversary. The ability to augment cutters and their crews, similarly to how the Coast Guard deploys aviation detachments, would avoid placing additional training and maintenance requirements on already burdened cutter crews. Having a common command-and-control (C2) system between the CDCM detachment and the cutter’s combat information center would permit streamlined system integration and allow for interesting personnel management options between the cutter fleet and CDCM community, similar to the “1-3-1” program currently used to train and retain the necessary skills on board national security cutters.[8] Outside of the major cutter community many of the skills and experiences the services’ operations specialists and electronic technicians gain during their time aboard a national security Cutter are undervalued, and at worst irrelevant. Having an operational assignment at a CDCM battery ashore following an national security cutter tour to use and hone those skills would greatly increase the Coast Guard’s return on investment for C2 and weapon systems training, build a robust candidate pool of qualified individuals for surge operations during higher threat missions, and provide opportunities for the geographic stability desired by many members of the service. Within the officer corps, the same correlations can be made for qualified tactical action officers who would presumably be responsible for overseeing the watch at a CDCM battery. Finally, the expeditionary capability of the mobile TELs could be capitalized on to either create additional missile shooters on board any vessel large enough to carry them or to aid in securing key locations, such as choke points in the South China Sea or to counter Iranian aggression in the Arabian Gulf.
As demonstrated by the August 2019 ground launched cruise missile demonstration, a functional system could be rapidly developed using familiar components already in the inventory. As is already done with major weapon systems the Coast Guard operates, the future CDCMs should be Navy-type, Navy-owned to leverage preexisting organizational relationships and supply lines. This approach minimizes risk and the time required to deploy a viable system. With other countries fielding similar systems, like the Russian “Club-K”, the need for the US to rapidly develop and field a CDCM capable of operating ashore and afloat is necessary both to challenge the ambitions of our adversaries and ensure the protection of the Joint Force and homeland.[9]
CDCMs represent a modern day beach patrol for the Coast Guard, giving it the capability to both meet its traditional role of securing the homeland while providing an afloat and ashore expeditionary capability that enhances the capabilities of its cutters and compliments the abilities of the joint force during this new era of great power competition.
Endnotes
- President Donald J. Trump, National Security Strategy, December 2017
- USCG Historian’s Office, “The Coast Guard at War: Beach Patrol,” 15 May 1945, 1.
- “Treaty Between the United States of America and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Theirintermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles,” 08 December 1987.
- Commander, Naval Surface Forces, “Surface Force Strategy: Return to Sea Control,” 6.
- Ben Werner, “U.S. Tests First Post-INF, Ground-Based Cruise Missile,” USNI News, 19 August 2019.
- Congressional Research Service, “Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress,” 06 May 2020; Commander, Naval Surface Forces, “Surface Force Strategy: Return to Sea Control,”19.
- LCDR Daniel Wiltshire, USCG, “Distribute Lethality to the Cutters,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 143, no. 9 (September 2018); Chuck Hill, “Augment Naval Force Structure byUpgunning the Coast Guard”, Center for International Maritime Security, 06 October 2016.
- U.S. Coast Guard, “ALCOAST 171/18,” 18 October 2018.
- SteelJaw, “The ProblemWith Proliferation: Cruise Missile Edition”, U.S. Naval Institute Blog, 24.
