Service Lines

Summer 2011

Vol. 1, number 2

COMDTPUB 5700.4

Vice Adm. J.P. Currier

Deputy Commandant for Mission Support

Kerry L. Freese

Managing Editor

Joy Crabaugh

Editor

Lori Pastro

Editor

Service Lines magazine, COMDTPUB 5700.4, is

produced for members of the U.S. Coast

Guard by members of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Unless otherwise noted, all stories, 

photographs and graphics are produced by

Coast Guard employees.

Editorial content is unofficial and not

authority for action. Views and opinions

expressed do not necessarily reflect those of

the Department of Homeland Security or the

Coast Guard. Articles may be reprinted

except for those reprinted by permission

from other publications.

Submissions: We need your letters to the

editor, story ideas, content submissions and

suggestions. Please submit your comments

on this issue and content or ideas for future

issues by email to servicelines@uscg.mil. For

additional information you may also call

(202) 475-5767.

Service Lines editors and its editorial board

retain final approval authority for the publication or non-publication of all letters to the

editor and content submissions. We also

reserve the right to edit submissions for

length, accuracy and grammar.

Mission Support Links:

http://www.uscg.mil/missionsupport/

askdcms@uscg.mil

Editor’s Note: Service Lines Summer 2011 will be the

last printed edition. All subsequent issues will be

online only, found on our website at 

http://www.uscg.mil/servicelines/. Visit our website to

view the current and future 

editions.

We Need Your Stories: Service Lines is always looking

for stories and ideas. Have a story to tell? Write it down and

send it in. We encourage enlisted, officer, auxiliary and

civilian members to submit articles. You can email your

article(s) to servicelines@uscg.mil.
Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Benjaman Brown.
2 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

We have made significant, positive changes to

our mission support structure in the last two

years; your leadership, dedication and expertise made this new support

architecture possible. As we

continue to make our mission

support organization even

more efficient and effective, I

want to ensure that we enable a

culture of professional service—one in which we are

responsive to the needs of the

Coast Guard and our nation,

built on a foundation of shared

commitment to the execution

of Coast Guard missions, supportable and repeatable service

standards, and a focus on professional development that

delivers technical and leadership skills necessary to achieve our organizational goals.

I believe the following represent the core tenets of

mission support:

Whether you operate or support operations,

you are an equal partner in the successful

execution of Coast Guard missions. Coast

Guard operations are neither effective nor sustainable without mission support. A district commander

recently told me that he directed his operational

commanders to do what they needed to in order to

ensure that the mission support organization is successful, reasoning that fully functional support

directly enables his operations. This captures the

essence of our key internal relationships. Operations

and support are interdependent, and we must look

at each other as equal partners in owning and delivering mission excellence. We exist to support operations, yet superior operations can’t be successful

without exceptional mission support. We build

mutual respect by consistently contributing to this

partnership.

We must deliver standard, consistent and

reliable service. We’ve learned our lessons from

the past when resources, procedures and organizational relationships were vastly different depending

on location. Our new mission support organization is

built on standardized, repeatable, transparent

processes for both normal and contingency operations. A cutter’s engineering officer in Honolulu

should expect to receive the same service standard

as his or her counterpart in Boston. Standardization

is critical to providing efficient planning, logistics,

training and budgeting. We

stood up the service and

logistics centers to provide

service standardization, and

we are now standing up

bases to provide coordinated

delivery across service lines

at the local level.

Standardization is also critical to consistently meet customer’s expectations.

Providing excellent service

does not mean that we routinely depart from standards

of service based on what our

individual operational partners demand, it means we

deliver established and readily known standards of

service when and where needed. We must incorporate sufficient agility to remain responsive when a

risk-based departure from those standards is called

for and concurred with by both mission support and

operational commanders.

To best serve, we must professionalize mission support. As a mission support professional,

you are bound only by your own personal growth

and initiative to become a successful leader in the

mission support organization. In an increasingly

complex world, we require both technical specialists

and broadened mission support professionals to be

successful. Your ability to serve is enhanced by dedication to your own personal professional development. If we desire to provide the best possible service to our Coast Guard, optimize our contribution to

the execution of missions, and earn the respect of

our operational partners, we must provide professional service, enabled through a commitment to

continuous learning. By enhancing our knowledge,

skills and abilities, we better serve ourselves and the

Coast Guard.

We must take ownership of all mission support services. The stand-up of bases allows us to

coordinate the delivery of services to our operational

partners. While our mission support team is made up

of people with specialty skills, we need everyone to

be a mission support customer service representative. This requires that we lean forward, declare to
Vice Adm. J.P. Currier

Deputy Commandant for Mission Support

Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Henry G. Dunphy

our customers that “your problem is my problem”

regardless of the product or service line, and follow

through to ensure that our customers get to the

right support provider. This also requires that we

take the time to learn our customer’s missions and

needs so that we can provide the right, integrated

service at the right time.

I hope these tenets hold true meaning to each of

you. Over the coming months, we will be looking to you

to tell your story of what these words mean to you

through words and photos. This is your magazine, and

its value will be enhanced through your personal participation...more to follow! 

WE ARE MISSION SUPPORT...EACH OF US IS 

COMMITTED TO ENABLING SAFE AND EFFECTIVE 

MISSION EXECUTION.

Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 3
From the 

Command Master Chief

Deputy Commandant for 

Mission Support

Master Chief Petty Officer 

Kevin Isherwood

Greetings from Washington,

D.C.! I know that it has been

a busy last couple of

months for everyone in the mission

support world. Think about

it...where did spring go? Summer is

already here and promises to be

just as eventful. We are on track to

stand up the rest of the Phase 1

bases before the winter. When last I

looked, the base billet maps had

been signed by the vice commandant, and the base position/billet 

functional description statements

were in the final stages of approval.

Once we have approval of where

everyone will be and what they will

be doing, we can move forward

with the next base stand-up. More

information will be headed your

way as soon as it becomes available.

To ensure service delivery alignment at the deck-plate level is consistent coast to coast and throughout the entire mission support

enterprise, the Director of Logistics

hosted a base commanding officer,

executive officer and command

master chief meeting in Norfolk, Va.

It was a fantastic exchange of field

best practices and experiences

combined with a programmatic

overview perspective from logistics

and service centers as well as the

individual product lines. To continue that momentum and improve

communications, the base command master chiefs conduct a

monthly phone conference where

common challenges are discussed

and enterprise-wide solutions are

developed. There’s no sense in each

base reinventing the wheel; this is

just another example of configuration control management enabled

by mission support modernization. 

Recently the commandant

released the Uniform Board

ALCOAST 291/11. Interestingly, this

has been the most talked about uniform guidance since “shaving the

beards” in the early 80s. Like then,

today’s uniform decisions are for

the better. When you think about it,

much of the content in ALCOAST

291/11 is simply reiterating what

we should already be doing.

Remember, we are all volunteer

public servants given the honor and

privilege to proudly and professionally wear Coast Guard Blue!

Fortunately, almost everyone is,

or has been, upholding their part in

presenting a sharp military appearance. However, from my travel

experiences I will share two uniform

travesties as examples of the pendulum swinging unchecked. I’ll

start with the young 3rd class petty

officer in Chicago’s O’Hare

International Airport wearing ODUs

and sneakers. When I approached

him in my civilian clothes asking

about his attire, his response was

priceless, “What? Are you in the

Guard or something?” And the

senior officer that was forever wearing unauthorized lettering and pins

on his ball cap. When I approached

him, his response was, “Master Chief

this is MY unit and I will do what I

want. Mind your own business!” I

will smile about those teachable

moments long into my retirement.

You just can’t make this stuff up!

Seriously, we can all wallow in

ALCOAST 291/11 having personal

pity parties playing the rememberway-back-when game. Or we can

take a moment of introspection;

realize that we HAVE allowed the

pendulum to swing too far and

work our hardest to get it professionally centered. Make no mistake,

there is NO better time than the

present to fix this, and the commandant has provided us clear guidance regarding following and

enforcing Coast Guard standards

and presenting a sharp military

“uniformed” appearance!

When was the last time your

unit conducted a uniform inspection? Who got “gigged?” In many

cases it might have seemed like you

were just going through the

motions without purpose. I am NOT

telling you anything that you don’t

already know and have observed;

it’s no wonder why ALCOAST

291/11 is telling us to clean up our

act! With Bravos, Trops and ODUs, it

is not unreasonable to conduct a

“representative” uniform inspection

every three months. Heck, if the

Winter Dress Blue uniform gets

approved, a different uniform could

4 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines
be inspected each quarter.

This seems like a happy medium from where we were when

I came in (monthly) to where

many are now (few and far

between). Presenting a sharp

military appearance is one of

the minimum conditions of

employment. 

Each of you out there is a

leader in your own right, and

uniform regulations are not a

buffet line where you meander through picking and

choosing the ones that you

will follow or enforce based on

whether you like or agree with

them. NO. As leaders, it’s the

full-meal deal for you from

now on. If doing the right

thing was easy, everyone

would do it! 

I pledge to each and every

one of you that I will continue

to do my part to follow and

enforce ALL of the rules and

regulations. What say you?

This will be a regular column in Service Lines magazine,

and I want to write what you

want to read about. If you

have suggestions for topics or

themes send them my way. 

“Shipmates rarely fail

alone...unless left alone”

Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 5

Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Adam Eggers

http://cgweb.comdt.uscg.mil/cmc
6 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

from the 

Director of 

Operational Logistics 

Rear Adm. Rick Gromlich

I

n the spring edition of Service Lines, we introduced you

to our newest force multiplier, the Director of

Operational Logistics, or DOL. The DOL was established to marry the mission support elements across the

Coast Guard organization—from the field, service and

logistics centers and headquarters—to ensure collaboration and consistency in service. The most important

reason for the DOL’s inception, however, was to give

operational commanders a touchstone, both in times of

normal operations and in contingencies. The DOL

ensures responsiveness, continuity and sustainability—

no matter where or when Coast Guard personnel and

assets are deployed. 

What does this mean? How does it work? What benefits does the DOL offer that exceeds what was available

before its existence? Some recent examples of how the

DOL has prevailed in offering responsive, timely support

include:

The DOL, through its 24x7 DCMS watch, has facilitated the response to over 200 CAT IV CASREPS (Category 4

Casualty Reporting) and over 100 emergency and medical tonos this year alone, ensuring the service and logistics centers were responsive to the needs of the units

involved in getting the maintenance, parts, personnel or

other associated support necessary to continue operations. Their 24x7 capability affords immediate communication between the unit and associated product lines

and serves as a conduit for senior leadership in the sustainment of a logistics common operating picture.

The DOL played a key role in the overall Coast Guard

response to the Midwest flooding events. Per the DOL‘s

contingency response standard, the local base support

unit provided a logistics section chief to serve on the

Incident Management Team to ensure a local support

expert was assisting in the recovery. Additionally, the

DOL collaborated with the Shore Infrastructure Logistics

Center (SILC), Surfaces Forces Logistics Center (SFLC)

and Health, Safety and Worklife Service Center (HSWL

SC) to provide the following: Damage Assessment Team

(DAT) surveys of affected Coast Guard units, a Facility

Repair Team (FRT) to provide immediate repairs as the

water receded, and Safety and Environmental Health

Officers (SEHO) to assess the overall conditions for personnel safety. The DOL response was immediate, and its

influence spanned across all affected regions with no

restriction to geographical boundaries.

The DOL was fully engaged in three recent largescale contingency exercises—the 2011 New Madrid

Earthquake National Level Exercise (NLE) and Districts 7

and 5 hurricane exercises. In these scenarios, the DOL

played a key role in establishing Logistics Section Chiefs

at the district and area levels as well as coordinating the

myriad of DCMS Emergency Response Teams in one

cohesive mission support effort.

While still maturing, the DOL is delivering as

promised—a responsive, nimble organization capable

of pulling resources from numerous venues to offer

standardized support to the field. The DOL has simplified the process of acquiring support by being the single

touchstone for the operational commander, yet it is able

to pull resources from anywhere, anytime. Geographic

boundaries have come down, and the new mission support system has evolved into a system not bogged down

by chains of command, areas of responsibility or differing standards of support. Regardless of where the operational commander needs support, they can get it, and

expectations of a standard, clear and predictable mission support organization are realized. 

Director of Operational Logistics – Our promise for world-class support
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 7

Photo courtesy of Air Station Sitka
8 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

BOURNE, Mass. - After flying more than 15,371 hours in support of U.S. Coast Guard operations around the country, the Coast Guard HU-25 Falcon jet CG2133 lands at Air Station Cape

Cod, Monday, June 6, 2011, after its final flight. The Falcon’s replacement, the HU-144 Ocean

Sentry is due to arrive sometime next year and the CG2133, the first Falcon jet to be retired at

the air station, will join the HU-16E Albatross CG7250 on display at the front gate of Air

Station Cape Cod as a tribute to Coast Guard aviation's rich past. Coast Guard photo.

Last Flight
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 9
10 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

Coast Guard’s new headquarters building boasts 

environmentally friendly design

The Coast

Guard is

preparing for

a 2013 move,

transitioning

its headquarters from its

location near

Ft. McNair to

the new Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) consolidated

headquarters campus currently under development at the historic

St. Elizabeths hospital site in Washington, D.C. In line with the

Coast Guard’s commitment to protecting the environment, DHS

determined the building will utilize stringent sustainable design

practices and technologies to reduce its environmental footprint.

Design plans boast improved performance in energy savings,

water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality and stewardship of resources. Read more about

this initiative in the Coast Guard Compass at

http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/category/environment/.

Coast Guard launches first fast

response cutter 

The Coast Guard launched its first

Sentinel-class Fast Response

Cutter on April 21, 2011, in

Lockport, La. The Bernard C.

Webber’s mast was installed

approximately one week later.

Once commissioned, it will support vital migrant and drug interdiction missions conducted

throughout the Caribbean Sea

and Gulf of Mexico.

Mission Support Handbook

The Deputy Commandant

for Mission Support’s

(DCMS) Mission Support

Handbook was updated to

reflect the current organizational chart, points of

contact for all DCMS field

service providers, and the

establishment of Director

of Operational Logistics

(DOL) and Base Seattle. The

DOL was created to oversee multiple base commands, provide a single

point of accountability to

field area commanders, establish an operations support planning capability, maintain a continuous roundthe-clock watch and build compliance functionality in

mission support. To this end, the Base Seattle pilot was

stood up to coordinate all regional mission support

activities in the District 13 area of responsibility. Read

more at https://collab.uscg.mil/lotus/myquickr/dcmsmission-support-organization/handbook

President Obama addresses the Coast

Guard Academy’s Class of 2011

President

Barack

Obama

addressed

the Coast

Guard

Academy’s

class of

2011 in

May, congratulating

them on their successes and encouraging a

continued commitment to carry out the

Coast Guard’s traditional life-saving, national

defense and law enforcement missions. Read

more about this event on the Coast Guard

Compass at

http://coastguard.dodlive.mil.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 11

Bertholf patrols Alaska waters

Check out the ongoing series of Coast Guard Compass

blog posts titled, “From the Bridge of the Bertholf”

and “From the Deck Plate of the Bertholf,” at

http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/. In this series, Coast

Guard Cutter Bertholf’s command staff and crew

members highlight

day-to-day operations, various jobs

and unique perspectives as they are

underway on the

first Alaska patrol for

the Coast Guard’s

first National

Security Cutter.

Coast Guard cadets participate in

high school science extravaganza

The University of Texas at El Paso's

College of

Engineering and its

student chapter of

the Society of

Mexican American

Engineers and

Scientists hosted 400

local ninth graders for

the May 2011 Science

Extravaganza, a day

of hands-on math

and science workshops and the Coast

Guard Academy's

Robotics on the Water (AROW) competition. Academy faculty and cadets

facilitated the competition for 30 preselected students. These ninth graders

were primarily Hispanic and enrolled

in GEAR UP, a program that promotes

early college awareness and readiness

in traditionally underrepresented

groups. Rear Adm. Ronald Rábago,

Assistant Commandant for

Engineering and Logistics (CG-4), was

the keynote speaker, kicking off the

day's events. Read more on page 30.

Year of the Coast Guard family 

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Bob

Papp declared 2011 as the “Year of

the Coast Guard Family” in his State

of the Coast Guard address and has

placed a renewed emphasis on

ensuring that Coast Guard policies,

programs and services reflect this

commitment. Information addressing how the Coast Guard is building

upon existing policies, programs and services while also exploring new

opportunities to support military members and their families can be found

online at http://www.uscg.mil/yotf/. Read more on page 26.

Coast Guard helps destroy

tallest structure in Africa

The Coast Guard helped Liberia

destroy a 1,410-foot Omega

Navigation System tower, setting a new record for the tallest

structure felled by explosives.

The tower has not been used or

maintained since 1997, so its

destruction eliminates a significant safety hazard and clears the

site for other purposes.

Currently, plans are underway to

turn the former tower site into a

marketplace that will encourage

economic development in the

area. Read more about this

unique event on page 44.
Glimpse the RB-M in “The Adjustment Bureau”

The Response Boat-Medium (RB-M) made a brief appearance in screenwriter and director George Nolfi’s “The

Adjustment Bureau,” released in March 2011 starring Matt

Damon and Emily Blunt. While the Coast Guard asset does

not play a major role in the film, almost all of the television

ads and trailers include the RB-M scene. The RB-M’s appearance, speed and agility make it an excellent candidate for

the camera’s spotlight,

though the MH-65

Dolphin helicopter

and Defender-class

Response Boat-Small

are still the Coast

Guard’s most popular

on-screen stars. Read

more about the making of the movie in the

Acquisition

Directorate’s online newsroom at 

http://www.uscg.mil/acquisition/newsroom/newsroom.asp.

Dolphin Helicopters modernized with crucial

updates

Atlantic City has become the first Coast Guard air station

to achieve initial operating capacity with the delivery of

its 10th MH-65D. The most recent upgrades to the Coast

Guard’s Short Range Recovery Helicopter will replace old,

analog navigation systems with modernized, more reliable digital systems, both

increasing current operational

capabilities and

building a solid

foundation for

future improvements. The aircraft—reclassified as MH-65Ds from MH-65Cs—also

gained new digital computer displays, embedded GPS

and inertial navigation systems, and other avionic components. Since these upgrades are being combined with the

regular overhaul process, impacts to fleet readiness will

be minimal. For more information, visit the Acquisition

Directorate’s April newsletter at

http://www.uscg.mil/acquisition/newsroom/newsletters.asp.

Watchkeeper technology demonstrations begin at selected Interagency

Operation Centers

Technology demonstrations of Watchkeeper

software has begun at 17 selected sites

around the country as part of the Interagency

Operations Center (IOC) project. IOCs promote

information sharing as a way to improve tactical decision-making, situational awareness,

integrated vessel tracking, interagency operations monitoring and joint planning efforts

with port partners. The Watchkeeper software

is designed to be an information management

system that

coordinates

and organizes port

security

information

to help the

Coast

Guard and

other federal, state

and local port partners make the best use of

available resources to accomplish their missions. Read more about IOC technology rollouts in the Acquisition Directorate’s March

newsletter at 

http://www.uscg.mil/acquisition/newsroom/newsletters.asp

.

12 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

Cutter energy audits

The Coast Guard Energy Program is currently

auditing electrical loads of 270-foot cutters

while in

port to

identify

energy

reductions

measures.

Future

plans include energy audits for 225-foot and

110-foot cutters to review loads while in port

and identify energy reduction practices while

underway. Learn more about Coast Guard

energy conservation efforts at

http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg4/cg46.
Coast Guard installs Rescue 21 tower disguised as

a tree 

The Coast Guard’s Rescue 21 project just completed its

first monopole tower at Post Ranch in Sector San

Francisco. After exhausting all

other options, the one-of-akind monopole was built in an

environmentally sensitive area,

per the exacting conditions of

the private property land

owner. Built exclusively to

house the Rescue 21 antenna

array, the tower resembles part

of the local landscape. Rescue

21’s modern communication

technology provides vital

direction finding to boaters in

distress along the U.S. coastal

areas, Western Rivers and

Great Lakes. The system’s

capacity also enables greater

coordination with the DHS

Security, other federal, state

and local agencies and first

responders. The monopole

technology enables the Coast

Guard to install capabilities in remote areas to ensure continuous monitoring along the entire California Pacific

coast.

Coast Guard sells aging assets to the Philippines and

Nigeria, saves millions

The Coast Guard transferred two excess 378-foot High

Endurance Cutters (WHECs) to the Philippines and Nigeria in

separate ceremonies

May 13 at Coast Guard

Island in Alameda,

Calif. These Excess

Defense Article (EDA)

transfers will save the

Coast Guard approximately $10 million in

disposal costs for each

cutter. In addition,

each country is paying the U.S. for spare parts, equipment,

training and transfer support, which makes them the largest

foreign military sale cases associated with a Coast Guard EDA

transfer. Read more in the May edition of the Acquisition

Directorate’s newsletter at

http://www.uscg.mil/acquisition/newsroom/newsletters.asp.

Advancing careers in DCMS

The Deputy Commandant for Mission

Support (DCMS) Office of Workforce

Management (DCMS-81) is working with

the Personnel Service Center (PSC) and

DCMS leadership to design a mission

support career progression program that

grows both the technical expertise and

leadership skills of the DCMS workforce,

allowing the best civilian and military

members to rise to the top of the organization. DCMS Assistant Commandants

are developing annexes to the DCMS

Human Capital Strategy, which will outline requirements and goals for managing military and civilian members in the

modernized mission support system.

Additionally, a Mission Support Career

Guide is under development and will

provide career maps and developmental

requirements, identify training and

advanced education opportunities, and

more. Look for more on the DCMS

Human Capital Strategy in the next issue

of Service Lines and on CG portal.

Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 13

World Children’s Festival

The Coast Guard (CG) participated in the

fourth World Children’s Festival (WCF), June

2011, on the National Mall in Washington,

D.C as it demonstrated its commitment to

youth, safety, security, sustainability, diversity and marine stewardship. The WCF attracts

more than 13,000 attendees and is free to

the public.

The CG's

outreach

tent included

a Partnership

in Education

display and

members of

the CG

Auxiliary presenting classes on Water Safety.

Coastie the Tugboat and Sammy the Sea

Otter were also on display.
14 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

Seaman Evan Lewis, a student in

Operations Specialist School at Coast

Guard Training Center Petaluma,

practices operating radar in a 

shipboard communications course. 
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 15

ALAMEDA, Calif.—On an average morning in the Two Rock Valley about 60 miles

north of here, enlisted men and women

undergoing apprentice-level training at

Coast Guard Training Center Petaluma

hustle to slice stuffed pork loin and grill

vegetables at the base’s galley for the

arriving lunch crowd. In a classroom nearby, others operate shipboard radar and

hover over nautical charts, simulating a

cutter’s arrival into New York Harbor. Still

more sit in phlebotomy chairs, allowing

their classmates to practice drawing their

blood.

Meanwhile, about 3,000 miles away in

Portsmouth, Va., a group of chief warrant

officers spend a morning aboard the

Coast Guard Cutter Northland—some

scrutinizing receipts and reviewing a 52-

page audit checklist with junior officers

who manage the cutter’s morale program, while others, alongside gunner’s

mates, inspect the calibration of the magazine sprinkler system for the Northland’s

76 mm gun.

These are some of the activities

undertaken by the Coast Guard’s Force

Readiness Command (FORCECOM), the

newest flag-level field command in the

mission support enterprise, brought

under the Deputy Commandant for

Mission Support (DCMS) in January 2011.

With about 2,640 military and civilian personnel, FORCECOM brings together

once-disparate entities to prepare the

Coast Guard workforce for mission execution by overseeing doctrine and Tactics,

Techniques and Procedures (TTP); training; inspections and assessments; and

exercise support.

From FORCECOM’s former headquarters at Coast Guard Island, former

National Training Director and former acting FORCECOM Chief of Staff Capt. Brian

Marvin said the command is a natural fit

for DCMS. “It’s like ‘Jerry Maguire’—we

complete them,” he said, referencing the

1996 film and its often-quoted line. “Our

mission now boils down to workforce

preparation, getting the workforce ready.

With that piece added, DCMS has responsibility for all readiness—not only ships

and planes and equipment and parts, but

also the people, well-trained to use them.

So it’s a complete system.”

Human Performance Cycle

At the heart of FORCECOM is its

Human Performance Cycle, inspired by

studies of human performance technoloby Rebekah Gordon

FORCECOM Joins

Mission Support to

Train and Prepare

the Workforce

Photos by 

Petty Officer 2nd Class Sondra-Kay Kneen and 

Petty Officer 3rd Class David Weydert

Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Sondra-Kay Kneen.
16 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

gy, an engineering-based discipline to improve human

performance. The cycle fuses FORCECOM’s four divisions—

doctrine, training, assessment and exercise support—into

a continuum that provides clear doctrine and TTP, relevant

and standard training, and assessments and exercises that

capture feedback and lessons learned. Ideally, the cycle

ensures that the TTP given to Coast Guard men and

women in the field to execute their missions is the same as

both what they are trained to and what they are assessed

on.

In addition, FORCECOM is eliminating the confusion

that stems from doing things differently on the East and

West Coasts, creating nationwide standardization for training and assessments. Former FORCECOM Chief of Staff

Capt. John Bingaman said workforce standardization

proved critical in the Coast Guard’s response to Hurricane

Katrina in 2005, when pilots and aircrews deployed to New

Orleans from all over and knew exactly what to do because

they had trained and operated in a standardized fashion.

“The beauty of the FORCECOM concept, and what we’ve

been able to do in reality, is to consolidate like functions

that were already being done in the Coast Guard but often

managed by separate commands—either on both coasts

or in other entities of the Coast Guard—and bring all those

like functions under one commander,” he said.

For example, East and West Coast finance and administration assessment teams under the legacy Atlantic and

Pacific Area Maintenance and Logistics Commands each

had different audit checklists. By bringing them under one

command, the checklist has been standardized, making

Learning to be a food service specialist, nowPetty Officer 3rd Class Christopher Sebring

makes a sandwich at Training Center Petaluma’s

galley for Seaman Anthony Lawing.

Petty Officer 1st Class Mark DiGennaro, a 

gunner’s mate from Armory Portsmouth,

assesses the magazine sprinkler system

aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Northland.

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class David Weydert.

Photo by Petty Officer Sondra-Kay Kneen.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 17

assessments the same no matter what the locale. “The

workforce benefits because they’re getting a more coordinated, standardized approach,” said Bingaman, who

departed FORCECOM in April 2011 to become the 9th

District Chief of Staff in Cleveland. “So someone may be

stationed in Alaska this year and two years from now be

stationed in Florida, and they should see, nearly identically, what they experienced in Alaska.”

Training Division

The Training Division hosts the vast majority of

FORCECOM’s personnel at training centers nationwide.

In its first year, it streamlined annual mandatory personnel training—from sexual harassment to suicide prevention—by putting it online and creating opt-out pretests,

saving an estimated 400,000 man-hours annually. The

division also provided on-scene training during the

Deepwater Horizon oil spill response last year, forwarddeploying a schoolhouse outside New Orleans to give

more than 2,300 deployed personnel one to two weeks

of training in skills needed by operational commanders.

One of the challenges for the division has been erecting

training simulators ahead of the delivery of new assets.

For example, while the Coast Guard was timely in

installing the National Security Cutter bridge simulator

at Training Center Petaluma, the service has delivered 11

new HC-144A Maritime Patrol Aircraft but still has an

empty building in Mobile, Ala., meant to house a simulator. When the service has to trim acquisition budgets

without diminishing the quantity of assets, Marvin said,

training dollars are often first to go.

In Commandant Adm. Bob Papp’s 2011 State of the

Coast Guard address, FORCECOM was also called upon

to develop training that doesn’t just qualify personnel,

but makes them proficient, demonstrating secondnature expertise in their operating environment.

Marvin, who is retiring, said that it is a goal that the

entire Coast Guard will have to work towards. “Some

areas we do obtain proficiency—it’s not like we don’t

have it anywhere. Ship drivers and aircraft pilots, anybody who’s done several assignments within a community, begins to build expertise and proficiency,” he said.

“But there’re other situations in the Coast Guard where

you might only do a task twice a year, and it’s a challenge to maintain proficiency doing something twice a

year.”

Doctrine and TTP

The Doctrine Division focuses on both doctrine and

TTP, born from strategic policies set by the President. For

example, if it is policy that the United States will reduce

overfishing in the Arctic Ocean, doctrine

outlines how to implement Coast Guard

policy, such as by extending patrols and

cooperating with international partners.

TTP provides detailed instructions for

execution, such as to patrol at night and

ride down waves as the boat gets underway. 

The division has established

Integrated Process Teams to tackle doctrine and TTP projects using a cooperative

drafting process with subject matter

experts. It took a 900-page ordnance

manual that had been waiting for

approval for nearly nine years and worked

with stakeholders to divide it into four

smaller TTP handbooks. The division also

developed urgent TTP for the Deepwater

Horizon response, including TTP for certifying decontamination of vessels of

opportunity used to clean up oil, thus

protecting the Coast Guard from future

litigation. The division is keen on quality; former

Doctrine and TTP Integration Branch Chief Cmdr. Alan

Tubbs said they have developed a step-by-step process

guide for creating TTP. “We’re not the content owners.

We can write anything, but the content belongs to the

subject matter experts,” Tubbs said. “You give us what

you think it should say, and we’ll turn it into something

that’s the way it should read.”

The division still has a long way to go when compared with the other U.S. armed services, Tubbs said. The

division has found between 450 and 500 operationally

Capt. John Bingaman,

the former FORCECOM

Director of Staff, 

completes paperwork for

the command’s relocation from Alameda, 

Calif. to Norfolk, Va..

Photo by Petty Office 2nd Class Sondra-Kay Kneen.
18 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

related TTP documents, but the average document is 15

years old. They calculated that it takes 763.5 hours of

work to publish a standard TTP document; with the

number of people the division currently has—six—they

estimate it would take 37 years to update everything.

‘We Don’t Just Assess’

Besides consolidating finance and admin audit

checklists, the Assessment Division has developed baseline readiness metrics

for units and initiated a

readiness data reporting system, or dashboard. The division

conducted three beta

tests—aboard the

Coast Guard Cutter

Campbell, at Sector

Buffalo, and at Barbers

Point Air Station in

Kapolei, Hawaii—to

test the concept of a

Consolidated

Assessment Visit (CAV)

to minimize disruption

to units caused by various assessment team

visits. Former

Assessment Division

Deputy Chief Cmdr.

Scott Stewart said the

tests revealed that consolidating operational

assessments was not

effective, but there is

potential for consolidating mission support-type assessments.

A limited field deployment of the CAV concept has

been underway at about 34 units and includes about a

dozen mission support-type assessments, such as environmental compliance and independent duty health

service technician visits. “The key advantage of becoming part of DCMS is that DCMS, since they owned the

lion’s share of the assessment teams, can now help to

centrally manage it,” said Stewart, who is now the

Inspections and Investigations Branch Chief in the 13th

District’s Prevention Division in Seattle.

The division is also trying to eradicate the punitive

mentality that is sometimes felt with assessments.

“When we leave a unit, we want that unit to be better

than when we came. So we don’t just assess, we also

assist,” Stewart said. ”It’s not to put a unit on report, but

it’s to establish an accurate level of readiness and then

help them increase and improve upon that readiness.”

Exercises to Evaluate Plans

The Exercise Support Division assists Coast Guard

units with designing and executing exercises from cradle to grave, including facilitating planning meetings,

developing exercise plans and running exercise control

cells. The division also drafts after action reports, collecting lessons learned and identifying issues for remediation. While the other armed services conduct exercises

primarily to train, Coast Guard exercises are conducted

primarily to evaluate unit plans and their ability to

implement those plans, said Exercise Support Division

Chief Jeff Hughes.

Hughes sees exercise support activities as a strong

fit for FORCECOM. “One of the benefits of bringing the

Exercise Support Division—which has a lot of experience with the contingency preparedness system,

lessons learned and remedial action—together with the

rest of the FORCECOM family is, number one, it has

made a way for us to complete the linkage back to the

training community,” he said from Coast Guard headquarters in Washington.

A typical sector-level exercise requires about 600

man-hours of work by his division. Similar to efforts

throughout FORCECOM, Hughes’ division is working to

From left, now-Petty Officers 3rd Class Samuel Gainer, Jaime

Peralta and Amber Hynes hone their operations specialist 

navigation skills as seamen at Training Center Petaluma.

Photo by Petty Office 2nd Class Sondra-Kay Kneen.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 19

standardize the ways of doing things among its three

detachments.

Roller Coaster Ride

FORCECOM’s path to existence has been something

of a roller coaster ride. Under the previous

Commandant, FORCECOM was conceived as a threestar command to replace Pacific Area. Besides workforce

preparation, initially FORCECOM was also responsible

for allocation of assets and deployable forces and was

staffed with Pacific Area personnel. Along the way,

minds were changed and a decision was made to retain

Pacific Area, with FORCECOM as a two-star command

minus allocation responsibilities. 

FORCECOM has begun reconstituting the Pacific Area

workforce, returning more than 40 billets and temporarily putting FORCECOM into what Bingaman termed

“marginal operating capability.” While training and other

ongoing work will remain unaffected, TTP development

and assessment will feel the hit, “and therefore FORCECOM will dip a little bit in what it’s able to accomplish,”

Bingaman said.

FORCECOM’s command headquarters are also

moving from Coast Guard Island to Norfolk, Va. In

cooperation with union partners, about 25 people began relocating this summer, and moves

will continue in waves through 2013.

Master Chief Petty Officer Leilani Cale-Jones,

FORCECOM’s Command Master Chief until April

2011 and now Pacific Area Command Master

Chief, said that all the pending decisions were

unsettling. The command must keep emphasizing its successes to convince naysayers. “Change

is scary,” she said. “But it’s necessary. We can’t continue to do business from 20 years ago.”

Shared Services and Resources

A DCMS/FORCECOM integration team was

chartered at the end of 2010 to help oversee a

smooth transition into DCMS. FORCECOM is

already looking at sharing resources with the

Director of Operational Logistics, another DCMS

command element that will be headquartered in

the same building—called Main Street Tower—

in Norfolk. FORECOM Commander Rear Adm.

Stephen Mehling recognizes that the biggest

integration challenge remains determining

“what functions will FORCECOM retain as organic capabilities, and what functions will we necessarily have to have some kind of shared service

support.”

Mehling said that while FORCECOM will

require additional resources to reconstitute itself

from its diminished capacity, he understands the

reality of budgetary constraints. “The

Commandant has been very clear that FORCECOM will operate to the level it’s resourced, which

means that in the near term, there are going to be some

things that FORCECOM will not be able to do,” he said

from his Norfolk office. “We’re going to have to make

sure that we apply our resources toward those items

that are either the most critical based upon either a safety or operational concern, or those things that will reap

the greatest benefit to the overall organization.”

His vision, he said, is to ensure that FORCECOM continues its fundamental role of supporting operators in

the field preparing to execute missions. “We’re going to

focus on providing tools to the operators so that they

can have what they need—the training, knowledge,

skills and abilities that they need to do their job,” he said.

“We’re going to continue to assess the drive toward a

standardized workforce, and we’re going to do this all

for the betterment of the organization.” 

In Health Service School at Coast

Guard Training Center Petaluma,

Petty Officer 3rd Class Omar Payton

practices drawing blood from Petty

Officer 3rd Class Mason Gulley.

Photo by Petty Office 2nd Class Sondra-Kay Kneen.
20 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

Plotting the

Course for

Mission Support

by Jeanine Shipley, Strategic Planning Division

A landing signal officer guides a Kodiak-based HH-65

Dolphin helicopter to the deck of the Coast Guard Cutter

Bertholf in the Gulf of Alaska. Photo by Petty Officer 3rd

Class Jonathan Lally.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 21

“Working together

we can achieve our

vision of sustained

and adaptable

readiness for Coast

Guard missions.”

– Vice Adm. J.P. Currier

I

n March 2011, Vice Adm. J.P. Currier, the Deputy

Commandant of Mission Support (DCMS), released the first

version of the Mission Support Strategic Blueprint. The blueprint plots a course for mission support improvement by

detailing his organization’s mission and vision, strategic goals

and objectives, and near-term initiatives.

Currier explained the goal of the blueprint in his introduction, “By providing a shared focus for our efforts over the next

five years, the blueprint helps to unify the DCMS organization.” 

This strategic document was developed over the course of

a year with participation from all the DCMS directorates. It was

put together by analyzing what is happening inside and outside DCMS to identify opportunities for improvement and

unity of effort. As such, the blueprint addresses common challenges across the varied mission support elements.

At the highest level, the blueprint defines five goals:

Governance; Organizational Integration; Command, Control,

Communications, Computers and Information Technology, or

C4&IT, Architecture; Human Capital Alignment; and Optimal

Process. These goals address broad business results that the

DCMS organization is committed to achieving over the next

five years. Each goal is broken down into a series of objectives,

which convey in more specific terms how the organization will

progress toward achieving the goals. 

The DCMS organization will implement these goals and

objectives through a series of major DCMS-wide initiatives.

The initiatives are short-range efforts that can be achieved

within the next two years. This first version outlines initiatives

that encompass the major milestones of Mission Support 2.0. 

“We are currently working to assign managers to each of

the initiatives listed in the blueprint,” said Mr. Tom Chaleki,

deputy of the Mission Support Integration Office. “Each manager, supported by an Executive Sponsor, will be responsible

for the successful completion of their assigned initiative.”

In addition, Currier asked the DCMS Assistant

Commandants to align their strategies and business plans

with the blueprint during their next scheduled update. The

goal is to create a cascading family of mission support plans so

that each member of the DCMS organization understands

how their work contributes to the overarching mission and

vision.

“I ask each of you to carefully read the Mission Support

Strategic Blueprint to understand our collective way ahead.

Our actions for the next five years will be predicated on this

strategy, ” said Currier. “All military and civilian personnel have

a role—both large and small—in helping to achieve these

goals.”

The blueprint is available for download at:

http://www.uscg.mil/missionsupport/blueprint.pdf. 22 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

Unwritten ground rules often govern workplace

behavior and can have far more influence on an

organization’s success than its vision and mission

statements. These rules are derived from our perception

of how the organization really works. The mission support organization is documenting the way personnel

actually advance in their careers with an eye toward

retooling the education, training and mentoring needed

for promotion.

Vice Adm. J.P. Currier, Deputy Commandant for

Mission Support (DCMS), recently wrote, “A key ingredient to success in Mission Support 2.0 is the professional

development of our people. This involves not just changing the boxes on an organization chart, but also charting

career paths for every active duty, reserve, officer, enlisted and civilian member to advance and succeed in a

modernized mission support system.”

Major strides are being made in designing a mission

support career progression program that grows both the

technical expertise and broader leadership skills of the

workforce, allowing our best civilian and military members to rise to the top of the organization.

To better understand the mission support workforce,

one must understand its relationship with the Coast

Guard as a whole. The mission support workforce consists of people within the DCMS organization, i.e., those

performing mission support activities at operational

entities and those serving in “out-of-specialty” or “broadening” assignments. 

Three Mission Support Concepts

In addition to understanding technical expertise,

leadership and Coast Guard missions, everyone in the

mission support workforce needs to grasp three concepts scaled to their positions, with increasing responsibility as they progress throughout their careers:

1. Budget development: If you look at the entire Coast

Guard budget, it can appear daunting. But in reality,

a budget is a collection of smaller pieces where each

person plays a role, from being a responsible financial steward of finite public resources to being a program manager at headquarters responsible for the

viability of an entire fleet.

2. External factors: This takes into account current

events external to the Coast Guard and looks at the

risks and opportunities they present as the Coast

Guard is perceived by others, notably the public,

Congress and industry partners. A current example

is the nation’s focus on smaller government.

3. Organizational impacts: This emphasizes Coast

Guard processes surrounding decision making and

learning the role each person or office has in contributing to those decisions. At its basic level, that

can mean simply understanding where to find the

support you need to do your day-to-day job. Or, as

you advance in your career, it can mean participating in the major systems acquisition process, working within the mission support organization and

reaching out to the program offices in the Deputy

Commandant for Operations organization.

Career Paths 

Because the progression of these skills can be hard

to visualize, the Office of Workforce Management

(DCMS-81) is working closely with the assistant commandants in mission support to document potential

Charting Personnel Success

in Mission Support 2.0

Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Patrick Kelley.

by Richard Kramer, Office of Workforce Management
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 23

career paths for civilian and military members. The critical first step was to identify key positions in mission

support that demonstrate the cumulative experience

different positions can offer as part of a career progression. 

Product line managers at the logistics and service

centers made the list because they are responsible for

the budget execution of their assets. Further up in the

organization, headquarters program managers are

responsible for budget formulation for all assets, people and systems in their community. For example, the

small boat product line manager at the Surface Forces

Logistics Center is responsible for the budget execution

of all small boats, while the naval engineering program

manager is responsible for budget formulation of the

Coast Guard’s entire fleet of assets afloat. Considering

the scope of responsibility, both positions made the list

of key positions in mission support.

To ensure that the right educational opportunities

are in place to build technical competencies and aid in

career progression, the office is evaluating the formal

offerings to certify requisite skill knowledge. First,

DCMS-81 is evaluating formal training in logistics and

management for an advanced logistics program. The

Coast Guard has partnered with the U.S. Army Materiel

Command to provide advanced logistics, technical and

product life-cycle support training through the

University of North Carolina. Qualified military and civilian personnel can request to participate in this training

through their training officer.

DCMS-81 is also looking into a senior service school

focused on management and leadership education for

senior officers and civilians in mission support (O5/O6

and GS-15). The war colleges provide this education for

their operational partners; however, there is a gap in

educational opportunities focused on the big picture

from a mission support perspective. DCMS-81 is examining offerings at National Defense University and in

the private sector as it refines course objectives around

support services management.

DCMS has some of the largest Commands in the

Coast Guard. The commanding officer of a logistics or

service center can have as many as 1,000 people under

their command across the U.S., doing hundreds of jobs

for hundreds of customers on any given day at every

type of Coast Guard unit. Mission support leaders need

to think strategically and act locally. They must remain

focused on the overall support strategy, but provide for

local operational needs.

Training Requirements

DCMS-81 is reviewing training requirements and

competencies, and developing a certification and technical warranting system to establish workforce technical requirements, capabilities and authorities. The office

is trying to develop the knowledge to demonstrate

competence as well as establish controls and authority

based on mission requirements. Depending on the subject or area of expertise, there may be a certification for

it to demonstrate knowledge in several competencies.

For example, competencies in workstation system management or security can result in a certification in network security by an external industry 

authority.

The office is also looking into using existing certifications in various competencies to fulfill Coast Guard

needs. Technical warrants require demonstrating ability

and establishing authority for specified areas. Warrants

say who can authorize changes and deviations from

procedure. For example, Force Readiness Command is

the technical authority on training. Key personnel who

have demonstrated the required technical proficiency

hold warrants that give them the authority to evaluate

and approve training methodologies.

Civilian Workforce Career Development

DCMS-81 is equally committed to identifying career

development and education opportunities for our

workforce’s civilians, who play a critical role in enhancing the service’s ability to perform missions. Civilians

provide continuity to compliment the transient military

component of our workforce. Career development and

education opportunities help us retain our top performers and their institutional knowledge.

The office is looking at all civilian positions in mission support to identify where career promotion opportunities can be created in an occupational area and

location. Civilians are less likely to change locations outside of commuting areas, so opportunities within a geographic location are getting a close examination.

DCMS-81 is also examining advanced education opportunities for civilians.

A challenge that needs to be addressed is how to

equip managers with easier alternatives for backfilling

civilians pursing advanced education. Having a gap for

one year while someone pursues an executive M.B.A. or

other advanced degree could diminish the performance of a unit or program. The solutions available

today, including backfilling with a temporary position

or double encumbering a billet, are often complex, time

consuming or unbudgeted. DCMS-81 is looking at ways

to equip managers with easier alternatives, such as

something similar to military training allowance billets.

These are just a few of many improvements the

office hopes to make for the mission support workforce

as Modernization progresses. DCMS-81 encourages you

to send suggestions and ideas to

Richard.C.Kramer@uscg.mil. 24 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

From the

Director of Health & Safety

Rear Adm. Mark J. Tedesco

Serving in the Coast Guard is rewarding and challenging. We take considerable risks in the performance of our duties. Likewise, when it comes to

recreational motorcycling, whether on the road, a track

or off-road, we take risks. For some, these risks result in

severe consequences. Senseless loss of life and debilitating injuries from motorcycle mishaps impact everyone.

We train relentlessly to recognize, assess and minimize

the risks inherent to our Coast Guard duties.

Motorcyclists must prepare for each ride with the same

approach. To reduce the number and severity of motorcycle mishaps within the Coast Guard, senior leadership

is committed to improving the motorcycle safety program in cooperation with the other branches of the

Armed Forces.

The Office of Safety and Environmental Health; the

Health, Safety and Work-Life Service Center; and the

other service centers have teamed up to offer expanded

motorcycle safety training opportunities. Coast Guard

policy requires motorcycle-riding active duty members

to complete a Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF), or

state-approved motorcycle training course, which is provided free of charge. The Shore Safety Division, or CG1132, is expanding the motorcycle training infrastructure

at Coast Guard facilities. Currently, training is available at

Training Centers Petaluma and Yorktown; at Air Stations

Sacramento, Traverse City, Elizabeth City, Borinquen and

Atlantic City; and at Base Support Unit Portsmouth.

Points of contact for each training site can be found on

CG-1132’s website at www.uscg.mil/bikerider. Personnel

near Department of Defense (DoD) installations should

inquire with the safety office to see if motorcycle safety

training is available. Those close to a Navy installation

can go to www.navymotorcyclerider.com to sign up for

training. If free training via a Coast Guard or DoD facility

isn’t available, personnel can take training through a

local provider and submit a claim for reimbursement.

Details regarding the reimbursement program can be

found on CG-1132’s bike rider website.

Advanced or follow-on training is the next step in a

rider’s continuing education. Although not required by

policy, those who have completed their Basic Rider

Course are encouraged to take follow-on training. For

sport bike riders, the Navy and Marine Corps offer MSF’s

new Military Sport Bike Rider Course (MSRC). For cruiser

and touring riders, there is MSF’s Experienced Rider

Course or Advanced Rider Course (ARC). The ARC is similar to the MSRC, but is designed for all motorcycle riders.

In addition to MSF courses, track days and civilian police

motorcycle classes offer additional training opportunities. All of these courses are designed to educate and further develop a rider’s skills.

Coast Guard men and women take their mission seriously and complete each job with honor and courage.

Those who are motorcycle riders must do the same when

they ride. In the Health, Safety and Work-Life Directorate

we are working diligently to provide a world class motorcycle safety program, to ensure the personal safety of

our people, to include additional free training, expanded

access to motorcycle specific safety information, and the

establishment of motorcycle mentorship programs.

Riders must make the most of these new opportunities

as well as the programs being offered now. Get trained,

wear the protective gear, and ride safe each and every

time.

For more information, please contact Mr. Dale A.

Wisnieski, in CG-1132, at 202-475-5206 or at

Dale.A.Wisnieski@uscg.mil. 

“Semper Paratus.” 

Coast Guard Motorcycle Safety Program: Moving Forward
% Positive 2008 % Positive 2010 Workforce Breakdown

70% 75% All CG

72% 77% Active Duty

74% 80% SELRES

58% 66% Civilian

Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 25

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Cory J. Mendenhall

We take off-duty safety seriously

In both the 2008 and 2010 Organizational Survey (OAS), members were asked whether manager/supervisors and co-workers

actively communicate and promote off-duty safety practices. A

majority of members agreed or strongly agreed with the statement as shown by the breakdown comparison below. 
38

Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Henry G. Dunphy.

Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Rachel Polish.

26 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Rachel Polish.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 27

2011: Year of the

Coast Guard Family

by Claudia Isaacoff, CG-1 BOD

When Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Bob Papp

declared 2011 as the Year of the Coast Guard Family in

his State of the Coast Guard address in February 2011,

he promised a renewed focus on “ensuring our housing, child

care development centers and other family support programs

are the best they can be.” The Coast Guard recognizes that the

well-being of military families correlates with the well-being of

the service overall, a view that is in lockstep with President

Barack Obama, who has made the care and support of military

families a top national security priority. Adm Papp emphasized

several existing policies, programs and services provide this support for Coast Guard men and women and their families but this

year the service is also committed to building upon these by

making improvements and exploring new opportunities.

Child Development Services

The happiness and well-being

of our children is paramount for a

focused, productive workforce.

Child Development Services (CDS)

offers a wide range of services to

meet the childcare needs of Coast

Guard active duty and civilian families no matter where they are stationed. Core CDS services are nine

facility-based child development

centers, a childcare subsidy program, a system of certified in-home

providers for Coast Guard housing

and access to the DoD’s child development center facility-based programs. Additional services include

information and referrals, as well as

some school year and summer

camp programs for school-aged

children.

One of CDS’ primary objectives is to achieve parity

with DoD by fiscal year 2013, doubling the number of

children under age 12 who receive some type of service

from CDS. To achieve this goal, the Coast Guard is revising and expanding its child care

subsidy program by lifting the total

family income cap and increasing

subsidies for junior and senior personnel as funding permits. The service also plans to hire dependent

care specialists and assign them to

regions with the highest concentration of Coast Guard housing, thereby expanding the Family Child Care

Program and local community

childcare options.

At each of its nine child development centers, CDS also aims to

place training and curriculum specialists who will standardize training requirements for all center personnel and ensure the highest levels of performance. In addition,

these specialists will assist in maintaining the program’s national

accreditation. These much-needed improvements to

the CDS program will increase accountability, affordability and accessibility for the children and families of

Coast Guard men and women.

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Caleb Critchfield

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Jonathan Lally.
28 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

Ombudsman Program

Coast Guard ombudsmen

are a vital link for our Coast

Guard families. As Adm. Papp has

stated, “readiness begins at

home,” and Coast Guard

ombudsmen are in families’

homes, schools, child development centers and programs.

Ombudsmen serve as a link

between a command and its

families, providing valuable realtime information and resources.

In his State of the Coast Guard

address, Adm. Papp noted that a

full-time ombudsman position had been established at

Coast Guard headquarters, and that he was committed

to placing at least two more ombudsmen in field commands. As a result, a new ombudsman program manager in the Office of

Work-Life has already

begun strengthening

the relationship between

commands and their

families, and two future

regional ombudsman

coordinators will be

responsible for recruiting, training, supporting

and monitoring volunteer ombudsman with

the assistance of the

ombudsman coordinators at each Health,

Safety and Work-Life regional practice. As the program

moves forward, it will improve real-time communication of support information to families, creating a more

connected Coast Guard family.

Housing Initiatives

It is imperative that all Coast Guard military

members and their dependents have access to

quality housing within a reasonable commute

of the permanent duty station. The service provides housing access via referrals to local housing using Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH),

Coast Guard-leased housing, and in locations

where BAH and leased housing is not feasible,

the Coast Guard owns and maintains housing.

The Coast Guard currently owns approximately

4,000 homes, which have an average age of

more than 45 years. There is currently a backlog

of more than $350 million in maintenance and

recapitalization projects, and current funding

levels are insufficient to address the backlog.

The Coast Guard has recently undertaken several initiatives to improve the material condition

to family and unaccompanied housing, 

including:

1. For the first time ever, language in the Coast

Guard Authorization Act of 2010 now allows

the service to convey real property, place

proceeds into the Coast Guard Housing

Fund, and spend the funds on family and

unaccompanied housing improvements.

2. The Coast Guard has undertaken a comprehensive, nationwide assessment of its entire

housing inventory to ascertain material

condition, housing demand and availability

of community-based housing. The results of

this study will determine optimal allocation

of housing both in and outside of the continental United States and prioritize where

the next maintenance dollars should be

spent. Information gleaned from this

assessment can also be used for future budget requests.

3. Where viable, the Coast Guard is pursuing

Public Private Venture housing partnerships

with DoD and has successfully partnered

with the Navy in Belle Chasse, La., and

Oahu, Hawaii. The service is currently

exploring the feasibility of a Public Private

Venture partnership with the Army in

Puerto Rico.

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Levi Read.

Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Patrick Kelley.
Improved Communication

The Coast Guard is committed to strengthening communications, and a strategic

communications team is coordinating the Year of the Coast

Guard Family message to

ensure it is heard by not only

Coast Guardsmen but their

families as well. The Year of the

Coast Guard Family website

provides important family services information, including

links to most Coast Guard housing sites. These links

will be updated regularly with relevant information to

better assist families transitioning to a new location.

The Year of the Coast Guard Family is inspired by

the Commandant’s guiding principle of “Respect our

Shipmates,” a tenet that

emphasizes the importance of caring for one

another. In an ALCOAST

message to the service

earlier this year, he wrote

that he will ensure that

the Coast Guard’s policies, programs and services reflect his commitment to improving the

quality of life for Coast

Guard members and

their families. “In my mind,” he wrote, “the health and

welfare of our people and their families are at the

heart of operational readiness.”

Visit the Year of the Coast Guard Family online at

http://www.uscg.mil/yotf. 

Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 29

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Levi Read.

TRICARE Young Adult Program

TRICARE now offers a new benefit option for dependents

who age out of TRICARE at age 21 (or 23, if full-time college

students) and who are not married or eligible for their own

employer-sponsored coverage. Eligible dependents will have

the option to purchase TRICARE Standard/Extra health coverage on a month-to-month basis. The 2011 premium has been

established at $186 per month. After purchasing coverage,

enrollees will be issued a new identification card. Additional

details are available at 

www.uscg.mil/announcements/alcoast/216-11_alcoast.txt. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Tasha Peters.

Don’t Let Your Guard Down

Safety is everyone’s responsibility,

and “Don’t Let Your

Guard Down” is a

campaign to highlight the critical role

of leadership and

peer-to-peer

responsibility in on

and off-duty mishap

prevention. The

campaign emphasizes the accountability of the Coast Guard

to make the right decisions for safety. Currently the emphasis is on off-duty and recreational safety, especially motor

vehicle and motorcycle safety, to prevent mishaps that can

have devastating impacts on families and the service. Offduty fatalities are historically the No. 1 type of fatality for

Coast Guard members, and motor vehicle accidents still

account for the greatest number of off-duty fatalities.

Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Christopher Evanson.

Yellow Ribbon Program

The Coast Guard’s

Yellow Ribbon Program

ensures that deploying

reservists, their families

and others they designate connect with local

resources before, during and after deployments. The program

particularly ensures

reservists in need

receive assistance during the reintegration

phase that occurs months after a reservist

returns home, building resilient members

and families. To date, more than 600 reserve

members have been identified who require

access to the program. For more information, contact the Yellow Ribbon Program at

yellowribbon@uscg.mil.
30 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

The crowd watches as robotic boats designed by ninth graders perform

simulated Coast Guard missions in a 375-gallon pool of water. 
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 31

Academy’s

Robotics on the

Water Inspires

Young Engineers

in the El Paso

Desert

by Rebekah Gordon

Photos by Bob Corral and Luis Jasso

Photo by Luis Jasso.

EL PASO, Texas—While most high school freshmen might spend a typical Saturday at the mall, Jennifer Luna spent hers at the University of

Texas at El Paso (UTEP), measuring angles, assembling motors and levers,

and maneuvering a robotic craft via radio control. With four teammates,

she built and operated a small floating vessel that competed in a contest

simulating Coast Guard missions in a 375-gallon pool of water. Despite a

troublesome net contraption, her team—dubbed Team Luna—finished

the day-long contest in second place against five other teams of ninth

graders. 

This was the first time that Luna, who attends Del Valle High School,

had ever participated in a robotics competition, and she was excited

about spending the day building things. “I like it. It’s actually fun because

it has to do with science and math at the same time,” the 14-year-old

said.

Luna was among about 410 predominantly Hispanic freshmen from

eight high schools in the Ysleta Independent School District who came

to the campus on March 12 for the 2011 Engineering and Science

Extravaganza. Organized by university students, the annual event aims

to expose local youth to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, commonly known as STEM. For the first time, the Coast

Guard played a central role in the event, by providing major sponsorship,

a flag-level keynote speaker and a team of cadets and instructors from

the Coast Guard Academy who led an Academy Robotics on the Water

(AROW) competition. The freshmen who attended are part of a federal

program called GEAR UP that aims to prepare economically disadvantaged students for post-secondary education.
32 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

The Competition

While most freshmen spent the

day rotating through hands-on engineering workshops organized by university students, 30 of them were

pre-selected to spend the day participating in the AROW competition. At

the Undergraduate Learning Center

on campus, six teams—each led by

an academy cadet—spent the morning designing and assembling their

robotic boats with Styrofoam, basic

drivetrain pieces, batteries and other

raw materials. After testing their

boats out on the water, students

readied their vessels for the afternoon competition by outfitting them

with mechanisms designed to execute simulated missions in the pool’s

floating obstacle course.

Lt. Cmdr. Brian Maggi, an assistant professor of civil engineering

who helps lead the AROW program,

was one of three academy instructors

on hand to oversee the event. He said

the purpose of AROW is twofold: It

promotes STEM by encouraging students to apply concepts from the

classroom in a hands-on setting, and

it also introduces youth to the Coast

Guard and the possibility of a future

career in it. “We have the different

missions of the Coast Guard set up in

this pool, so it starts to get that kind

of discussion going around as far as

what the Coast Guard’s about, why

we are there,” Maggi said.

The missions—simulated with

ping pong balls, levers and other

floating devices—include moving

rings representing buoys, turning on

a light on a lighthouse, knocking a

drug-running foosball off its path

and putting it in jail, recovering ping

pong balls that represented spilled

oil, capturing floating survivors from

a sinking boat and landing a toy H-65

helicopter on the deck of their craft.

Missions are assigned points based

on complexity, and teams win points

for successfully completing as many

missions as they can with their radiocontrolled boats in timed rounds.

Jennifer Luna completes a simulated

buoy-tending mission as academy

instructor Lt. Cmdr. Jessica Rozzi-Ochs

stands by to offer encouragement. 

Photo by Bob Corral.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 33

Rear Adm.

Ronald Rábago

observes a team

of ninth graders

led by a Coast

Guard Academy

cadet as they

build their

robotic vessel.

Photo by Bob Corral.

AROW was originally part of the Academy

Introduction Mission, a week-long, on-campus summer

program for entering high school seniors. The AROW

competition went mobile to high schools nationwide

about two and a half years ago, Maggi said, and currently makes about four trips a year. AROW was introduced

to the extravaganza thanks to Gloria Potocek, the Coast

Guard’s chief of acquisition workforce management,

after she saw it at the 2010 Coast Guard Innovation Expo

in Tampa, Fla. When she learned that AROW had no

funds available to attend the extravaganza, Potocek

informally appealed to Assistant Commandant for

Human Resources Rear Adm. Ronald Hewitt and Director

of Personnel Management Curtis Odom who, she said,

did not hesitate to pledge funding for travel and equipment for the AROW team and to cover sponsorship fees.

Without their support, the Coast Guard would not have

been able to participate.

Given the rave reviews and high demand, the academy hopes to expand AROW further. “The long-term

goal for the program is to create a middle school and

high school curriculum that we’re going to try to develop this summer, and roll that out to schools where they

could tie the concepts of this program into their curriculum,” Maggi said. “And then we could host a competition

at their school.” Further down the road, he added, the

academy could potentially enable high schools or middle schools to run the competition themselves.

Hunt for Talent

Rear Adm. Ronald Rábago, a Hispanic who is now

the Assistant Commandant for Engineering and

Logistics, gave the keynote speech at the day’s opening

ceremonies, sharing about his path from a high school

student to the highest-ranking engineer in the Coast

Guard. He encouraged the ninth graders to keep pursuing their interest in math and science. “Take those math

and science courses now. I know I said the ‘M’ word, but

you've got to be prepared for the future. As scary as it

sounds, the work and the decisions you make today will

determine the dreams of tomorrow,” Rábago, who was

the Assistant Commandant for Acquisition at the time,

told the students. “If you'd asked me as a high school

junior in Laredo, Texas, trying to get decent grades as the

oldest of six kids, if I could have imagined where I am

today, I simply would have said, absolutely not.”

Rábago feels a special affinity for UTEP’s College of

Engineering, which Hispanic Business Magazine has

consistently ranked among the top 10 engineering

schools for Hispanics, three of the last six years in the No.

1 spot. As the Coast Guard competes for top talent, he

feels compelled to assist the service in inspiring and

hunting for future engineers, whether Hispanic or otherwise, from diverse sources, including the El Paso desert.

“We're going to need bright young people from all

sources for our country. We need them from every walk

of life and every geographic area,” he said after his
34 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

speech. “We can't allow any place in the country not to

contribute to that talent pool that the Coast Guard's

going to need to serve our nation and its citizens in the

future.”

College Role Models

The annual extravaganza is primarily planned and

run by UTEP College of Engineering students who are

members of the joint student chapter of the Society of

Mexican American Engineers and Scientists and the

Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, known as

MAES/SHPE. Nydia Esparza, the UTEP chapter president,

said the event helps show young students that they are

capable of going to college. With about 70 students

from MAES/SHPE and other organizations volunteering

to run the event, the ninth graders were surrounded by

university students not far removed from them in age or

background. “Because of the culture here in El Paso,

sometimes kids feel like they can't go to college or that

they're not going to be able to make it through college,”

said Esparza, an El Paso native who completed her

Bachelor of Science in metallurgical and materials engineering in 2010 at UTEP and is working on her master’s

degree. “That's why we like to have the [UTEP] students

here, so that they can relate to them and see that they

can go to college.”

The College of Engineering’s mission is to “change

the face of engineering,” according to Peter Golding, the

college’s associate dean for academic affairs and undergraduate studies. Meeting that mandate includes reaching out to underserved student populations, supporting

cutting-edge ways of teaching and exposing students to

all kinds of potential career paths. The latter was especially salient during the extravaganza, Golding said.

“Most of these kids would never think about the Coast

Guard or the Navy. Most of these kids have never seen

the ocean and many of them—a great majority of

them—can't swim,” he said. “There’re people in here

today who I bet in 50 years' time are going to be Ron

[Rábago] because of today. And if you have one of those

happen, where his visit has charged them, what an

incredible result.”

GEAR UP, which stands for Gaining Early Awareness

and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, is a six-year

grant program from the Department of Education

administered locally by UTEP for the Ysleta Independent

School District. It aims to get the ninth graders, who

started GEAR UP two years ago in seventh grade, to finish high school, be ready to enter post-secondary education and to understand the college application and

financial aid process.

Future Engineers

There were signs of a budding engineer in 15-yearold Nathan Rios, a freshman at Eastwood High School

who participated in AROW. Insatiably curious and with

science his favorite subject in school, he definitely wants

to attend college if he can obtain financial aid. His team,

W.P.B.T.Y—standing for “We’re Probably Better Than

You”—didn’t win, but he said he still had great fun working with his hands building the vessel with his teammates.

“It was awesome. We had our little conversation, like,

‘No, we should do this,’ ‘No, we should do that,’ but we

eventually said, ‘Oh, OK, your idea’s better,’” Rios said.

While he said the team’s demise was probably its lack of

an overall strategy and some setbacks in trying to master the radio control system, the lesson he took away

from the day was “by far the teamwork.”

Lessons of teamwork were also what fourth-class

academy Cadet Cesario “C.J.” Elizaldi Jr., took away from

the day. Thrown into leading a team of young students,

cadets often get just as much out of AROW as they hone

their leadership skills. “I had one person in my group

that, once he had an idea, he was kind of stuck on it. And

if somebody else had a better idea, or something that

could maybe, possibly work even better than his idea, he

wasn't really open to it,” Elizaldi said. “So even if I have a

great idea that I think will be successful, I'll listen to other

ideas because maybe another idea will be better or

maybe something will help improve my idea and make

it more efficient.”

Elizaldi, who is majoring in mechanical engineering,

is one of the few cadets in the academy’s history who is

an El Paso native. Bringing AROW to the Texas desert

gave students needed insight into the academy, he said.

“I definitely know that if I would have been a part of this

program when I was in high school I would have made

my decision there that the Coast Guard was for me,” he

said. “Even though it's a simulation of what really goes

on, you still get the idea of how important the Coast

Guard is with cleaning up oil spills, making rescues and

doing drug interdiction, and aids to navigation as well.

You get an idea of how important the Coast Guard is to

the nation.” 

Editor's note: Photographers Bob Corral and Luis Jasso are

UTEP students. 

Photo by Bob Corral.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 35

Alontay Aguilar, a

freshman at Hanks

High School, saws

through Styrofoam to

help construct her

team’s boat for the

robotics competition.
36 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

From the

Assistant Commandant for C4IT 

& Chief Information Officer 

Rear Adm. Robert E. Day Jr.

I

t just does not seem possible that it has been almost

two years since I assumed the Coast Guard Chief

Information Officer position. Yet, as I look back at the

myriad of challenges that the Command, Control,

Communications, Computers and Information

Technology (C4&IT) team has successfully undertaken, I

am surprised that it has only been 24 months!

As I travel the Coast Guard, I am asked a lot of questions by our shipmates about C4&IT issues they do not

understand or they believe should be easy to fix. Our

C4&IT enterprise is complex—subject to a plethora of

rules and regulations from both DHS and DoD—and

challenged by a difficult budget environment. This

labyrinth of factors sometimes makes my head hurt. I

can only imagine what my field shipmates think when

we try to explain the “why’s” and “what’s” of the C4&IT

enterprise. I want to use this opportunity to provide you

with my answers to the top four questions that I get as I

travel the field. Hopefully, they will help you understand

the challenge of things that seem to be a “no brainer.”

The number one question is: “I hate the Windows 6

phones and Good software. Why can’t we use iPhones,

iPads and the new Droid equivalents on the CG network?” I

get this question multiple times each day, and I can

assure you that the CG-6 staff and the

Telecommunication and Information Systems

Command are putting a lot of energy into making these

devices available. A key part of the issue is that, unlike

the Windows 6 phones, the current iPhone, iPad and

Droid platforms do not meet critical security requirements mandated by DoD and DHS to allow these

devices to connect to our “.mil” network. Our Good software environment has the potential to mitigate the

inherent security weaknesses of the Apple and Droid

mobile devices. DoD is very interested in how the CG

leverages Good software to help secure our devices, and

the organization sees potential for this software to provide a solution for the current gaps in Apple/Droid security. I hope to be able to announce availability of these

devices in the near future since stocks of the current

Windows 6 mobile devices are becoming difficult to find,

and the Good software for the Windows 7 devices is several months away.

The next frequently asked question is: “When are you

going to fix cutter connectivity so that our sailors can enjoy

the same level of Coast Guard Standard Workstation service as shore units?” The simple answer is that this is a

matter of physics and economic laws of supply and

demand:

- Cutter connectivity relies on data circuits connected

via satellites, which require a 45-thousand-mile

round trip into space. Unless you have very large

antennas, you will find that getting a high-speed

connection is difficult.

- The customer base for high-speed data connectivity

at sea is small; thus, the cost for these services is

high.

The Assistant Commandant for Capabilities, or CG-7,

CG-6 and TISCOM, continue to identify opportunities to

get larger bandwidth to all of our cutters. For example,

new Ku band satellite and Inmarsat Fleet Broadband

offerings are being installed, tripling available bandwidth from our previous 64- and 128-kilobit-per-second

leased circuits. New tools to help cutters better manage

their usage of our limited bandwidth are also being evaluated to ensure that mission-critical communications

get priority on our circuits. Smaller cutters are receiving

cellular data solutions to provide access to Coast Guard

network resources.

Another common comment and question is: “Our

unit wanted to get a couple more workstations and laptops

so that we could easily access them in our office and our

shop spaces down at the pier, but the $3,500 initial cost and

recurring expenses are more than the unit can afford. Why

are the Electronic System Support Unit and CG-6 ripping us

off when it seems like I could buy the same thing at Radio

Shack for $500?” This is a common perception, but when

we buy a Coast Guard Standard Workstation (CGSW), we
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 37

are paying for so much more than just the hardware

platform that you would get at Radio Shack. The costs

imposed one time and recurring for each CGSW go to

fund: the hardware and software licenses for the many

programs needed for Coast Guard applications and

security, network costs, support personnel, help desk

and replacement of the computer when it is obsolete. It

may seem expensive, but when you compare Coast

Guard costs per workstation against our DHS and DoD

partners, our costs in many cases are 50 percent less.

You are really getting a great value, and we are looking

at ways to make it even cheaper by using thin client

computers and cloud computing.

Last, but certainly not least, I often get this comment

and question: “We have tried this commercial software

and really want to use it on a CGSW to do [insert your

favorite task], yet the Electronic Systems Support Unit

refuses to install it and demands that we use the poor Coast

Guard software that we currently use. Why are you guys

such software police?” I certainly can understand this perception, but you also have to understand the challenges

that CG-6 and the C4&IT Service Center have with maintaining a CGSW image that works properly with the hundreds of programs that the CG already has, meets the

strict DoD and DHS security standards and can be easily

upgraded as our CGSW image is modified. Every new

piece of software added to the Coast Guard inventory

has to be thoroughly tested to ensure that it does not

impact the image and all other critical software we

already have installed. This is the reality of trying to

effectively manage the very complex enterprise that is

our CGSW environment.

I will continue to use the CG-6 section of the Service

Lines magazine to have these “From an Enterprise View”

discussions to help you get a sense of the challenges

that your C4&IT shipmates overcome to deliver exceptional C4&IT support to mission execution. Please continue to email me questions that you think have enterprise-wide applicability, and I will address as many as I

can. 

Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Levi Read
38 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

AWS 2.0 screenshot. Coast Guard graphic.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 39

Alert and Warning

System 2.0 Improve

Mass Notifications

by Coast Guard Operations Systems Center Staff

To provide Coast Guard first

responders with an efficient

means of meeting critical security and safety-related port-wide notification requirements, the Coast

Guard developed and deployed the

Alert and Warning System (AWS) in

2007. An upgraded version of this system, called AWS 2.0, enables the Coast

Guard to rapidly and reliably transmit

messages to maritime partners and

other stakeholders. To date, AWS 2.0

has been used extensively to manage

Coast Guard and federal responses to

many crises, including the earthquakes in American Samoa and Haiti,

and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in

the Gulf of Mexico.

Before AWS, the Coast Guard used

radio broadcasts, fax and local telephone trees. It was an ineffective and

costly way to execute Coast Guard

missions. Now, AWS 2.0 is the Coast

Guard’s enterprise-wide mass notification system that that is capable of

supporting multiple Coast Guard missions in maritime safety, security and

environmental protection. 

Changing Needs of Mission

Support 

The Maritime Transportation

Security Act of 2002 and federal regulations require Coast Guard Captains

of the Port (COTPs) to communicate

changes in maritime security levels in

a timely manner through local broadcast notices to mariners, and via electronic means if available, or as

detailed in the Area Maritime Security

Plan. These regulations also require

COTPs to transmit maritime notifications to maritime security partners

and stakeholders in a timely manner.

AWS is the Coast Guard’s answer to

these requirements, providing COTPs

with an efficient means of providing

crucial security and safety-related

port-wide notification capabilities.

With significant improvements in

mobile phone and network technologies within the last few years, it

became apparent that the initial version of AWS was not fully supporting

the rapidly changing needs of Coast

Guard missions and not keeping up

with demand for mobile device usage

in the general public. Additionally, the

Coast Guard determined that AWS

needed to interface with various

other notification systems in use in

the nation’s ports in order to support

the COTPs’ mission needs.

By linking notification systems

through an upgraded version of AWS,

the Coast Guard sought to create efficiencies in training, supportability and

total ownership cost of its notification

systems. Working with the Coast

Guard’s Office of Port and Facility

Activities and the sponsor’s representative—the Office of Command,

Control, Communications and

Computers (C4) Sensors and

Capabilities—the Operations Systems

Management Division developed the

next generation of AWS with

improved reliability, enterprise-wide

supportability and advanced functionality.

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd class Tom Atkeson.
40 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

Features of AWS 2.0

AWS 2.0 was deployed in December 2009. After performing comprehensive market research and a detailed

analysis of alternatives, the Coast Guard selected AtHoc’s

IWSAlerts emergency notification system for its entire

enterprise. The solution was demonstrated to be reliable

and easy to use by Coast Guard personnel and did not

require Information Technology (IT) professionals for

operation.

An advanced alert and warning system, it enables

COTPs to rapidly and reliably transmit targeted alerts, in

bulk, to maritime partners and stakeholders at a rate of

approximately 100 messages per minute. Additionally,

the system allows COTPs to receive responses from alert

recipients to respond to incidents or support operations. 

AWS 2.0 provides the ability to notify active duty,

reserve, auxiliary, civilian, maritime industry partners

and other government agencies through many methods

of delivery (e.g., telephone, Short Message Service (SMS)

on mobile devices, email and fax). This unified collaborative effort provides a single enterprise solution that is

capable of sending alerts concerning safety, security and

environmental protection events. For example, it can

automate the recall of unit personnel, ensure continuity

of operations and account for personnel in times of crisis. 

The upgraded system’s ubiquitous reach and bidirectional communications capability provides greater

usability and functionality than the earlier version of

AWS. The system also supports additional Coast Guard

missions, such as hurricane preparedness, natural disaster readiness, search and rescue operations, and the closure of waterways. By including all this functionality,

AWS 2.0 has eliminated the need to have more than one

alerting system at a unit, thereby simplifying training

and support requirements.

Also, AWS 2.0 is a Web application that can be

accessed over the Coast Guard’s existing network

(CGDN+) through a Coast Guard Workstation III or a

Coast Guard-issued laptop. This feature is important for

COTPs who need to send rapid notifications in order to

protect people and materiel assets.

Leveraging Advanced Technology and Existing IT

Architecture

For the Coast Guard, AWS 2.0 combines networkcentric security and an emergency communications system. The centralized, server-based system replaces cumbersome non-standard emergency notification processes that once depended upon a string of actions at the

unit level, often without central coordination from Coast

Guard headquarters and regional offices. AWS 2.0

improves the Coast Guard’s ability to account for the

reception of messages and alerts by taking advantage of

the way Internet Protocol-based services, such as email

and text messaging, permit immediate reply. 

The Coast Guard acquired AWS 2.0 under a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software license that leverages

Diagram

showing how

information

flows through

the AWS 2.0

system. Coast

Guard 

graphic.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 41

the service’s existing CGDN+ network. The AWS system consists of two hardware components: the alert

application server and the gateway server. The application server is a government-off-the-shelf (GOTS)

product. The gateway is the telecom interface

between the AWS application layer and downstream

providers (email, SMS, voice and fax). Once a Coast

Guard operator logs into the system, data is passed to

the GOTS servers via encrypted Web service submissions. From the servers, messages are delivered to

individual recipients in clear text because of the lack

of encryption support in commercial phones and

SMS. In order to prevent the leaking of sensitive information, recipients may have to authenticate using a

personal identification number before receiving a

voice message. Passwords and other sensitive fields

are encrypted prior to delivery to the database.

The Coast Guard selected this enterprise-wide system to unify the service’s alerting channels. By deploying a single, centralized, Web-based system that unifies multiple alerting channels, Coast Guard COTPs can

rapidly alert personnel to pending dangers and

events. Additionally, Coast Guard emergency managers can provide detailed instructions to all personnel for action, and receive confirmation to verify that

messages were received and appropriate actions were

taken. AWS 2.0 is the network-centric emergency

mass notification system that has become the enterprise-wide standard for the Coast Guard, capable of

reaching 50,000 Coast Guard personnel and maritime

industry members with alerts and critical information.

Executing Mission Support 

Since its deployment in December 2009, AWS 2.0

quickly has become a robust application that enables

the Coast Guard to rapidly and reliably transmit targeted messages in bulk to maritime partners and

stakeholders. Most recently, AWS 2.0 was used in

response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf

of Mexico. The Coast Guard issued 13 messages that

were received by some 4,500 internal and external

users. Examples include a message sent to internal

and external users that Port Fouchon, located along

the southern tip of Louisiana, was open, correcting

misinformation in earlier reports. In addition, not all

reports were confined to the Gulf Coast region.

Internal notification was sent to Sector Honolulu

requesting additional personnel for the Gulf, and

Sector Mobile also used AWS 2.0 to postpone a

search-and-rescue exercise that had been scheduled

for Gulf waters near the spill.

Whether used to respond to natural or man-made

disasters, the new unified and pervasive AWS 2.0 notification system is helping the Coast Guard reach people through multiple redundant channels in minutes—instead of hours—with detailed information for

a safe course of action. AWS is making a big difference

in improving communications and coordination

among maritime partners, whether industry or other

government agencies. 

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class David Weydert.

Dike walls of mud and sandbags hold back the

flooding Sheyenne River in Valley City, N.D..
42 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

As an Era of Coast

Guard IT Support Ends,

Promises of a

Brighter

Support

Future

Begins

Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Andrew Kendrick.

by Rory Jansen, C4IT Service Center
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 43

From smartphones to tablets, technology is changing, and the Coast Guard is changing with it. A

major shift is coming in the way that the Coast

Guard supports its information technology (IT) infrastructure. The district Electronic System Support Unit

(ESU) Service Desks are being consolidated into one

Centralized Service Desk (CSD) operating 24/7/365 in St.

Louis, Mo., starting in October 2011.

Centralizing the Coast Guard’s information technologists and electronics technicians services is another

cornerstone of continuing Coast Guard modernization

efforts to streamline processes, improve service

response times and support Coast Guard missions.

As the ESUs transition to the new CSD throughout

the summer, their services will remain the same. Local

technicians will still take calls and work tickets. As the

ESUs transition to the CSD, they will switch their phone

numbers to the CSD phone number: 855-CGFIXIT. 

“The CSD is a necessary step towards addressing

new challenges that require us to be organized more

efficiently and manage our business practices more

effectively,” says Capt. John Gallagher, project manager

for the CSD. “We are really excited about this transition.

The CSD will have a state-of-the-art customer call system, a new and much more capable trouble ticket management system and a professionally trained customer

service staff to serve all users. It will provide a one-stop

location to report incidents or request assistance for all

C4&IT systems, 24/7.”

In a parallel effort, the Coast Guard Operations

Systems Center (OSC) will soon upgrade CGHelp to a

new software package, Remedy 7.6, and a new name,

“CGFIXIT”.

CGFIXIT will provide Coast Guard users with a simple, easy-to-use tool for submitting trouble tickets or

requesting service. CGFIXIT will also allow support technicians to better manage tickets and deliver high-quality service in line with industry best practices. This ticketing system is the USCG’s preferred method of requesting

support for IT issues.

This centralization effort brings the Coast Guard into

alignment with industry best practices and enables significant improvement to the customer service experience. It does so by following the international IT bestpractice service framework, called IT Infrastructure

Library (ITIL). This process is rapidly growing in popularity around the world, and is used by Hewlett-Packard,

Dell and IBM to serve their customers. ITIL provides guidance for creating and operating a service desk that provides a continuous feedback loop between an organization’s IT strategy, systems developed and deployed, end

users and the IT service community. Aligning with ITIL

not only allows the Command, Control,

Communications, Computers and Information

Technology (C4&IT) Service Center (SC) to analyze an

incident, find the root cause and fix it, but also permits

improvement of the end-user experience to be better.

St. Louis was chosen as the location for the CSD for

several reasons. First, centrally located between the east

and west coast minimizes issues related to serving multiple time zones. Additionally, St. Louis is more insulated

from the typical natural disasters that the Coast Guard

manages (or has to schedule around), such as a hurricanes. Construction is presently underway in St. Louis to

transform the ESU into the CSD, and new networks,

workstations and phone systems are being installed.

Consequently, responsibilities for Cmdr. Cornell Perry,

the St. Louis ESU commanding officer and soon-to-be

CSD branch chief, will change significantly. 

“Centralizing all of our ESUs plays a critical role in

ensuring reliability, availability and continuity of IT services, even during natural disasters or major Coast Guard

operations, such as Deepwater Horizon. The CSD will be

at the forefront of technology, leveraging a state-of-theart facility, an updated suite of tools and a voice-over

intranet protocol (IP) telephone system, which is the

foundation for the future transition of the entire Coast

Guard to an advanced phone system,” says Perry. “For the

first time, the Coast Guard is looking at IT end users as

customers that require the same level of service that the

private industry provides.”

The combination of new technologies and the

24/7/365 schedule will allow the Coast Guard to maintain a higher level of preparedness to respond to incidents as well as a higher level of service for everyday

requests. In addition, the CSD will provide considerable

savings to the Coast Guard annually—an important factor in an era of shrinking budgets. Leveraging modernization’s centralized aspects fully, the C4&IT SC will deliver significantly improved service with better tools,

improving not only daily IT service delivery but also

enabling greater preparedness for disasters and other

incidents of national importance. The CSD is a foundational element in the C4&IT Service Center’s continued

focus on processes, standards and configuration management, and according to Gallagher, “We look forward

to unveiling this new capability around the Coast Guard

in fall 2011.” 44 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

The 

Coast 

Guard 

Helps 

Liberia

Demolish

Omega

Navigation

Tower

by Linda M. Johnson

Acquisition Directorate Office

of Strategic Planning and

Communications
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 45

I

n less than 30 seconds, 1,400 feet of steel and 520 tons

of tower and wiring came tumbling down in a controlled explosion in May 2011, when the Coast Guard

helped Liberia demolish the Omega Navigation System

tower in Paynesville, just outside Liberia’s capital city of

Monrovia.

At 1,410 feet—which is taller than the former World

Trade Center towers—and with an antenna field about

one mile in diameter, the Omega tower was the tallest

man-made structure on the continent of Africa. 

The tower’s demolition set a world record for the

tallest structure felled by explosives, a record previously

held by the April 2010 controlled demolition of the former Long-Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) tower at

Coast Guard Station Port Clarence, Alaska. 

The demolition of the tower is good news for Liberia

for several reasons. Since the Liberian tower had not

been used or maintained since 1997, it was considered a

safety hazard. Moreover, the tower’s demolition will promote economic development in the area by turning the

former tower site into a marketplace.

In a high-level show of support for the project,

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the U.S.

Ambassador to Liberia, Linda Thomas-Greenfield,

pushed the buttons that set off the explosives that

destroyed the tower.

The demolition of the tower, which is owned by

Liberia, was funded through a Foreign Military Financing

grant from the U.S. Department of State. U.S. Army Lt.

Col. Clement Ketchum, who serves as the Deputy for

Security Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia,

conducted the initial site survey documenting the condition of the tower. He also negotiated with the government of Liberia to establish the boundaries of the tower

demolition contract that was awarded by the Coast

Guard to a U.S. company with the proper expertise.

Ketchum—who served in the Coast Guard from

1984 to 1996—brought a unique perspective to the project because he had seen it come full circle, having

served as the Coast Guard’s liaison to Liberia and operations officer for the Omega Navigation System in Liberia

from 1989 to 1992.

“Everyone is very happy that the tower came down

and that it was done in a professional, controlled manner that caused the least amount of damage. The tower

has outlived its life and hasn’t been maintained for 13

years,” he said.

“The next phase of what’s going to go in its place is

a new market area to try to get some congestion off the

roads,” Ketchum explained. “There’s a big market that’s

kind of formed on the road near the station that totally

inhibits traffic, and it’s on the main highway to go up

country, so moving the market off the road and into a

new area will be great.” 

Tower History

The U.S. Navy began construction on the Liberian

tower in 1972 and turned the permanent structure and

adjacent buildings over to Liberia in 1973. In 1976, the

Coast Guard was asked to manage the tower and its 35-

person Liberian crew, along with the overall operation of

the Omega Navigation System network. 

Cmdr. Michael Hudson takes field

measurements of one of the Omega

Navigation Tower’s structural guy

anchors during a preliminary site

visit in April 2011. Photo by Mark

Loiseaux, Controlled Demolition Inc.
46 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

The Liberian tower

was one of eight transmitting stations worldwide that provided

global navigation

assistance to aircraft,

ships and submarines

based on the very low

frequency radio signals emitted by each

station. The Omega

system functioned as

the world’s first GPS,

but it was based on

land rather than on

satellites in space.

The Coast Guard

maintained and operated the Omega network in cooperation

with the seven partner

nations that hosted

transmitting stations

until the entire Omega

system became obsolete and ceased operations in 1997.

Foreign Military Sales Case

The tower’s demolition was part of a Coast Guard

Foreign Military Sales (FMS) case established in August

2009 to help rebuild the Liberian Coast Guard after several recent civil wars. The $7 million case, managed by

FMS Case Manager Yael Handel, includes two 27-foot

Defender-class small boats—which Liberia received in

November 2010—spare parts, training, technical assistance and infrastructure improvements. The case also

includes a maritime advisor based at the U.S. Embassy in

Monrovia, who happens to be Coast Guard Cmdr.

Jennifer Ketchum, wife of Lt. Col. Ketchum.

After conducting research and consulting with the

Coast Guard, the government of Liberia amended the

original FMS case in October 2010 to include a contract

for the tower’s demolition. Based on a sole-source

request from the government of Liberia, the Coast

Guard awarded the demolition contract in March 2011

to Tower Inspection Inc. of Muskogee, Okla., which subcontracted with Controlled Demolition Inc. of Phoenix,

Md. Controlled Demolition oversaw the recent demolition of all the Coast Guard LORAN towers in Alaska and

the demolition of Argentina’s Omega tower in 1998.

Cmdr. Michael

Hudson, the executive

officer with the Coast

Guard’s Civil

Engineering Unit in

Miami, served as the

contracting officer’s

technical representative and worked with

the Acquisition

Directorate’s contracting staff—Erica Fetter,

Eric McDoniel and

Kerri Williams—to

develop the tower

demolition contract.

Hudson was

already somewhat of a

tower expert himself,

having spearheaded

the most recent update

of the Coast Guard

tower manual in 2001.

By reaching back to his

Coast Guard colleagues,

he managed to find the original construction drawings

for the Liberian tower, which were an enormous help to

bringing it down safely.

Along with three Tower Inspection and Controlled

Demolition employees, Hudson travelled to Liberia in

April 2011 for a post-award site visit to make field measurements, finalize the demolition plan and discuss

logistics and security details with the U.S. Embassy in

Monrovia and the Liberian government.

For the actual demolition, Hudson was part of a

seven-person team that arrived in Liberia in May 2011 to

manage the tower’s demolition and oversee the preparation and installation of the explosive charges and site

security.

“This project was an excellent demonstration of

cooperation within the Coast Guard—clearly it crossed a

lot of organizational lines—and a demonstration across

the Atlantic of good international cooperation with the

U.S. Embassy and the government of Liberia that kept

the project moving forward and made the execution of

the project that much easier,” Hudson said. 

“This is a great example of the international cooperation between Liberia and the U.S.,” noted Handel, who

accompanied Hudson on the May trip to Liberia to oversee the tower’s demolition. 

After the Omega Navigation Tower’s demolition, Coast

Guard FMS Case Manager for Liberia Yael Handel shakes the

hand of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf while the

U.S. Ambassador to Liberia, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, looks

on. Photo by U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Gary Morris, U.S.

Embassy Monrovia.
The Omega

Navigation Tower

in Liberia falls during its controlled

demolition in May

2011. Photo by

Gary Lehman,

Tower Inspection

Inc.

Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 47
48 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

The Coast Guard Cutter Decisive patrols around the Deepwater Horizon well site Aug.,

4 2010. Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class David R. Marin.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 49

Medium Endurance

Cutter Product

Line Overhauls

Decisive’s Reverse

Osmosis Unit

by Lt. David J. Kowalczyk

The overhaul of a Reverse Osmosis

(RO) unit aboard the Medium

Endurance Cutter Decisive (WMEC

629) has yielded important lessons that

may benefit not only the 14 ships of the

210-foot WMEC fleet, but also the Coast

Guard’s 13 270-foot WMECs, which use

similar equipment. This repair availability

was one of the first undertaken by the

Coast Guard’s Surface Force Logistics

Center (SFLC) and the newly established

Medium Endurance Cutter Product Line.

The RO unit is a crucial piece of a ship’s

equipment that the crew uses to make

fresh water from seawater while operating

underway. Overhauling Decisive’s RO unit

has helped Coast Guard and industry engineers to hone their procedures and develop cost-saving insights into the causes and

remedies of casualty reports (CASREPs)

that document problems with the materiel

condition of RO units aboard the fleet’s

WMECs.
50 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

The Coast Guard identified problems with corrosion

in Decisive’s bilges underlying the RO unit after the cutter’s 2008 overhaul under the Mission Effectiveness

Project (MEP). The project is refurbishing the Coast

Guard’s 110-foot, 210-foot and 270-foot cutters at the

Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Md. The SFLC and the

Medium Endurance Cutter Product Line manage overhauls of the Coast Guard’s WMEC fleet.

Multiple Casualty Reports

In the fall of 2009, during another of Decisive’s

scheduled dockside maintenance periods at her home

port in Pascagoula, Miss., the Coast Guard removed the

cutter’s RO unit and overhauled it to correct the underlying bilge corrosion.

During the previous year, Decisive’s RO unit was the

subject of five CASREPs; it frequently required attention

above and beyond the normal scheduled maintenance

load and had developed many water leaks. Decisive’s

engineering team changed out the RO unit’s high pressure pumps twice during that year. Additionally, the RO

unit’s salinity meters required nearly constant calibration and had also failed several times. Decisive’s engineering team was changing the RO unit’s salinity membranes once every patrol rather than the expected operational life of six months to one year for this part.

The RO unit’s leaks were causing corrosion on and

beneath the unit. The leaks exacerbated bilge deterioration beneath the RO unit, making repairing this corrosion a priority for the ship’s planned September to

November 2009 dockside maintenance availability.

Inspection Yields Discrepancies

Following contract specifications, the Coast Guard and the RO

unit’s original equipment manufacturer, Village Marine, inspected the

Decisive’s RC 5000 RO unit and developed procedures to improve the

unit’s operation and increase its reliability. The Coast Guard and Village

Marine ultimately found 25 discrepancies. These discoveries led to the

replacement of three gauges, five

flow meters and two pressure

switches on the RO unit. The Coast

Guard also upgraded the RO unit’s

salinity probes and the unit’s motor

controller. Unexpectedly, the Coast

Guard and the manufacturer found

corrosion inside the high-pressure

metal tubing that carries water

through the RO unit.

The Coast Guard also found

deterioration on the sealing faces of

the RO unit’s high-pressure tubing,

which had caused the water leaks

that resulted in the bilge corrosion.

The manufacturer renewed about 25

percent of the RO unit’s tubing. This was surprising,

because there had been no external indication of corrosion on the tubing itself; the inspection had demonstrated that the RO unit was corroding from the inside

out. 

The Coast Guard has been researching solutions to

RO unit CASREPs for some time. In 2009, the Engineering

Logistics Center contracted with ABS Consulting to

report on the causes of frequent failures in the membrane components of the WMECs’ RO units. The study

indicated that both materiel and personnel training

issues may have played roles in failure of the RO units’

salinity membranes. The center’s report recommended

that corrosion issues be studied further and that lessons

learned could be applied to the RC 5000 units aboard

the 210-foot WMECs and, potentially, to the RC 7000

units aboard the 270-foot WMECs.

Decisive was scheduled to complete dockside availability on Nov. 2, 2009, but manufacturing and installing

The Reverse Osmosis unit foundation with all components off; corrosion is

evident. Coast Guard photo.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines •51

the parts continued until Nov. 12. Some parts, including tubing, had to be custom-manufactured, which

added time to the repair schedule. Ultimately, the overhaul and repairs were successful. As of July 2010, the

RO unit aboard Decisive was running smoothly with

few problems and membranes were only changed out

once after about six months of operational life.

Lessons Learned 

The overhaul of Decisive’s RO

unit proved to be a worthwhile

experience that improved the

unit’s function and reliability. The

process can be time consuming

and should be planned for during a

50-day maintenance period due to

the manufacturer’s lead time for

parts. Each RO unit is custom built

to its ship; tubing runs and dimensions are neither mass-produced

nor identical between units, and

this was an important factor in the

lead time for the fabrication of

parts.

The cost of disassembly and

reassembly was approximately

$5,000. The cost of the overhaul

work was about $19,000. As a reference point for future overhauls,

approximately $24,000 was necessary; that figure was approximately

$3,500 less than the original independent government estimate.

To avoid the problem of postinstallation leaks, the manufacturer

should be required to test piping sections at their facility, under operational

pressures, in the presence of a Coast

Guard inspector.

Finally, the cause of corrosion within the metal tubing of Decisive’s RO unit

was unclear. This issue should be studied in future overhauls. If internal corrosion is a significant cause of WMEC RO

unit degradation, the causes (such as

inadequate materials, dissimilar metals

or flow rate) should be identified and

corrected.

Special thanks are due to the

SFLC’s WMEC Product Line Asset

Manager, Lt. Jon Cox, and Port Engineer

Lt. Simon Barr, whose planning, efforts

and stewardship were critical to this

project. Decisive’s engineering department also did an

exceptional job of inspecting this and other dockside

items, resulting in a superior product.

Editor’s note: The author served as engineering

officer on Decisive from 2007 to 2010 and is now the

executive officer at Naval Engineering Support Unit

Honolulu. 

Village Marine photos show corrosion on tube flanges and threads.

Coast Guard photo.

The Reverse Osmosis unit foundation after preservation, prior to the unit

being reassembled. Coast Guard photo.
52 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

by Aviation Logistics Center Industrial Operations Division Staff

The Aviation Logistics Center (ALC) is the

hub for Coast Guard aviation support,

which includes depot-level maintenance, structural engineering, spare parts

warehousing and information services. Depotlevel maintenance encompasses the total

overhaul of an airframe. An overhaul is completed, on average, every four years for each of

the Coast Guard’s 200 airframes, and includes a

complete teardown, inspection and reassembly. During the process, the ALC completes any

required modifications or system upgrades.

The ALC also manages shipment, component repair and warehousing of aviation spare

parts. Each day, the ALC repairs 500 component parts and manufactures 100 piece parts

that support programmed depot maintenance

and warehouse requirements. The ALC serves

as the central warehouse for a $1.2 billion

spare parts inventory. To best manage the

parts inventory, the ALC has led the way in

applying supply chain and inventory management tools to reduce inventory holding costs

while ensuring a robust and responsive delivery system that provides maximum fleet readiness.

The success of this logistics model became

the driving force behind Modernization efforts

and the application of supply chain and configuration management initiatives across the

service. But where there is excellence, there is

also a need for continuous improvement, and

one area where this was recognized was in

hazardous materials (hazmat) management.

Hazmat Management

Project Saves

Money at the

Aviation Logistics

Center

Coast Guard photo.

Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Kevin Ouyoumjian.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 53

Managing Hazmat Inventory

For several years, the ALC contracted out hazmat

management with a primary focus on meeting environmental laws and customer needs, a natural result of

being a response-focused organization. Aircrew safety,

schedule and quality are the prime movers at a logistics

center. Cost is important, but it is easy to miss hidden

support division costs.

Waste data revealed that, in one month, $54,844

worth of expired chemicals had to be shipped to the

Defense Logistics Agency’s Disposition Services for

proper disposal. A 10-month data report was then called

for, revealing expired shelf-life chemicals that constituted $459,533 in annual waste, plus a disposal/weight

charge exceeding $6,000.

With an eye toward discovering what could be

achieved by applying supply chain management tools

and process improvements, an effort has begun to

define and document processes, leverage appropriate

tools and consolidate hazmat management for the

entire Elizabeth City, N.C., complex, which includes Air

Station Elizabeth City, Aviation Technical Training Center,

Base Support Unit Elizabeth City and the small boat station. There is a potential for significant savings while

concurrently optimizing environmental stewardship.

ALC’s Industrial Operation Division (IOD)’s hazmat

team had utilized a computer program called the

Hazardous Materials Management System (HMMS) for

several years. The IOD had piggybacked on an Air

Force/Department of Defense (DoD) contract to do so,

but never had the proper training to fully utilize the software system’s capabilities beyond entering Material

Safety Data Sheet information. Additionally, there were

no written procedures, so multiple databases were used

to capture authorized chemical lists, control personnel

access to the system and ensure chemicals were distributed only to those with a documented need. Over time,

this resulted in chemical proliferation and stagnant

inventory.

To remedy this, a contractor with HMMS expertise

was brought into the IOD for one year to develop a

process guide to capture and define repeatable processes that any user can follow to order and stock appropriate chemicals and restrict access. The draft process

guide has been delivered and final edits have been

made to facilitate a release this year. HMMS is not an

inventory management tool in itself, so a simultaneous

initiative has been made to leverage the ALC’s supply

chain management tool to right-size inventory based on

usage and delivery constraints. Since no historical usage

data existed, the “norm” was to carry at least a twomonth supply of all chemicals to avoid work stoppages

on aircraft product lines. This was a prime cause of ongoing high levels of expired shelf-life waste resulting from

excessive quantities on hand.

Supply Chain Management Solution

The ALC implemented a Supply Chain Management

Solution (SCMS) in fiscal year 2008. The tool, called “Click

Parts,” was a commercial, off-the-shelf solution with a

$9.1 million total cost. SCMS reduced excess inventory

purchased by $6.5 million from October 2008 to March
54 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

2010. The SCMS return on investment has been documented at 27 percent. Managers and planners within the

ALC aircraft product lines use SCMS as a rigorous, reliable and repeatable decision-support tool to improve

the efficiency and effectiveness of inventory replenishment, sparing, budget and supply planning, and sourcing decisions.

Since the Click Parts SCMS tool resulted in tremendous savings and the right-sizing of aircraft parts inventories, leveraging the tool in managing hazmat purchases was obvious. This required building a table to access

and capture usage data in order to right-size individual

chemical purchases. The table will be utilized in the

upcoming year to eliminate excess inventory and prevent material from expiring on the shelf. It will also allow

data mining between the software systems to capture

usage data. This will ultimately increase the return on

investment in Click Parts and is likely to eliminate 90 percent of the current $500,000 in annual hazmat waste

generated at one industrial complex.

Hazmat Disposal

To achieve immediate results, the IOD identified 322

non-aviation-related products not listed on any product

line’s Authorized Use List within HMMS software. Rather

than automatically disposing of these expired products,

a separate holding area for all non-aviation products and

a five-year shelf-life (except where a manufacturer’s recommended shelf-life was longer) were established.

Products like commercial cleaners (such as Windex) that

would previously have been disposed of at expiration

were retained because they were determined to be fully

functional.

Procedures were also put in place to address situations in which a product’s performance is questioned.

These procedures allow the use of the DoD’s shelf-life

extension website to research a product specifically by

lot and batch number. If no shelf-life information can be

determined, all containers are removed immediately

and disposed of. Meanwhile, the products will be consumed through non-aviation use. The IOD will evaluate

the process every six months to reduce the shelf-life

years for non-aviation products. The goal is to reduce

shelf-life for non-aviation products from five years to two

years in order to minimize the facility’s chemical storage

footprint.

All designated nonaviation

products are

marked with

a “Not for Aviation Use” sticker in order to clearly segregate them from aviation-related products.

This allows products to be clearly identified by personnel issuing chemical products and provides visual

identification for hangar deck personnel to prevent aircraft use. In the four months since enacting this program, the ALC utilized $10,560 in inventory that would

have otherwise been disposed of.

Hazmat Management Consolidation

The ALC also recognized the need to consolidate all

hazmat management for the entire Elizabeth City Coast

Guard complex under one standardized system. Under

the previous construct, Air Station Elizabeth City supported four HH-60T and five HC-130J aircraft by manag- U.S. Coast Guard photo.

Aviation Logistics Center’s new Chemical Issue Center.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines •55

ing their own hazmat purchasing and

inventory. This often required taking

personnel out of rate to manage chemicals for up to six months at a time.

The ALC’s IOD took over the air station’s hazmat management by establishing a Memorandum of Agreement

outlining the duties and responsibilities for procurement, storage, control

and issue of hazardous materials. The

agreement was designed to ensure

hazmat use and disposal was minimized and that it meets all Coast

Guard, federal, state and local requirements.

For example, the IOD evaluated

and restructured all Point of Use (POU)

lockers at the air station based on

requirements and application. A total

of 1,126 hazardous items were determined to have been expired or beyond

their chemical shelf-life. These were

removed and replaced with new products. Three POU lockers were eliminated and the total chemical storage footprint for all POU lockers was reduced

by more than 33 percent.

Construction also began on a

Division 1, Class 1, explosion-proof

Chemical Issue Center (CIC) at the air

station. Previously, the air station’s hazmat inventory was located and stored

in three different locations. With the

new CIC, chemical storage and inventory will be centralized in one location

and stocked with a 12-day supply. A

ribbon cutting for the new CIC facility

took place on February 24, 2011.

For more information on ALC visit

us online at http://www.uscg.mil/alc/.

U.S. Coast Guard photo.



U.S. Coast Guard photo.

Aviation Logistics Center’s new Chemical Issue Center.

Aviation Logistics Center’s new Chemical Issue Center.
56 • Summer 2011 - Service Lines

Mr. Jose Velazquez (Personnel Service Center), 

selected as the civilian employee recipient of the 2011

National Image, Inc. Meritorious Service Award.

Lt. Charlene Forgue (Coast Guard Academy), selected

as the 2011 Federal Asian Pacific American Council

(FAPAC) Military Meritorious Service Award.

Civil Engineering Unit Miami received the Cowart

Plaque for Civil Engineering Organizations. The Cowart

Award is named in honor of Vice. Adm. Kenneth C. Cowart,

U.S. Coast Guard. The Award is presented for outstanding

contribution to the U.S. Coast Guard civil engineering and

shore facility management programs.

The Coast Guard Yard received the Cowart Plaque for

Facility Engineering Organizations. The Cowart Award is

named in honor of Vice. Adm. Kenneth C. Cowart, U.S.

Coast Guard. The award is presented for outstanding contribution to the U.S. Coast Guard civil engineering and

shore facility management programs.

Lt. Laura Smolinski (Rescue 21 Project Resident Office

Scottsdale) received the Oren Medal. The Oren Medal is

named in honor of Rear Adm. John B. Oren, U.S. Coast

Guard. Presented for outstanding contribution to military

engineering by a civilian or military member of the U.S.

Coast Guard.

Chief Warrant Officer Sean Cox (Civil Engineering Unit

Cleveland) received the Sargent Medal. The Sargent

Medal is named in honor of Vice Adm. Thomas R. Sargent

III, U.S. Coast Guard. The medal is presented in recognition

of the most outstanding contribution to U.S. Coast Guard

Civil Engineering or Facilities Engineering.

Mr. Trigg McNew (Naval Engineering Support Unit

New Orleans) received the Stabile Award. The Stabile

Award is named in honor of Vice Adm. B.L. Stabile, U.S.

Coast Guard. The award is presented to active duty

Warrant Officer, Chief Petty Officer, Petty Officer or Coast

Guard civilian employees GS-8, WS-11, WG-11 or below

who has made an outstanding contribution to the Coast

Guard Naval Engineering program.

SFLC Small Boat Product Line (SBPL) received the

Lucas Plaque. The Lucas Plaque is named in honor of Rear

Adm. R.S. Lucas, U.S. Coast Guard. The award is presented

to any Coast Guard Naval Engineering organization or

any Department, Division, Section, Branch or Natural

Working Group within a Naval Engineering Command

that has made an outstanding contribution to the Coast

Guard Naval Engineering program.

Capt. Michael Ryan (Operations Systems Center

Commanding Officer) was selected as one of this year’s

Federal 100—the top executives from government,

industry and academia who had the greatest impact on

the government information systems community in

2010.

Mr. Lorrin Ching (Naval Engineering Support Unit

Honolulu), and Training Center Petaluma received the

CG 2011 Environmental Sustainability Award in the

individual and unit award categories respectively.

Cmdr. Scott Gesele (Coast Guard Academy) is the 2011

Coast Guard Engineer of the Year.

Cmdr. Thomas Cooper (COMDT, CG-41) and Cmdr.

Michael Muller (COMDT, DCMS-822) were selected to

participate in the 2011 Department of Homeland

Security Fellows program.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Syreeta Bromfield (Personnel

Services and Support Unit Miami) was selected as the

Coast Guard’s Female Athlete of the Year.

Lt. Kenneth Burgess (Surface Forces Logistics Center)

was selected as the Coast Guard’s Male Elite Athlete of

the Year.

Cmdr. John Gage (Surface Forces Logistics Center) is

the recipient of the Poore Award for Naval Engineering.

The Poore Award is named in honor of Capt. Richard D.

Poore, U.S. Coast Guard. This award is presented to any

Naval Engineering professional who has made a most significant contribution to the Coast Guard Naval

Engineering program within the past three years culminating in the three-year period ending in the current year.
Summer 2011 - Service Lines • 57

The Reservist Magazine won the Department of Defense’s

Thomas Jefferson Award, in the category of Magazine Format

Publication (non-flagship).

Petty Officer 2nd Class Zachary Walden (Training Center Cape

May) earned a spot on the All Navy Volleyball team and just got

back from the competition in Cherry Point, N.C. where he was

part of the Silver Medal winning Indoor Team and Gold Medal

winning Beach Volleyball team. He also earned a spot on the All

Military team that will play in Brazil later this year.

Petty Officer 1st Class Nyxolyno Cangemi (Coast Guard

Academy Staff) won the Joc Alex Haley Public Affairs Award,

Category B, best writer (PA-PAO) and Category E, for outstanding

work in videography, photography, writing and marketing.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Franklin Pine was presented with the

Society of American Indian Government Employees (SAIGE) meritorious Service Award on June 15, 2011, at the Cherokee Hard

Rock Hotel in Catoosa, Okla. by Capt. Kenneth Barrett, USN, DoD,

Deputy Director of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity.

Capt. Kenneth Barrett, USN, Petty Officer 2nd Class Franklin Pine, Rear

Adm. Daniel May, USCG and Mr. Danny Garceau, SAIGE Chairman.

Franklin is holding the award.