What to know before Joining the Coast Guard
So you want to be a Coast Guardsman?
Consider this your very unofficial Underground User Manual to the United States Coast Guard.
Now, don't expect to hear a lot of what I'm about to tell you down at the local recruiting office. I also want to make it clear up front that the advice and opinions here are most definitely not that of the real U.S. Coast Guard.
Lastly, I must explain a bit about the various Coast Guard missions and their pertinence to your career, so vow to stay with me an extra minute or two, ok?
So, let's begin.
The Coast Guard is one of the greatest and most flexible sea services ever created. It is a great place to have a tremendously successful and rewarding career. It is staffed by dedicated, hard working people who consistently achieve miracles everyday.
Like all organizations it has its strengths and weaknesses however, and these may have a direct bearing on your success and happiness, so you should understand these institutional quirks before you come in.
The first thing you should know is that within the Service, people who work in this branch of the armed forces call each other "Coasties." It's a happy, friendly and approachable name. However if you roll your eyes thinking that this is a really gay name for a supposedly macho bunch of people in the armed forces, then you should probably move along and check out the Marines, Army Rangers, or Navy SEALS. Truly, this is probably a fairly accurate early indicator of how well you may fit in.
The United States Coast Guard is one of the most unusual branches of the armed forces. It is the nation's premier law enforcement and search and rescue organization at sea. It differs from other military branches of the armed forces because all members above the rank of E-4 in the Coast Guard have technical Federal arrest authority while in the performance of their official duties. This law enforcement and arrest authority does not exist with rank and file members of the other services, and so this makes Coast Guard culture more hesitant, regulated and police-like than war-like. The Coast Guard is frequently the forgotten son in the lineup of more famous American military muscle which includes the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines. Originating from a merger of the old Revenue Cutter Service and the Lighthouse Service in 1915, the Coast Guard has accrued more missions and assignments than all other branches of the armed forces. It does this with a worldwide active duty force that is only a tad larger than the New York City Police Department.
This has resulted in a do-more-with-less mentality that has been both a curse and point of pride in the organization. The net effect is that, with the probable exception of search and rescue, the Coast Guard is loaded with so many missions that they frequently can't do any of them excessively well. Before joining, you should honestly assess your own interests against the various mission areas. Therefore, it is important that you first understand all the different missions, and where they come from.
In the past 150 years, a large variety of government mandated missions and responsibilities have emerged that are of a nautical or maritime nature. Congress always has to decide who to give these new missions to when they arise, and traditionally have thrown most of them over to the Coast Guard, though frequently without any additional corresponding funding (more on that in a bit.)
The history of the Coast Guard's many missions is essentially the history of America.
When coastal smuggling for the avoidance of paying taxes became an issue in the late 1700's, Alexander Hamilton first created the Revenue Cutter Service as a floating arm of the Treasury Department to intercept and arrest smugglers.
In the mid-1800's, many experimental boiler designs on early American steamboats had a nasty habit of exploding. After a series of several famous steamboat disasters resulting in large losses of life, Congress created the Federal Steamboat Inspection Service, a lesser known forerunner, now long gone, that makes up part of the DNA of the modern Coast Guard. Merchant and pleasure craft vessel inspection is still one of the main areas of the Coast Guard to this day. You can have an entire career in the Coast Guard in this specialty field.
With the closing of the American frontier in the late 1800's the standardized proper marking of channels, lighthouses and harbor entrances throughout the country became paramount. The early Coast Guard, after a protracted political battle with the Army Corps of Engineers, became the assigned agency for the accurate placement and maintenance of all channel markers and buoys in Federal waterways. This mission area of the Coast Guard is called ATON, or Aids-To-Navigation, and is a whole special career field unto itself. It has been prominently featured on the Discovery television show "Dirty Jobs."
Now as to exactly why weapons-trained military members of the armed forces are actually required to be the ones to float up and down the coasts and rivers of America spending a career replacing scummy bells, buoys, and lamps, has never been satisfactorily explained by anyone. Truth be told, you don't need to go to bootcamp and shave your head to set a buoy. In a new millennium, this career area is very ripe for political and operational transfer to the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, or even a civilian contractor in the years ahead. The Coast Guard likes to hang onto this mission though, because it provides a lot of ship-driving jobs for its officers, especially the junior ones looking for early command.
With the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, there was a large public outcry for the establishment of an International Ice Patrol to keep the sea lanes open between North America and Europe. After a lot of treaty negotiation and legal wrangling, this agency was in fact eventually created in 1936, and the permanent Coast Guard mission of ice monitoring and ice breaking was formally established. Ice breaking is a fun, tough, and adventurous job, however there are actually few icebreakers available to be assigned to. The ones the Coast Guard traditionally operated for many decades had notorious maintenance problems which resulted in several embarrassments, including having to ask the Canadians and the Russians at times for a tow out of the ice. A whole new class of ice breakers is coming on line however, so things are starting to look up in this mission area. However there will never be a lot of these vessels around, so just don't expect to do icebreaking for an entire career.
In time of officially declared war, the Coast Guard becomes a component of the Navy. In both World Wars this made the Coast Guard primarily responsible for port security, explosive loading, armed coastal and beach patrol missions, anti-submarine warfare patrols, and convoy escort duty. In current modern undeclared conflicts, the active Coast Guard national defense mission has primarily involved the interdiction of arms at sea in the Middle East, and port security in an expeditionary environment.
Starting in the 1950's, the creation of the single-hulled supertanker inevitably led to a series of oil tanker disasters around the world. This highlighted the need for a lead U.S. agency responsible for pollution prevention and oil spill cleanups within U.S. waters, and so the Coast Guard was assigned this mission as well. This particular mission competency has waxed and waned through many cycles of funding and general interest. It reached its zenith, out of necessity, with the enormous spill caused by the Exxon Valdez in 1989. Many people saw Coasties cleaning oily otters and ducks on TV in 1989, and this image remained in the public consciousness.
With the rise of drug smuggling in the 1960's, the Coast Guard launched additional aggressive efforts to intercept seaborne drug shipments, a very high profile mission that really has always existed, and really needs no explanation. The mission continues to this day using some of the latest technology imaginable.
With the increasing depletion of the global ocean fishery, the enforcement of fishing treaties, catch quantity, and size of the species caught has been a major enforcement issue. This primarily takes place on the Great Lakes and coastal ocean areas, and is a significant and continuing challenge. It is an important, but pretty dull job where you'll do things like examine the length of a fish, or try to drop a clam through a plastic ring. If it falls through, the clam was harvested too early, and you just caught a violator. Expect to be called a "clam cop" if you wind up doing this mission.
Lastly, the 24 hour, anytime, anywhere, search and rescue (SAR) function of the Coast Guard is the most famously visible arm of the organization. It is the one area it is most justly proud of. A great overview of this mission competency can be found in the movie "The Guardian." A career in this area can be very satisfying and rewarding indeed.
Less deft in the mission assignment process has been Congressional handling as to what major government department to actually put the Coast Guard under. Few government agencies, if any, have been passed around as much as the Coast Guard. Originally under the Treasury Department, the Coast Guard moved to the Department of Transportation in 1966, and after 9/11 moved to the new Department of Homeland Security. Many leaders in the organization would like to see it as part of the Justice Department. The Coast Guard has a valid claim for being in any or all of these Departments, and therein lies some of the problem.
Spiritually, these department changes and multi-faceted missions have caused the Coast Guard to perennially suffer in trying to decide how to project its sound bite to the public and recruit new talent. The 4-star Admiral who runs the Coast Guard is called the Commandant, and depending on whom the current Commandant is, large knee-jerk swings can happen in the organization's primary emphasis. At various times the Coast Guard's main message swings back and forth from tough drug-stoppers to eco-protectors, benevolent regulator, combat warrior service, and always, the good guys in the white hats who save people at sea. Depending on when they joined, this has confused more than one recruit who thought he joined for one thing, and wound up doing another.
Culturally, and despite some subtle and not so subtle invitations from the Pentagon and various wartime Secretaries of Defense, the modern post-Vietnam Coast Guard tends to shy-away or deemphasize the missions that make them play the role of prolonged active combatants or bad guys. The Coast Guard likes to naturally gravitate towards the missions that allow them to be the good guys. They are more comfortable there. The shoot-em-up, beach-landing, submarine-sinking Coast Guard from World War II pretty much doesn't exist anymore. If given the mission, the Coast Guard no longer even has a single vessel in the fleet that has any equipment or weapons to track or sink a sub if it wanted to. This is fine for good-guy white-hat public relations, but on the national defense political level, this creates a price to be paid. Since the Coast Guard's contribution to the nation's recent overseas conflicts hasn't included any visible insurgent gunfights, exposure to maiming explosives, or has Coast Guard personnel showing up on combat casualty lists, eventual revenge from the rest of the national defense establishment comes in the form of the budgetary ax.
Financially, the Coast Guard is the bastard stepchild of the U.S. armed forces. It is always plagued by endless underfunding errors that simply repeat themselves year after year. Around Capitol Hill, the Air Force is considered the master of the military budget game, and the Coast Guard, the never-learn rookie. You should be aware of this perpetual underfunding because it is guaranteed at some point to affect your career satisfaction and the ability to do your job. Much of this perpetual shortage of money for the mission comes from an institutional pride of always doing more with less. This karma is so strong on Coast Guard leaders that they frequently become politically afraid to ask for what they really need. The Coast Guard has shut down life-saving stations, grounded aircraft, and even occasionally tied up ships at the pier rather than go back to Congress and admit they didn't request enough money to get them through the year.
Many lay the blame for this behavior on a now famous flattering segment done by the TV show 60 Minutes many years back, where the Coast Guard was seen as one of the most cost effective agencies in government. This made the leadership of the Coast Guard very proud of their still-operating creaky ships, but also very timid in asking for major funding for big expensive programs. Of the 39 major military fleets in the world, the Coast Guard runs the 37th oldest. The average U.S. Navy ship is 14 years old. The average U.S. Coast Guard ship is 41 years old. Forget Guadalcanal or the beaches of Normandy, when 12 Coast Guard cutters were sent on a short jaunt to Haiti to assist in post-earthquake relief, 10 of the 12 wound up in port for repairs. When funding for new ships is given, as in a recent major ship and aircraft system overhaul called Project Deepwater, it resulted in such inefficient management and oversight that people had to be fired and Congress actually took away the Coast Guard's ability to issue contracts.
Given all of the above, you might be asking, who does well in the Coast Guard then? There are basically four profiles that are attracted to this service. I will call them the warrior, the tree-hugger, the administrator, and the fireman.
Generally, the warrior has watched too many episodes of Miami Vice or drug interdiction videos on YouTube. He's looking to chase, catch and shoot bad guys. Wanting to be part policeman and part sea-going commando, he thinks he's going to get a lot of trigger time. He is doomed to disappointment.
Generally, the only people who wear camouflage uniforms and carry rifles in the Coast Guard are primarily found in Port Security Units (PSU's), which are heavily made up of reservists. Their normal mission, during time of war or crisis, is to deploy overseas and protect a strategic port or harbor of a host allied nation. The Coast Guard likes to talk about them as a sort of rapid deployment force for projecting combat power. From the Pentagon national defense point of view however, a PSU is considered a minor rear area combat support unit that never sees any action. The arrival of a PSU overseas is usually greeted with a derisive "What are you guys doing here?" by other branches of the armed forces that usually already have the situation well in hand.
Though Coast Guard vessels at sea will eventually engage a fleeing vessel with gunfire if called for, this is done in a process that has so many checks and balances that it can take, no kidding, days. On the aerial side, it's not much different, with the exception of a recently formed special aviation unit in Florida that has permission to fire weapons from the air - though the other branches of the armed forces have been doing this since 1917. Really bad cases involve permission from the District Commander, the Commandant, the State Department, and usually a couple of foreign countries to boot. When the time to shoot does come, and if the vessel hasn't actually already made port yet, the Coast Guard always announces to the bad guys exactly where they are going to shoot (like the engine room), and tells the bad guys to please get out of the way. If you think this is the proper process for stopping fleeing armed bad guys at sea, there may be a good fit for you in the Coast Guard. If not, you should look elsewhere in the armed forces to less politely and unambiguously engage our country's enemies.
Accordingly, the attrition rate among warriors after one obligated tour is almost 100%. Generally, warriors get bored with all the hesitation and restrictions and decline to stay for a career.
The tree hugger is someone who joins the Coast Guard thinking it's going to be a lot like joining the Greenpeace navy, but with a gun. It's a term for a loose category of service member that includes old draft dodgers, conscientious objectors, eco-warriors, and generally left-leaning liberals. Many join thinking their service will allow them to clean oily ducks and make the planet a better place. These folks tend to be conflict avoiders, with high compassion levels and moderate to strong anti-war attitudes. The first batch of them arrived in the Coast Guard during the Vietnam War, as the Coast Guard was then a popular place to dodge the draft, but still be seen serving. Indeed, at that time there was a waiting list to even get into the Coast Guard. Many of these folks found a home in the Coast Guard and stayed on past Vietnam. They generally attracted like-minded others, as word got out that joining the Coast Guard was a more lucrative thing to do than claiming official conscientious objector status or running off to Canada. Consequently there are a significant amount of people in the Coast Guard that would never consider serving in other branches of the military for a minute, but are otherwise comfortable serving in the Coast Guard. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 created a second wave of these folks in the early 1990's. If you don't mind shooting a weapon if you have to (some have refused though, and get processed out), can dial down the left-leaning attitudes and allow yourself to be at least somewhat militarized, you can have a stable and solid career in the Coast Guard. However at some point, you will probably be sized up for what you are by some old sea dog, and it is likely that you will never be where the action is or be entrusted with a lot of people's lives in your hands.
Administrators are folks in regulatory inspections, computer and paper shuffling jobs who like the military uniform and being seen serving, but don't want to shoot or be shot at and don't want to get wet, sleep in tents, or stand watches. They aren't leftists, just practical normal people who want something akin to a regular day job, with normal hours. They are found mostly on headquarters and various office staffs everywhere, and tend to stay there. They select or steer themselves into these office jobs early in their career, choosing from a certain range of administrative specialties. For the most part, they are usually very good and knowledgeable in what they do. Now, since this type of office-based job satisfaction can be found anywhere in the normal working world, you should honestly ask yourself what is unique then about joining the Coast Guard, if this is all you want to do.
The last character profile is the fireman. This is the perfect profile for a Coast Guard career. The fireman profile is the bread and butter person who truly makes the Coast Guard work. If you think about what a really good fireman is and does, and naturally gravitate towards those values and behavior, you can probably have a magnificent career in the Coast Guard in ships or aircraft with a lifetime of satisfaction. Firemen tend to not stray very far from Coast Guard operational activities throughout their career. Firemen are always on-call and always vigilant. The fireman doesn't go looking for action, because it usually means something bad, but the fireman trains, anticipates and practices for it everyday. He's proud of his skills, spends countless hours maintaining his equipment, and is proud of his co-workers who are cut from the same cloth. The Firemen are the front line people that grease the wheels of the Coast Guard everyday and keep it moving. If you want the maximum career possible, and truly live the ethos of the Coast Guard, then you should strive to be the fireman.
These are the things you need to know before joining the Coast Guard.
It is a fine Service, rich in history and a Service much in demand everywhere. There is a saying in the Coast Guard that dates back to many a dark and stormy night in the old Lighthouse Service, when boat crews were faced with having to row out to do a seemingly impossible rescue, "You have to go out, but you don't have to come back."
If this idea excites you, then you have the right stuff.
See you at sea.
