LG, Bernhard
ANN wrote:Agencies Squabble Over ADIZ Mission
Customs, Coast Guard Both Wanna Shoot Somebody Down
The whispering campaign
seems to have begun with the Coast Guard. "You can't trust
Customs," was the message. "They might get the order and then get
weak. You need somebody with a military chain of command. You
need... us."
As is appropriate for a whispering campaign, the Bureau of
Customs and Border Patrol didn't reply directly. Instead, its
proxies called into question, not the Coast Guard's willingness
(which seems to be more than adequate), but its ability to gun down
airspace intruders. Quoted in the Federal Times, Lexington
Institute expert Loren Thompson disparaged the Coast Guard's
"grab-bag of ancient airframes. It's ultimately unequipped to
deal with even a moderately challenging mission," he said.
Oddly enough, some of the Coast Guard's helicopters are HH-60s
about the same age as the Black Hawks operated by Customs. But
where would we be without think-tank experts?
Both agencies presented their positions to Department of
Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff last week, each one
insisting that it was more willing, able, and even eager to shoot
Americans down than the other.
So far, in almost 3,500 (!) violations of the ADIZ or FRZ since
2003, none has needed to be shot down. Almost 3,000 of them did not
require aircraft to intercept them: they were momentary violations
only, or the aircraft responded to air traffic control's calls.
But in 665 cases so far,
aircraft have been scrambled, or (more usually) patrolling aircraft
vectored, to investigate ADIZ violators. This includes a number of
cases when aircraft from one government agency were scrambled to
investigate those of another.
Every case so far has been an inadvertent violation; a couple of
violators have been escorted to land and arrested, but nobody's
needed to be shot to kingdom come to ensure compliance, yet. The
door gunners on the Customs helicopters must be feeling a little
like the Maytag repairman; all that training, and they don't even
have one little Cessna silhouette painted under the waist gun
window.
Defense of the airspace is managed by the National Capital
Region Coordination Center, which includes DHS, most of the
alphabet agencies, and the military. Its resources include Northern
Command fighter jets (which might be on patrol or on ground alert),
the familiar Customs Black Hawks, and surface-to-air missiles that
are believed to be operated by both military and Secret Service
anti-aircraft gunners.
Customs believes that they should retain the job. From decades
of chasing drug and other smugglers, they have evolved flight
procedures that are usually effective in bringing both inadvertent
and deliberate violators to ground with no loss of life. But the
Coast Guard also has plenty of experience chasing troublemakers --
they just do it over the sea most of the time.
Another problem has cropped up in that Customs' air arm, the
Office of Air and Marine Operations, has been moved around
repeatedly lately -- from the old Customs Service, to ICE, and it's
now about to be placed under the Border Patrol or merged with the
Border Patrol's tiny flying unit.
This has the Customs pilots -- about 500 of them -- concerned.
Customs has traditionally hired highly experienced pilots with a
military or law enforcement background, and the service always
depended heavily on its air arm. They operate some very
high-performance aircraft, including the Black Hawks and P-3 Orion
patrol planes.
The Border Patrol, on the other hand, offers pilot training to
outstanding Border Patrol agents, or well-connected higher-ups, and
Border Patrol pilots are agents first and pilots second. They fly
simpler machines -- the Patrol just bought a fleet of Eurocopter
EC120s -- on a narrower spectrum of missions.
There's a serious cultural clash in the making here, but the
idea looks good on paper to DHS managers, so it's probably going to
happen.
The new, combined, flying organization, CBP Air, is expected to
be less interested in previous homeland security missions. The
aircraft are to be parceled out to individual Border Patrol sector
chiefs, who will have operational control of the aircraft and
crews, while maintenance and logistics are handled by a centralized
bureaucracy.
This other battle
leaves the Customs and Border Patrol airmen ill-prepared to fight a
serious Washington turf (or airspace) battle with the Coast
Guard.
And the influential Government Accountability Office, the
accounting and investigatory arm of Congress, seems to have taken
the Coasties' side. The GAO released a report in July which
stressed that Customs' Black Hawk crews are not in the military
chain of command, and questioned their willingness to carry out a
shootdown as directed.
The stakes have been raised considerably by the current
government grab for more restricted and prohibited airspace in the
Washington, DC, area. Given the hysteria inherent in airspace
violations, and the unfortunate consistency with which pilots mess
up in proximity of the ADIZ, the winner of this turf spat will be
on TV a lot, which may be good for its budget.
So the Coast Guard is eager to wrest the high-profile mission
from Customs. Customs is equally determined to hang on to it. The
battle is joined. And so far, the only casualty has been the
reputations of both agencies, as their mutual insults attract
public attention.