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95–072 PDF 2015

WESTERN HEMISPHERE DRUG INTERDICTION 

EFFORTS 

(114–21) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

COAST GUARD AND MARITIME TRANSPORTATION 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JUNE 16, 2015 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

Available online at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/ 

committee.action?chamber=house&committee=transportation 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee, 

Vice Chair 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

ERIC A. ‘‘RICK’’ CRAWFORD, Arkansas 

LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

RICHARD L. HANNA, New York 

DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida 

JEFF DENHAM, California 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

TOM RICE, South Carolina 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois 

MARK SANFORD, South Carolina 

ROB WOODALL, Georgia 

TODD ROKITA, Indiana 

JOHN KATKO, New York 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

CRESENT HARDY, Nevada 

RYAN A. COSTELLO, Pennsylvania 

GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana 

MIMI WALTERS, California 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

CARLOS CURBELO, Florida 

DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

JANICE HAHN, California 

RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota 

ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois 

JARED HUFFMAN, California 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COAST GUARD AND MARITIME TRANSPORTATION

DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

MARK SANFORD, South Carolina 

GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana 

CARLOS CURBELO, Florida 

DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania (Ex Officio) 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

JANICE HAHN, California 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon (Ex Officio) 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... iv 

WITNESSES 

Vice Admiral Charles D. Michel, Deputy Commandant for Operations, U.S. 

Coast Guard: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 30 

Rear Admiral Karl L. Schultz, Director of Operations, U.S. Southern Command: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 36 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Written statement of Michael P. Botticelli, Director, Office of National Drug 

Control Policy ....................................................................................................... 76 

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(1) 

WESTERN HEMISPHERE DRUG INTERDICTION 

EFFORTS 

TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON COAST GUARD AND MARITIME

TRANSPORTATION, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:15 p.m., in room 

2253, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (Chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. HUNTER. This subcommittee will come to order. Welcome everybody. The subcommittee is meeting today to review the Federal 

Government’s efforts to confront transnational drug smuggling and 

stem the flow of illegal drugs to the United States. 

Let me start by saying I had a great trip down in Florida with 

you, Admiral Schultz, great, great time with JIATF [Joint Interagency Task Force] and General Kelly, and I got to see firsthand 

the problems that our Nation faces in stemming the flow of illegal 

drugs to our shores. 

My visit to the Coast Guard units as well as JIATF South was 

insightful. I was able to witness the impact limited resources and 

deteriorating assets is having on the Coast Guard’s ability to effectively carry out its drug interdiction mission. 

The flow of illegal drugs to the United States continues to be a 

problem. Illegal drugs placed a strain on our Nation’s healthcare 

and criminal justice systems. Their smuggling routes and methods 

are easily translated into transport routes for other illicit goods 

that pose significant safety and security concerns to U.S. citizens. 

Some of the most notorious and violent criminals, cartels, and 

narcoterrorists are directly responsible for drug violence, crime, 

and corruption that are destabilizing foreign nations and endangering the lives of American citizens here and abroad. Representing 

southern California, I am very aware of the harm violent drug traffickers inflict on our communities. 

In recent years, violence stemming from the drug trade has 

spilled over the Mexican border and has led to the kidnappings and 

murders of American citizens and U.S. law enforcement officers. It 

was only a few years ago that a Coast Guard servicemember lost 

his life during counterdrug operations near Santa Cruz Island, 

California. 

Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne was leading a boarding team when he was critically injured interdicting and 

apprehending illegal drug smugglers. The Coast Guard recently anVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:45 Nov 17, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\114\CG&JOI~1\6-16-1~1\95072.TXT JEAN
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nounced it will honor Senior Chief Horne’s sacrifice by naming a 

Fast Response Cutter after him. 

The Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, and allied partner nations continue 

their efforts to stop boat drug shipments at sea. Interdicting shipments of drugs at sea before they are broken down into smaller 

packages is the most effective and efficient way to stop the flow of 

illegal drugs across our borders. 

The Coast Guard is the lead agency in maritime interdiction because it has unique military and law enforcement authorities which 

enable it to seamlessly disable a drug smuggling vessel, seize the 

drugs, and arrest the crew. But that only works when the Coast 

Guard, SOUTHCOM [U.S. Southern Command], and partner agencies and nations have the resources and assets to act on intelligence targets. 

Unfortunately, however, cuts to the military’s budget, sequestration, and aging and rapidly failing Coast Guard assets are undermining mission success. In recent years, SOUTHCOM and the 

Coast Guard were only able to interdict slightly more than 20 percent of the cocaine bound for the United States. That is roughly 

half the national target for 2015. 

In addition, the Coast Guard has been consistently unable meet 

its internal performance goal for drug removal in the transit zone. 

In fact, since 2009, the Coast Guard has only achieved its cocaine 

interdiction target once. I hope today’s hearing will help clarify the 

direction we need to take in the future to ensure our men and 

women in uniform have the resources and assets that they need to 

carry out this and other critical missions. 

With that, I yield to Ranking Member Garamendi. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and 

thank you for holding the hearing and for the witnesses. It is good 

to see you once again and look forward to your testimony. 

This hearing is very, very important. We need to understand our 

efforts and the effort of our international partners to interdict the 

flow of illegal drugs into the United States from points all across 

the Western Hemisphere. 

At the hearing convened last April, I stressed that the current 

age of budgetary austerity, it remains essential for Congress to 

scrutinize every drug interdiction program to ensure that the various Federal agencies involved are best coordinating and utilizing 

their resources to the greatest effect in the transit zone. That sentiment is just as valid today as we take up this matter again. 

Additionally, I also voice concern about the imminent operational 

gap that the Coast Guard will have to contend with its aging legacy fleet of High and Medium Endurance Cutters as they are decommissioned or laid up more frequently for emergency repairs and 

maintenance. 

If anything, the recent hearing last month on the Coast Guard 

acquisition activities further corroborate my belief that the Coast 

Guard is going to be extremely hard pressed to maintain its existing capabilities, much less increase the tempo of their operations, 

and as you suggest, Mr. Chairman, make their bogey, that is, to 

get the number of drugs that they intend to. 

This raises the fundamental question, if the Coast Guard operational readiness and capability is likely to be degraded, at least 

3 

until we begin to see the delivery of the new Offshore Patrol Cutters, where can we turn now to find the assets and resources necessary to plug the hole? Unfortunately, it would appear that the 

Navy is not where we will go. They are scaling back the number 

of frigates and other assets it deploys through SOUTHCOM to support the JIATF operations. 

Moreover, despite the fact that the transit zone across the Western Hemisphere is roughly twice the size of the continental mass 

of the United States, other bureaus within the Department of 

Homeland Security continue to disproportionately allocate resources to reinforce the southern border, notwithstanding the data 

demonstrating that the maritime routes are becoming the preferred 

option for international criminal syndicates, and if supplemental 

resources are not going to be forthcoming soon, this leads us back 

to another fundamental question. 

How can we reasonably expect the Coast Guard and other Federal agencies, for that matter, to accomplish their vital missions? 

As I stated at the last hearing: If we want to succeed in our efforts 

to prevent illegal drugs from entering our country, we can no 

longer ignore the fact that inadequate Coast Guard budgets have 

left the Service out on the precipice, and until we have resolved the 

issue of this reality in full, we are far more likely to see more illicit 

drugs, more illegal migrants and other harmful contraband crossing our shores. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. I thank the gentleman. 

And before we introduce our witnesses today, I would like to introduce some gentlemen that just came in, World War II merchant 

mariner veterans. I just want to say thanks for being here, gentlemen. Appreciate it. 

In fact, we are trying to get ahold of Ms. Janice Hahn, who has 

been carrying your legislation, our legislation now for quite awhile, 

and I just want to let you know that we are working on it, so 

thanks for being here. Appreciate it. 

Our first witness today is Vice Admiral Charles D. Michel, the 

Coast Guard’s Deputy Commandant for Operations. Vice Admiral, 

you are now recognized. 

TESTIMONY OF VICE ADMIRAL CHARLES D. MICHEL, DEPUTY 

COMMANDANT FOR OPERATIONS, U.S. COAST GUARD; AND 

REAR ADMIRAL KARL L. SCHULTZ, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, U.S. SOUTHERN COMMAND 

Admiral MICHEL. Sir, before I start my statement, with the committee’s permission, if I could just take a couple of minutes to talk 

about a breaking news item. 

Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely. 

Admiral MICHEL. Sir, this is a picture of a semisubmersible that 

the U.S. Coast Guard interdicted this morning in the eastern Pacific. It was interdicted at first light by one of our Coast Guard 

units, and our Coast Guard units are on board. They have control 

of the vessel. They also have four detainees on board, and it is estimated 3,000 kilos of cocaine, or 3 metric tons of cocaine are on 

board this vessel. 

4 

We will have to pull it off to actually count it, but that is what 

the initial estimates are. As you can see—and I will pass around 

the picture of this vessel. This is a classic semisubmersible. It is 

about 50 feet in length. You can see the water-cooled exhaust that 

they put in place here to keep heat sensor detection down. You can 

see that it is painted to match the color of the ocean. It is almost 

undetectable. I will pass this around. 

I can’t answer any specific details in the open forum here, but 

after the hearing, I am happy to talk to you about the details of 

this interdiction, but this is what we are facing today, sir, and this 

was taken down this morning. 

Mr. HUNTER. Way to go. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Congratulations. 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, sir, congratulations to the Nation, and 

this is really a whole of Government team, including JIATF South 

that was engaged in this. It was the Coast Guard that took it 

down, but there is a lot more going on there than just the Coast 

Guard. 

So with your permission, I would begin my statement. 

Mr. HUNTER. Please. 

Admiral MICHEL. Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member 

Garamendi, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on Coast Guard drug interdiction operations. My complete statement has been provided to the subcommittee, and I ask that it be entered into the record and that 

I be allowed to summarize my remarks. 

Mr. Chairman, we continue to face a significant threat from 

transnational criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere 

that use drug transit routes to the southern approaches of the 

United States. These illicit networks are advancing their deadly 

trades with coercion, intimidation, violence, and near impunity in 

our closest neighbors and in our border regions. Transnational 

criminal networks destabilize our neighbors, exploit our citizens, 

endanger public health, and threaten regional stability, and national security. 

Last summer’s influx of over 50,000 unaccompanied children was 

a tragic symptom of the region’s instability and violence. Parents 

by the tens of thousands decided that it was better to turn their 

children over to human traffickers, who we call coyotes, for a 

chance of life in the United States rather than to live in countries 

wracked by some of the world’s highest homicide rates resulting 

from transnational organized crime. 

In September of 2014, Admiral Zukunft signed the Coast Guard’s 

Western Hemisphere strategy that calls out three strategic priorities: combatting networks, securing borders, and safeguarding 

commerce. This strategy recognizes that the Coast Guard is 

uniquely positioned to attack a key center of gravity of 

transnational criminal networks. 

The unmatched capability of maritime interdiction allows for the 

interdiction of concentrated, often multiton loads of expert quality 

drugs at sea before they can reach land and be broken down into 

small quantities that not only become extremely difficult to police 

but also cause death and devastation as they make their way to 

North American markets. 

5 

The cocaine trade, in particular, is uniquely vulnerable as the existence of the Darien Gap means that virtually all cocaine exported 

from South America must at some point during its journey travel 

by air or maritime means. This movement exposes conveyances to 

sensors and interdiction. 

In addition, maritime interdiction often allows for the assertion 

of U.S. jurisdiction over the witnesses and evidence vital to identifying and attacking transnational criminal organizations closest to 

the head of the snake. Maritime interdiction against mostly go-fast 

boats, however, typically require sophisticated detection monitoring 

techniques in vast ocean spaces and an endgame carried out by 

flight deck-equipped cutters with embarked day/night airborne-useof-force helicopters. 

Coast Guard ships are the Nation’s and our neighbors’ defense 

forward against the transnational criminal threat beyond our land 

borders, beyond Mexico, and beyond Central America. When we detect a suspect vessel, our cutters, helicopters, and highly trained 

pursuit boat crews have a nearly 90-percent interdiction success 

rate. 

Over the years, our operations have become extremely lean and 

efficient with the vast majority of interdictions happening as a result of intelligence cueing. In the last month alone, the Coast 

Guard has been involved in 22 counterdrug cases that have resulted in the arrest of more than 50 suspects, the removal of more 

than 12 metric tons of pure uncut cocaine on the sea, and that does 

not include this interdiction that I showed you this morning, sir. 

And denial to criminal networks of more than $400 million wholesale in drug proceeds. 

While we have made substantial improvements in our tactics, 

techniques, and procedures, resource constraints leave us able to 

target only 37 percent of the high-confidence intelligence cases, almost always due to a lack of surface vessels. 

To close this gap, the Coast Guard has undertaken four specific 

initiatives. We have increased our offshore presence to interdict 

drugs at sea, the initial results of which are encouraging. We have 

continued to build upon the 43 international maritime law enforcement bilateral agreements and work closely with the Department 

of State and our international partners in these interdiction efforts. 

We are fully integrated in in Secretary Johnson’s vision for unity 

of effort and the DHS [Department of Homeland Security] task 

forces to secure America’s southern border and approaches, and we 

continue to move forward with the acquisition of the affordable Offshore Patrol Cutter. 

Recapitalizing the medium endurance cutter fleet with the OPC 

[Offshore Patrol Cutter] is the Coast Guard’s number-one investment priority and is critical to our offshore presence and core missions. By the time we begin laying the keel for the first OPC, some 

of the legacy cutters they are scheduled to be replace will be more 

than 55 years old, well beyond their intended service life. 

The time to recapitalize the fleet is now, and we are on schedule 

to award OPC detailed design in fiscal year 2016. In summary, the 

Coast Guard continues to exploit the unique benefits of maritime 

interdiction to combat transnational criminal networks. This forward defense of the Nation and the region applied at a critical cenVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:45 Nov 17, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\114\CG&JOI~1\6-16-1~1\95072.TXT JEAN
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ter of gravity for transnational criminal networks requires highly 

specialized maritime assets and crews that are capable of countering a well-equipped, adaptable, and ruthless adversary. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today and for 

all you do for the men and women of the United States Coast 

Guard. I look forward to hearing your concerns and questions. 

Thank you. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thanks, Admiral. 

Our next witness today is Rear Admiral Karl Schultz, the Director of Operations for U.S. Southern Command. You are recognized, 

Admiral. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member 

Garamendi, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of General John Kelly, 

commander, U.S. Southern Command. I look forward to discussing 

how the U.S. Southern Command works with the Coast Guard to 

defend the southern approaches to the United States. 

Every day, our southern approaches are under direct assault by 

sophisticated criminal networks whose smuggling operations reach 

across Latin America and deep into the United States. These 

groups exploit every land, sea, and air border to traffic drugs, people, and weapons throughout the Western Hemisphere and beyond. 

Their corrosive activities pose a direct threat to our national security and the stability of our partner nations in the region. 

Mr. Chairman, it will take a network to defeat a network, which 

is exactly what SOUTHCOM, the Coast Guard, our interagency, 

and international partners are building through multinational 

counterdrug operations, and capacity-building efforts in Central 

America, South America, and the Caribbean Basin. 

As you know, the Department of Defense has a congressionally 

mandated statutory responsibility for the detection and monitoring 

of illicit drugs in the air and maritime domains. Our Joint Interagency Task Force South executes this responsibility working with 

agencies from the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice 

Department, the Department of State, and partner nation defense 

and security forces to disrupt illicit trafficking and dismantle criminal organizations. 

JIATF South has long been the gold standard in leading and orchestrating successful interdiction operations. Last year, the JIATF 

South team supported the disruption of 158 metric tons of cocaine. 

That is 76 percent of the total amount of cocaine seized by all U.S. 

Government agencies. 

JIATF South’s continued success, however, could be in jeopardy. 

Due to other global defense priorities, limited Department of Defense resources are available to source the counterdrug mission, 

and we have been forced to rely heavily on Coast Guard support, 

including their personnel, aircraft, and cutters. 

Come this September, the U.S. Navy will have a minimal presence in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. Mr. Chairman, for 

all intents and purposes, the Coast Guard is U.S. Southern Command’s Navy, which is why we share and echo the Coast Guard 

Commandant’s concern over the Coast Guard’s ability to sustain its 

aging fleet while recapitalizing its fleet of Fast Response, Offshore, 

and National Security Cutters. 

7 

As an economy-of-force geographic combatant command, we at 

U.S. Southern Command are concerned by the limited availability 

of Department of Defense assets, including U.S. Navy frigates, airborne ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], and national technical means to support our missions. For both the Department of Defense and the Coast Guard, asset shortfalls and potential asset failures are the greatest threats to our ability to defend the United States against the relentless onslaught of 

transnational criminal activity and illicit drugs. 

Finally, I will close by noting that the possible return of sequestration would be disastrous for the counterdrug mission. It will undermine our ability to remain engaged with our partners, undermine our awareness of threats in the region, and undermine our 

ability to stop them before they reach our shores. I look forward to 

discussing these and the other issues with you. Thank you. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Admirals. 

I am going to start by recognizing myself, and then the other 

Members for questions. I guess my first question is, if you take the 

Department of Justice, and you take the Department of Homeland 

Security, and you basically take everything else that is under that 

umbrella, including the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration], 

the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], local police forces for everything, you can probably guess, do you have a number for how 

much they spend on drug interdiction to get to that 24 percent of 

the total annual amount? 

So if you take—if you interdict 76 percent, it leaves them with 

24 percent, I am just curious about the money spent for each one— 

each bang for the buck there. 

Admiral MICHEL. Those figures are available. I don’t have them, 

but I can provide them on the record. There is a question for the 

record. 

Mr. HUNTER. Could somebody on the committee just Google that 

maybe while we are doing this? Let’s just find out what the number is. If you can get all the other—I am just curious. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. What I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, from a DOD [Department of Defense] perspective, about $25 billion goes 

into the drug budget, writ large. About $5 billion of that is allocated; about $3.7 billion across for interdiction efforts; I think $1.2 

billion or $1.3 billion for international efforts; about 20 percent of 

that drug budget goes towards what I call the JIATF South world 

to work there. JIATF South consumes about 1.5 percent of that $25 

billion budget, to give you a sense. I can’t speak to the other agencies to your specific question but—— 

Mr. HUNTER. That is just DOD? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Well, the JIATF South piece of DOD of the 

$25 billion total drug budget is sort of how those numbers shake 

out. 

Mr. HUNTER. But the DOD total drug budget is about $25 billion. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. That is the U.S. Government—— 

Mr. HUNTER. Oh, that is the entire. That is the whole effort. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Entire drug budget, across the U.S. Government, writ large, yes, sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. All right. Makes sense. Let’s go really quick to 

interdiction performance because I—we talked about this the last 

8 

hearing we had. We got into how the standard gets raised or lowered kind of based on every year going forward, and the baseline 

can get moved as well, which makes it hard for us to figure out 

where the real baseline was or is and where you really come from 

where you were, right. 

I do know that you said JIATF South, they increased their hits 

last year, right, meaning your average take was—you were hitting 

20 percent. Now it is more towards 30 percent? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Sir, JIATF South is currently targeting about 

36, 37 percent of the known activities. You know, if you get down 

to the success metrics, that is a different set of numbers, but we 

are targeting about—— 

Mr. HUNTER. But you are up over last year. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Up over last year, and then when you look 

at—after you target them, the next step would be how do you go 

about detecting and monitoring them. We detect and monitor about 

70 percent of what we target, so start with a number say 1,250, 

you look at about one-third of that, and then within that, about 70 

percent of those, you are actually putting detection and monitoring 

assets against. 

When we go out there and fly a Maritime Patrol Aircraft against 

a target, we are successful—a very high preponderance of an 

endgame—almost 90 percent of those that we target and then detect, we actually get a disruption or a seizure at the end of the day. 

Mr. HUNTER. So it is not possible, though, for the—for JIATF 

South’s interdiction percentage to go up and the Coast Guard’s, 

their numbers, or their goals met to go down, is it? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Sir, our numbers at SOUTHCOM and JIATF 

South are inextricably linked to the Coast Guard’s numbers. I 

mean, come this fall, the Coast Guard essentially is the only U.S. 

Government ship-providing game in the business here. We will 

have some PC–179 patrol craft from the Navy, but it is a Coast 

Guard game. As I mentioned in my opening statement, the Coast 

Guard is SOUTHCOM’s Navy moving forward. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. So then my last question then is, so tie those 

together. How could the Coast Guard reduce performance target for 

cocaine, let me see, from 18.5 to 13.8 percent in fiscal year 2015, 

so how can yours go down then as SOUTHCOM’s go up? 

Admiral MICHEL. I am not sure exactly. 

Mr. HUNTER. Or am I missing—— 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, there is—it is a little more complicated 

than that. So JIATF South supports disruption of cocaine not only 

by the Coast Guard but also by other U.S. Government agencies as 

well as foreign partners, so they may assist the Government of Colombia or the Government of Canada or the U.K. or the Dutch or 

the French who contribute ships to this effort as well as the Central American partners, so they have got a broader scope than the 

Coast Guard. 

The Coast Guard itself is supported by JIATF South, and our 

numbers have been pretty consistent, and it looks like ours is just 

a matter of ship effort. So we have already—last year we interdicted 91 metric tons of cocaine. That is what the Coast Guard was 

actually able to interdict. So far this year, just to date in this fiscal 

year, we are at 83 metric tons, not including the 3 that were on 

9 

this semisubmersible, and we have still got 3 months of the year 

left to go. 

So we are going to up our numbers, if I were guessing on trajectory here, probably up to 110, 115 metric tons when we get done 

here. 

Mr. HUNTER. And again, this is your—your performance targets 

are a percentage of the whole that you know about? What is it a 

percentage of? 

Admiral MICHEL. So the removal rate is based on—the numerator is the amount of known cocaine removed from the system, and 

the denominator is the U.S. Government’s best estimate on the 

amount of flow that moves through the Western Hemisphere Transit Zone, and their confidence factors that go in there. It is based 

on production estimates, so you know, over the imaginary of cocoa 

fields and things likes that, plus known interdicted events with a 

certain degree of confidence, and then the Coast Guard is accountable for a portion of that. 

Last year was 13.9 percent of that Western Hemisphere Transit 

Zone that the U.S. Coast Guard was accountable to get, and we got 

about 9 percent. And the long pole in the tent there is just simply 

numbers of ships. There was more actionable intelligence that 

would have allowed us to meet the goal down there, but we didn’t 

have the ships to be able to do it. It is a pretty simple story. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. And to be clear again then, that is a percentage of the known flow, not the number of ships you are able to 

send out to interdict, right? 

Admiral MICHEL. That is correct. The removal rate is based on 

the known flow, and the USG [U.S. Government] target, writ large, 

USG was 36 percent of that flow was the entire USG target of 

which the Coast Guard is responsible for 13.9 percent of that. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. Thank you, Admiral. I yield to the ranking 

member. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Actually three sets 

of questions. Now the first is on assets, the availability of the Coast 

Guard, how do you intend to bridge the gap if the Navy is pulling 

out and the Offshore Patrol Cutters are not, for another 2 years, 

assuming that they are actually going to wind up in that area, how 

do you intend to bridge the gap? That is one question. Let us deal 

with them one at a time, and then you won’t have to write notes 

about the questions. So Admiral Michel. 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, sir, that is the rub, ultimately, and our 

Commandant made an affirmative decision to increase our number 

of ships that we commit to the JIATF South effort in the Western 

Hemisphere Transit Zone by over 50 percent, and he did that by 

taking risk in additional Coast Guard mission sets. 

I don’t want to talk too much about that in this forum because 

some of that involves LE, law enforcement presence in other vectors, but the Commandant took a calculated risk because he felt 

the need to commit resources to that area to provide for regional 

stability and national security because those countries down there 

are really in a fight in addition to all the impacts that they have 

here. 

So the way that we are bridging that gap is we are providing the 

best quality ships we can provide down there, which is our NaVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:45 Nov 17, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\114\CG&JOI~1\6-16-1~1\95072.TXT JEAN
10 

tional Security Cutters, which have the best sensor capabilities, the 

best day/night AUF [airborne-use-of-force] capability, which the 

Commandant has also plussed that up on our commitment of the 

airborne-use-of-force capability, which is critical to stop the go-fast 

boats, which is about 80 percent of the traffic moves on go-fast 

boats. 

The other part is to continue to develop our intelligence mechanisms that will allow us to get at that other 30 percent that Admiral Schultz talked about there that we target but we can’t detect 

because of lack of wide area surveillance or other type of intelligence capabilities, the ability to buy that down, and then trying 

to use every type of TTP [tactics, techniques, and procedures] and 

asset that we have, whether it is from a helicopter or pursuit boat 

to ensure that when we get those detected assets, that we are actually able to interdict then. And then we are waiting for the new assets the come online, sir. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. So we have got about a 2-year, maybe a 3-year 

period of time here in which it is going to be touch and go. What 

are the role of the other countries in the area? You mentioned Colombia, the Coast Guard, Colombia’s Coast Guard, Panama, and so 

forth. Would you speak for a few moments about that? 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. Well, a number of countries down 

there have some good capabilities. Mexico, for example, has really 

good capabilities, and Colombia has good capabilities as well. Most 

of the other partners have very dedicated people but very small 

boats and essentially no detection and monitoring capability. 

When I was JIATF South Director, for the majority of the Central American partners, we had to actually commit an aircraft to 

walk a go-fast boat onto their small craft because they had no 

radar, they had no detection capability at all, and probably won’t 

have any for a long time. So they are committed forces and welltrained people, but they are not very well-equipped. 

There are other partners down there that do have good equipment, the French, the Dutch, the Canadians, the U.K. have had 

ships in the area and continue to work in the area, and those are 

obviously high-end quality ships, and we try to use those as much 

as possible. So you have got kind of a mixed bag on the local partners. 

I will say this about most of the local partners. They also have 

no real prosecution back end. So one of the critical parts about getting U.S. jurisdiction is the ability to exploit those cases for intelligence value to allow you to identify the networks and feed the intelligence cycle, and some of the partner nations, the people go in 

there, and we are not sure exactly sort of what happens to them, 

but we are not able to get intelligence value from them, sir. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let’s continue on with the other countries. 

There has been talk of a billion-dollar foreign aid program for the 

triangle countries in Central America, and that is part of this puzzle, it would seem to me. And also, how do you interact in the 

training programs that apparently are going to be diminished? 

Admiral MICHEL. I will talk about mine, and then SOUTHCOM 

also has a large piece in this. Yes, there is a billion-dollar piece, 

and a chunk of that, about one-third of it is for security-related 

pieces. The Coast Guard actually plays in all the different areas, 

11 

security, governance, and prosperity because of our port security 

work, our work with the legal teams that we send down there to 

make sure that they have got adequate laws and things like that 

to take care of maritime trafficking. 

But we have mobile training teams that we put into place down 

there who work on them on outboard motor maintenance or working on their communications capability, try to train them to maintain their equipment and how to do law enforcement. We have also 

stood up for the first time our support to interdiction and prosecution teams which are composed of a Coast Guard investigative 

service agent as well as some of our maritime law enforcement experts who work with the Central American countries to try to ensure that they can take that interdiction that we help them with 

and they can bring it into their court system and provide the witnesses and evidence to actually gain prosecutions as well as gain 

the intelligence value from the cases. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. You have been doing about 2,000 students a 

year. Are you going to be able to maintain that, given the budget 

cuts? 

Admiral MICHEL. Sir, my understanding is that the training 

money for the foreign nationals is on track, and part of that money 

comes from the Department of Defense and State Department. The 

Coast Guard has no organic foreign affairs authority. Most of the 

work that we do with foreign nations is done at somebody else’s request, so it is funded through either State Department or DOD, 

typically under their programs. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. And finally, if I might, Mr. Chairman, the issue 

of unmanned vehicles both on the water or under the water and 

in the air. What efforts are you making to work with the military 

or others and your own efforts on these unmanned vehicles? 

Admiral MICHEL. So from a Coast Guard perspective, we have 

fielded right now the small unmanned aerial systems, the 

ScanEagles, and they are on a number of our cutters, including our 

National Security Cutters, and we operate those now. We are also 

a partner with CBP, Customs and Border Protection, in their 

Guardian unmanned aerial system program, which is essentially 

Predator B, a marinized Predator B, and we have worked with 

them, and they have actually deployed the Guardian down there 

into JIATFS AOR [Area of Responsibility], both in the Dominican 

Republic and also out of Comalapa, which is a cooperative security 

location in El Salvador. 

The Coast Guard is actually making its determination now as to 

where we want to place our investments in this very dynamic unmanned aerial system, you know, whether we would want to go 

with a shipped-based system, which has some attractiveness but 

you got to be able to recover it, or whether we use a long-dwell, 

land-based system, and what type of sensor capabilities and backend processing piece would we need in order to do that. 

But we work hand in hand with the Department of Defense, and 

that is one of the great advantages the Coast Guard brings to the 

table is we have got all the connections with DOD to try to learn 

the lessons before we sort of make the big jump on unmanned aerial systems. 

12 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I for one, and I suspect the rest of my committee colleagues here, would like to be kept abreast of your plans 

with regard to these vehicles; also, how you will be collecting and 

analyzing the data. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, just on the UAS [unmanned 

aerial system] piece from a DOD perspective, to echo Admiral 

Michel, absolutely. We continue to use the Predator when it is 

available. You know, I would say the maritime solution for the 

UAS, as sophisticated it is in the land domain, what we have seen 

in the Middle East area. We are not quite there over the water, 

and there is some limitations in terms of where you can operate 

that, in terms of it is almost essentially a tether to it. You have 

to have a ground-based radar or shipboard radar, but we are very 

interested in how do you advance that, how do you bring those capabilities into the theater. 

We do use a Global Hawk for some ISR responsibilities, capabilities, capacity in our AOR. We get that on a couple-of-mission-amonth basis, but we are employing them as well. Not specifically 

in the maritime domain but in the SOUTHCOM equities. 

If there is a second, sir, to go back to just the country team participation, the question you asked there. From U.S. Southern Command’s perspective, you know, we have almost 6,000 to 8,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, coastguardsmen in the SOUTHCOM AOR on 

a day-to-day basis. I would say the bulk of their effort down there 

is along supporting the transnational organized crime, combatting 

that mission set. 

So in Guatemala, we have the interagency task force at the 

Mexican-Guatemalan border. There is one in the—that they are 

working on on the Honduras side. There is one down in the southern part of Guatemala. The plan is to build out a couple more of 

those task forces. We have got about $15–$17 million invested towards that. That is to help the Central American countries establish some border security within their own domain. 

Between us and INL [Bureau of International Narcotics and Law 

Enforcement Affairs], we are putting a lot of—while some of the 

countries that Admiral Michel mentioned don’t have a lot of big 

ship capability, there is some patrol boat capability, and then there 

is—we, with INL, are both buying interceptor-type boats, so while 

we may not have a ship—and again, there is no replacement for 

a Navy ship, no replacement for a Coast Guard cutter, but what 

we do do is bring some endgame capability. If an aircraft can traffic 

a vessel in, we have some pretty sophisticated interceptors, Boston 

whalers, we have them in the Dominican Republic, we have them 

in the Central American countries. 

Some countries prefer that we retake some refurbished former 

seized boats, eduardonos, which is a local domestic boat down 

there. And then we have got a special purpose Marine Air-Ground 

Task Force operating with 250 Marines in Honduras in the sort of 

ungoverned spaces in the northeast coast right now. 

So we have got a lot of building partnership capacity stuff going 

on, and your question was Central America focused, so I kind of 

constrained myself there, but on a day-to-day basis, we are training, we are equipping things like night-vision goggles, just essentially helping them bring governance to regions where there are 

13 

very little of that today, and that really props up the security part 

of the equation. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank 

you for the extra time. 

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. 

The gentleman from South Carolina is recognized. 

Mr. SANFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess what I would 

like to do for one second is go up 30,000 feet, and so this is not 

a commentary on how hard your men and women are working, the 

quality of their efforts, the hardiness of their pursuit, but really a 

macro question, because I remember being in hearings like this the 

last time I was in Congress. I remember going down to Howard Air 

Force Base, and I remember at that time there wasn’t enough 

money in drug ops to send up an AWACS [airborne warning and 

control system] every day of the week, and so they would send one 

up once a week, once every 2 weeks. 

And then the smart drug runners, they simply paid for a spotter, 

when the plane goes up that has the big dish, let us know, and 

then like the really stupid guys, the uninformed guys, they would 

still send a boat running north, and you would look at these films 

out of an F–16 in pursuit of the boat, they are throwing the drugs 

out of the boat, and once the boat is emptied, they would turn 

around, you burned a bit of jet fuel, you got a good video, but that 

was about it, and it was sort of catch-and-release. 

In contrast, I remember at that time, as part of our payments to 

Peru in the drug ops war, they had a shoot-down policy, and I remember watching videos of planes actually being shot down in 

Peru. And so it just seems to me that in war, it is either war or 

it is not. And what we have had for a long while in this country 

is sort of a middle ground when indeed you and the Navy and others do their duty. But in terms of actual result, really there isn’t 

that much in the way of result. 

I mean, any time you look at equation wherein 75 percent of 

what you are trying to stop is going through, then about 25 percent 

you are stopping, I mean, you have to question the validity of 

spending, you know, $25 billion, 6,000 folks, as you just mentioned, 

in this effort, in terms of result. And you look at how scarce dollars 

are in the American system, how much scarcer they are going to 

get going forward. I mean, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, their 

point was the most predictable financial crisis in the history of man 

is coming our way, given the squeeze financially that we are going 

to be in as a country. And therefore we have, I think a requirement, whether in this committee or any other committee, to fund 

those things that actually work. 

And so this is not about, again, the validity of your effort, you 

guys are working hard, but at the end of the day, the end results, 

I found wanting, and in contrast, one more data point. I remember 

being down on a drug ops trip, again, last time I was here, and 

there had been like 4,000 judges killed in the country of Colombia. 

I mean, it was all out war down there, and so I—you know, I just 

really begin to question, are we doing anything? What is your 

thought on that? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, let me just take a quick stab. So when 

I first started in the Coast Guard in the mid-1980s, I was actually 

14 

assigned on a patrol boat out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I 

would chase go-fast boats laden with cocaine right there into 

Miami Harbor, and those were the days of the Cocaine Cowboys 

where Miami was really on the brink. Those were the days of the 

shootout of the Dadeland Mall and all those things, and I can tell 

you, sir, we are a long ways from those days. 

We have chased those guys back down through the Caribbean. 

They are still there but not in the numbers that they were back 

in those days, and now they are in Central America. There is a 

huge amount of progress that has been made. We interdicted—— 

Mr. SANFORD. No, we just moved the border. I mean, you say the 

Bahamas, you couldn’t take a trip in the Bahamas without worrying about pirating in the Bahamas. You don’t have to worry 

about pirating these days. 

Admiral MICHEL. And the reason that is, sir, is because of the 

efforts that we put in place here. It is the same reason that the 

country of Colombia is actually a productive and advancing country 

when it almost was a basket case at one point. So we have made 

tremendous progress. Is there a lot more work to do? Yes, sir, there 

absolutely is a lot more work to do, but for anybody to say we have 

not made measurable progress on this, I think, is misinformed. 

Mr. SANFORD. Well, in terms of volume of drugs coming into this 

country, we haven’t really moved the needle there. 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, sir, we continue to have that because we 

continue to want to trade with the world. If we decided to completely shut down our borders to all trade, we probably could stop 

this trade, but we try to balance that out—— 

Mr. SANFORD. And I would reverse it. 

Admiral MICHEL [continuing]. With our law enforcement efforts 

with other society desires. 

Mr. SANFORD. What I would respectfully submit is that when in 

the history of man has supply not met demand? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, I would just offer, I think if 

General Kelly were sitting here, he would tell you our country’s insatiable appetite or demand for drugs has sort of put the region, 

what we call the transit zone, the Central American countries as 

sort of the meat in the sandwich between the Indian Ridge and 

producers. I think we have an obligation to aid and probably be 

part of the solution set here. 

I would make an analogy to speeders on the highway. I have 

teenage drivers. I know there’s a lot of speeders on the highway. 

I know there’s not a lot of police officers out there, but I go to sleep 

at night knowing there’s some police officers that keep some semblance of order out there, and I would say in the drug war, the 

transnational crime combatting efforts is sort of, you keep the lid 

on it. What we are here telling you with more effort—— 

Mr. SANFORD. Or does it do the reverse? 

Admiral SCHULTZ [continuing]. You stop more. 

Mr. SANFORD. Does it raise the profit margin? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Sir, I would say if you look at domestic cocaine use in this country, it is at a low that it’s been in recent 

years, prices are fairly high. I think the efforts that the men and 

women that are fighting this fight, both from U.S. Government 

15 

forces, from international partners, from partner nations, are having an impact there. Again—— 

Mr. SANFORD. Some people say it is based on demographics, the 

fact that our country is aging, and the fact that somebody in their 

50s may not be wanting to do what they were doing in their 30s 

or their 20s. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Yes, sir. I think we have got kind of an emerging epidemic with heroin use right now, and you know, I think 

with 8,500 deaths in this country here in the last year alone from 

heroin use, I think folks are seeing folks in places like New Hampshire where you didn’t think you had drug problems before, and 

parts of Kentucky where that is cropping up. And I think how we 

get our arms around that, I guess you could say you stop going 

after that or maybe we need to look at the fact that 45 percent of 

that heroin comes out of Mexico, 45 percent-plus is coming out of 

South America. 

Almost all of it now is coming out of this hemisphere through the 

same networks that the cocaine is coming up from, sir. So I don’t 

disagree with you, but there is a lot of ways at looking at this, this 

challenge. 

Mr. SANFORD. Understood. Understood. And again, I am not belittling in any way your efforts. I am just struggling with the overall aggregate in terms of numbers and the way in which this war— 

I remember seeing the statistics, the body bag counts, if you will, 

back when I was in high school, and us walking through those 

same body bag counts in terms of this much cocaine procured, this 

much marijuana stopped, but at the end of the day in a lot of small 

towns across America, somebody being able to buy whatever they 

want in some, you know, corner of town, and which says to me, obviously, we still have a problem. 

I see I burnt through my time, though. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HUNTER. I refuse to be yielded to until the—is the gentleman 

suggesting that we do what? 

Mr. SANFORD. That is the $94 question, and I really appreciate 

the chairman putting me on the spot like that. But I guess what 

I am struggling with, in watching this for a long number of years 

is do you spend more money and more time in affecting demand 

as opposed to trying to curtail supply. I mean, I think that is the 

big economic question out there, and that is ultimately not one that 

you all will resolve. 

You are doing your duty, you are doing your part, that which you 

are charged, so I admire your work, but I think that is the $94 

question we got to ask as a society is do we do something more. 

And again, a lot of this ties into stuff that is well beyond any of 

our pay grade, straight to the notion of family formation, a lot of 

other things that impact demand, poverty, you go down the list, 

but I think at the end of the day, the societal question we got to 

get our arms around is supply always equals demand. 

I remember reading in National Review, James Buckley, who is 

by no means a liberal, saying the war is lost. That was the front 

page of the National Review way back when, and he made the case, 

in that case for liberalization and for legalization and zombie farms 

16 

out West. You would have some number of people lost in either 

equation, and do you look at it a different way. 

I don’t know what the answer is, but I think that is the question 

we got to answer that ultimately is beyond your pay grade, and I 

suspect it comes down to the pay grade of the Americans—you 

know, and civilian population decide how do we address this problem. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, I think both of us would tell 

you, we have sort of run our careers in parallel tracks over more 

than 6 years together. There is a balanced approach, you probably 

need both, but interdiction, I think, is clearly part of that equation. 

Mr. SANFORD. I am less and less certain of that than I was 20 

years ago. 

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. And I would add, too, it is 

as much about drugs as it is—because you can get anything 

through the drug route that you can get drugs through, whether 

it is a weapon of mass destruction, whether it is weapons, whether 

it is some kind of chemical agent, the exact same routes that the 

drug smugglers take, the other bad guys who want to come in here 

take, too. 

Mr. SANFORD. My take, Mr. Chairman, is if you lined up a couple 

of Marines on the border, it would take care of the problem. 

Mr. HUNTER. Probably true. I would agree with that. 

The gentlelady from Florida is recognized. 

Ms. FRANKEL. Thank you. Interesting discussion. I am going to 

follow up on that, but just first, quick question is, it sounds like 

what you are saying here today is that you need more assets to do 

a more effective job. Are the new assets, is it new technology or is 

it more of the assets that you have and you just need more of 

them? 

Admiral MICHEL. It is a combination of both, ma’am. There is a 

certain quantity that is necessary to get the work done. On average, a major ship from either the Coast Guard or the Navy working 

for a year gets 20 metric tons of cocaine, which is a huge quantity 

of cocaine per ship, but each one of those ships can become more 

effective if you have more advanced sensor capabilities which allow 

them to find things like the semisubmersible. 

I know you didn’t see the picture of it, but we actually interdicted one of those this morning. I am sure they will share the picture of that with you and how difficult that is, and also the techniques for actually interdicting. So the airborne use of force which 

allows us to take on the go-fast boats. So it is a combination of both 

quantity, the number of ships that limit our ability to target, and 

then the better quality of the ship that allows it to have a better 

chance of detecting and interdicting that capability. It is a combination of both, ma’am. 

Ms. FRANKEL. Thank you. I now want to just follow up on Mr. 

Sanford’s. I thought it was interesting questions you had. I will 

just say it in a commentary. I think we spend $310 million a month 

in Iraq and Syria, and I think that a lot of people are questioning 

that. But I would like you, if you could, in that context, I would 

like to hear you make the argument as to the national security argument. That’s what I would like you to have a little more detail 

17 

on, why you feel your mission is so important, how it affects our 

national security? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Congresswoman, I would say, and I think 

Chairman Hunter sort of opened up this dialogue. You know, General Kelly’s first and foremost duty as a combatant commander for 

U.S. Southern Command is protecting the southern approaches to 

the United States for the security of this Nation. These same networks that allow drugs, you know, to the tune of—there’s about 

1,050 tons of cocaine that come out of the Indian Ridge, the sole 

cocaine producing region of the world on an annual basis, about 60 

percent—660 tons comes to the United States. 

It is the same networks that move those drugs, that move, you 

know, trafficking and women to the tune of 18,000 or so, moving 

cash both ways, weapons, illegal migrants, special interest aliens, 

we saw upwards of 500,000 illegals last summer, a subset of 

50,000-plus children, those are very sophisticated networks. These 

organizations are well financed, they are highly adaptive, and it 

doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think the same network that 

could move cocaine could move, you know, a component to a weapon of mass destruction or something else. They can move an Ebola 

patient. You name it. The networks are sophisticated. 

You know, my boss sometimes makes analogies. It is like a 

FedEx operation. So when you think about the maritime interdiction of drugs and cocaine is what we are specifically talking about 

here, you know, we can get the bulk loads of 3,000 kilos, you know, 

upwards of 7,000 pounds in one seizure at sea, when that ship 

offloads that to a couple of fast boats off of Guatemala or Mexico 

and it gets into the land border and gets broken down into small 

loads and coming across the border in the grille of a car in a 50- 

kilo load, our ability to stop that is very, very low at that point. 

When you interdict it at sea, there is no violence associated with 

that removal of 7,000 pounds of cocaine. When that cocaine hits the 

landmass, there is a lot of violence associated with that. There is 

a lot of graft and corruption associated with that, so the effectiveness is exponentially greater when we can push that border out 

and take that, you know, law enforcement endgame into the maritime domain. 

Admiral MICHEL. Let me just add one other little piece here. So 

I think you are probably aware, but in Mexico and Central America, a number of the countries down there have declared various 

states of emergency, and they have actioned their militaries to actually counter this, which is the number-one threat that they face 

down there. They don’t really have a nation state on nation state 

war problem, but they have a transnational criminal organization 

network. 

It should concern every American that the Mexican armed forces 

are having to be on the streets of Mexico taking on the cartels because their law enforcement has been completely outstripped by 

these criminal organizations. 

When you look at El Chapo Guzma ́n, Los Cano Los Cano from 

the Zetas cartel, or Trevin ̃ o Morales from the Zetas cartel, they 

were not taken down by Mexican local police or even Mexican Federal police. They were taken down by Mexican marines who were 

there trying to defend their country against these transnational 

18 

criminal organizations who basically rot the state from the inside 

out through intimidation, corruption, all the different things that 

they do, and this is one of our closest neighbors. 

And Mexico is a serious country. And to have a situation caused, 

at least in part, because of what American citizens are putting up 

their noses, to create that type of a national security situation in 

one of our closest neighbors should be a concern to every American 

beyond the public health problems that it creates in this country. 

Ms. FRANKEL. OK. Thank you very much. 

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentlelady. The gentleman from Louisiana is recognized. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. 

Admiral, thank you very much. It is nice to see you. You clean 

up well. Your old commander threads till today, good to see you. 

First of all, there was a hearing that the chairman had worked 

out with the HASC [House Armed Services Committee] that we 

had back in March where, Admiral Michel, you were there. And the 

topic was different but the theme was exactly the same in that it 

was talking all about the total maritime force package and the role 

that the Coast Guard plays in that. 

We talked at length about the fact that the—that you are only 

as strong as your weakest link and that the Coast Guard plays a 

critical role in that overall maritime total force strategy or total 

force package. And so we are sitting here talking about your capabilities. And we are talking about your ability to actually perform 

the mission that you are tasked with, whether it is drug interdiction, alien interdiction, and many of the other missions that the 

Coast Guard has had heaped upon it over the last several years. 

One of the things that we talked about a little bit in the past, 

I am going to bring it up again, the OPC. Can you talk a little bit 

about its role in you carrying out your duties, whether it is under 

the Cooperative Strategy for 21st-Century Seapower or it is your 

drug and alien interdiction mission? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, it is absolutely critical, sir, in that the 

OPC is the replacement for the Medium Endurance Cutter which 

is the bulk and real workhorse of the Coast Guard’s fleet, and we 

have got about 25 in the program of record of the OPC. The OPC 

is a sea state 5—— 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. And I want to be clear, your MECs 

[Medium Endurance Cutters] are all aging out. 

Admiral MICHEL. The average age even if everything goes on 

schedule—average age for a 270-foot cutter when it comes off the 

line is 35, average age for a 210-foot cutter is 55. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. OK. So we are beyond service life. 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. You need the OPC. It is going to give 

you better capabilities. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, 

if you could agree or disagree with that. Could you agree or disagree that the OPC is going to give you better capabilities? 

Admiral MICHEL. It does provide better capabilities. It is a modern system and it is a sea state 5 capable ship. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. And it does help you—and again, I 

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19 

firmation. It does help you to achieve your objectives within the 

overall maritime mission that you are tasked with. 

Admiral MICHEL. No question. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. OK. So then we get to the budget request, and in the budget request, as we have just spoken about in 

the past, you have some very confusing language about no funding 

in there, but you are going to transfer funding, but you haven’t 

identified the source, and I am not saying you, you understand, my 

friends at OMB, perhaps. 

Can you talk a little bit about, about how these things actually 

line up? I mean, how is it that you are going to be able to achieve 

your mission in working together with the Navy and the other 

armed forces, how is it that you are going to be able to carry out 

your mission with regard to drug and alien interdiction and other 

missions the Coast Guard is tasked with whenever you are dealing 

with equipment that is well beyond its projected service life and 

there are not funds in the budget for you to achieve—for you to acquire new resources? 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. I mean, that is the quandary in the 

world that I live in, and I will just give you an example. So on our 

210-foot fleet, which is the older one, right now we lose about 20 

percent of our scheduled time due to unscheduled maintenance, so 

these are, you know, major whole failures and other things that 

happen on that class of ship, and that situation only gets worse 

with time, so we need to replace that. 

And the OPC, you hit the nail on the head. The current plan is 

that there will be an internal transfer within DHS of the roughly 

$69 million we need to do to proceed with detailed design work. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. But we don’t know which couch to flip 

it over to find that? 

Admiral MICHEL. I don’t want to phrase it that way. Right now, 

the best that I have is I have assurances that that money transfer 

is going to take place and that the OPC is on schedule. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. One of the other things I am going 

to—I changed gears a little bit, but certainly the OPC’s capabilities 

in regard to source and transit zones makes sense, but just quickly, 

Mr. Chairman, if it is OK. I am curious, could you talk a little bit 

about its capabilities and in terms of the Arctic and ops up there? 

Admiral MICHEL. Right. So part of the reason it needs to be a 

sea state 5 capable ship is because this is not a one-for-one replacement with the Medium Endurance Cutter fleet. As a matter of fact, 

the 210-foot and 270-foot cutters, basically we tried to work those 

up in Alaska, and that is just too much weather. The distances are 

too great, and the weather is just horrendous. 

So those ships really do not work, the 210-, 270-foot cutters up 

in the Bering. But because we are not a one-for-one replacement, 

we have got to have more flexibility with the—where we can assign 

those ships, and with a sea state 5 capable ship, that OPC can actually operate on a seasonal basis up there in that Alaskan area 

where we need it. 

It is not going to be an ice capable ship or anything like that, 

but if you can understand that point, that is why we need sea state 

5 capability because it is not a one-for-one replacement program. 

20 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Sure. And it will work complementary to your new ice breakers that we will be acquiring sometime 

soon, correct? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, I hope so, sir. I know they are kind of a 

twinkle in somebody’s eye, and we should probably have some discussion about that, but yes, sir, they are all designed to work together as a system. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. 

The gentleman from Florida is recognized. 

Mr. CURBELO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for this 

hearing, and I thank Rear Admiral Schultz and Vice Admiral 

Michel for their presence here today. As the Representative from 

Florida’s southernmost district, I have a very special appreciation 

for the Coast Guard and its mission. Thank you for keeping our 

people safe and secure. 

I am hoping you can address generally this phenomenon we are 

seeing of drug transit routes shifting to the Caribbean. Have you 

seen a spike in the past several years and what impact has this 

had on your budget? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Good afternoon, Congressman, and so good to 

see you, and thanks for your support of the men and women in 

JIATF South. I know you were down there as recently as April 

here. 

Mr. CURBELO. Yeah that is right. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. I would say in terms of the shift to the Caribbean, we have seen a shift in recent years here. I think, A, that 

shift is attributable to some of the successes we have had along the 

Central American corridor. Writ large, about 80 percent of the cocaine that comes out of the Indian Ridge destined towards the 

United States comes through the central corridor, Central American corridor, some in the Pacific, some in the western Caribbean, 

but as we have had successes there, as we partnered with the 

Hondurans, their maritime shield, I think it is the balloon effect. 

You know, the squeeze of the balloon in that region has pushed 

some more activity to the eastern Caribbean route there, so we are 

aware of that. 

I think at the end of the day when you are dealing with a finite 

number of ships, and you know, the Coast Guard currently in this 

fiscal year had 6 ships—6.2 ships committed to the whole JIATF 

mission set here, that is across the EASTPAC [eastern Pacific] and 

the Caribbean. The Navy has had one ship. So you are taking 

seven ships on a good day, maybe some partnerships, and you are 

spreading them around, you know, we put some energy towards— 

at the JIATF, we put some energy in that eastern Caribbean route, 

but when, you know, you are in the teens, percentagewise, versus 

knowing 80 percent of it’s moving in either side of the Central 

American isthmus there, it is sort of a—it is sort of their decision. 

But that said, there’s a lot of challenges in Puerto Rico with increasing violence. Puerto Rico has a homicide rate five times that 

of here in the States. Domestically it is about 5 per 100,000 people. 

I think it is 25 per 100,000 there, weapons coming in. So we are 

very in tune with that. The Coast Guard has been working Operation Unified Resolve there, and I will defer to Admiral Michel for 

21 

specifics there, but as we at the Southern Command are working 

with the new DHS joint task force, working with other participants 

there, working with NORTHCOM, because NORTHCOM really, 

from a geographic combatant commander standpoint, knows the 

Puerto Rico region, we are looking at how do we bring some energy 

to that challenge. 

Politically, that has been a very hot area, so we are aware of 

that. So there is success there, and there is challenge there, and 

we are trying to attenuate that with a finite amount of bandwidth. 

Admiral MICHEL. If I could just add a couple of points here. One 

thing we watch very carefully is Venezuela. I think you have seen 

Venezuela has got some stability issues, and unfortunately, the 

traffickers are exploiting that, so we have seen what Admiral 

Schultz mentioned there about additional flows coming out of Venezuela, and a lot of those impact the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and the eastern Caribbean, so we are going to have to 

watch that very carefully. 

Also adding onto Admiral Schultz, the standup of the Secretary 

of Homeland Security’s new unity of effort joint task forces, of 

which Puerto Rico and southern Florida are all captured within 

what is called Joint Task Force East, which is actually dual hatted 

with our land area commander up in Norfolk, but they bring the 

entire DHS family together, so CBP, ICE [U.S. Immigration and 

Customs Enforcement], Coast Guard, the other supporting elements, all in the unity of effort format, along the lines of JIATF, 

if you know the way that they work, where they truly have a unified chain of command. This is not a sort of coordination element. 

This is real command and control from the Department of Homeland Security, and we are looking for great things from them along 

those vectors stretching into Puerto Rico and also south Florida. 

We are also watching the Cuba situation like we always do. Right 

now the Cuban Government is pretty good counterdrug, but we are 

going to have to see if that changes over time, but we watch that 

very carefully, sir. 

Mr. CURBELO. Since you mentioned Cuba, and with the chairman’s dispensation because it doesn’t have to deal specifically with 

drug trafficking, but we have seen a spike in migrant movement 

from Cuba to the United States. Do you attribute that to something 

specifically, and do you feel that you are prepared at this time for 

a potential mass migration of them? 

Admiral MICHEL. We did see a spike here at the end of last year 

and into the beginning of this year, and when we interviewed the 

migrants, they said we heard that the wet foot/dry foot policy was 

going to be changing, so we want to make sure we got there. We 

have had a public relations campaign out there telling people that 

that is not true and making sure that they understand what the 

facts are. 

And here over the summer, I think it has been relatively stable 

within kind of historic norms. And as always, we are ready for a 

mass migration, sir, and we watch that all the time and watch very 

carefully indicators and warnings both there and also in Haiti, the 

Dominican Republic, and those vectors where we have got some 

issues percolating. So we watch that very carefully, but we are 

22 

ready with our Homeland Security Task Force Southeast, which is 

specifically designed to deal with these mass migration events. 

Mr. CURBELO. Thank you both. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman. We are going to keep going 

here. We had really great participation today. You get more and 

more popular the more you come back, people start to like you. We 

will have full subcommittee here in a couple of years. 

Let me ask you about the NSC [National Security Cutter] really 

quick. You have a gap. You have a gap between now—between this 

year and 2018 where you’re not working on anything. Well, you are 

working on the OPC design stuff but you have a gap. There are 

some folks in this Congress and in this Senate that want to fill 

that gap for you with an extra NSC. What do you feel about that? 

And then if you would, not just say how do you feel about it, how 

would it—how would it affect drug interdiction ops; in 

SOUTHCOM, what would it do for you; could you use it? Could 

SOUTHCOM use it? I mean, you might have to take off your Coast 

Guard hat and put on your SOUTHCOM hat, and SOUTHCOM 

probably wants that ship. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Sir—— 

Mr. HUNTER. But the Coast Guard may not. 

Admiral SCHULTZ [continuing]. All day. Any ship, Coast Guard 

ship, Navy ship, is value add for the equation. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. Got that one. 

Admiral MICHEL. Easy for him to say. He doesn’t have to pay the 

bills. 

But, no, the NSC is an incredible ship, sir. It is the most capable 

ship the Coast Guard has ever had. We are ecstatic with the NSC. 

And I just want to go on the record. Same time, it is not within 

our program of record, and we designed our program of record to 

be affordable and best meet our needs, and that ninth NSC is not 

a part of that. 

And we cannot allow that to interfere with our other programs 

because, for example, on the OPC, that is the workhorse of the 

fleet, much cheaper ship to operate, plus it is smaller and can get 

into some of the dock spaces and things that we have. The NSC 

is just a much bigger ship, and that is why it was not a part of 

the program of record. Not because it is a great ship, but it is not 

within our affordability characteristics. 

And, obviously, if someone were to give one of those to us—and 

I hope it would not interfere with the other things that we need 

in the system—then your Coast Guard stands ready to use that 

ship, sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. If you get a ship like that, do you actually see the 

needle move, depending on how much you interdict based off of a 

ship like that that has as much capability as it has? 

Admiral MICHEL. Sir, that is the best ship available. I won’t use 

the word ‘‘Cadillac,’’ sir, because I know you called me on that last 

time. But the NSC has the best sensor capabilities, the best command-and-control suite, operates the best helicopters, and is the 

best that we have in the fleet. It has got the endurance. It has got 

the speed. If you were to design a ship to work in this mission set, 

it would be the NSC. 

23 

So it is the best that we can possibly bring to the fight, but it 

is also expensive. And its magnitude is more expensive than the 

OPC, which won’t have as many capabilities but hopefully will 

have more of them. 

That kind of goes to Ms. Frankel’s question of a balance between 

quality and quantity at a certain level, and we tried to do that in 

our program of record in addition to making sure the program is 

affordable. 

Mr. HUNTER. The Coast Guard has built the Navy’s littoral combat ship for them. And we are all very thankful. When we copy 

that and take it from you to give to the Navy, I think they will be 

appreciative. 

Admiral MICHEL. I wish they would send me a thank-you note, 

sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. I want to get back if we could just really quick to 

when we were talking about levels of capability and your internal 

performance targets in the very beginning, right. Can you go 

through how you set those, just, you know, from the ground up for 

me? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, the Office of the National Drug Control 

Policy sets what the national goal is, and it is—— 

Mr. HUNTER. Forty percent? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, it is 36 percent in 2015, 40 percent in 

2016, and that is along the formulas we describe, their sort of 

known interdiction versus the known flow, and there are formulas 

that underlie each one. So they sent—— 

Mr. HUNTER. Wait, let me ask, do they tie that to your capability, or do they just come up with that based on there is going 

to be more drugs coming across so we are going to up you 4 percent 

as our target or up the entire thing 4 percent? 

Admiral MICHEL. No, sir. It was actually a result of a study done 

a number of years ago that actually brought in some economists 

and some very smart people and came to the conclusion that if you 

could interdict 40 percent of the cocaine flow—and they were looking at the cocaine trade—that you could actually force the traffickers to change their business model in a radical method. And 

there is actually an intellectual basis for why that 40 percent was 

set that way. 

Then it was negotiated amongst the interagency partners as to 

what were achievable goals for each year in order to get to that 40 

percent. And there were studies done specifically on what it would 

take for the maritime interdiction forces to get to that 40 percent. 

And the study, my recollection, and I looked at the study when I 

was in JIATF South is that they figured that we would need about 

16 ships in order to do the 40 percent, at the time that study was 

done. Now, this was done a number of years ago. 

Now, some things have changed. The ships have gotten better. 

The technology has gotten better. The intelligence capabilities have 

gotten better. So 16 ships is probably an overstatement, in my 

opinion, up to this point, but even now, we are not fielding anything even approaching 16 ships in order to get down there at the 

40 percent that need to be done. So there is analysis behind all 

that. And it is also run through an interagency negotiation process 

24 

based on historical data. And that is where you come up with the 

Coast Guard’s contribution. 

And when you look at that historical data for our contribution of 

the removal, it converts directly into our resource commitments to 

the fight and what we think we can provide to the fight and what 

type of capabilities we can provide to the fight. Again, there is pretty good historical data that over a number of years, that for each 

capital ship that is put downrange by the U.S.—and also some of 

our foreign, the high-end foreign partners—1 year of ship effort is 

about 20 metric tons removed. So you can kind of do the math from 

there. 

Now, part of it is beyond our control, you know, how much the 

traffickers plant, how much they move that year, what their production estimates, how much they decide to send to the U.S. and 

how much they decide to send to other global markets. So it is a 

difficult problem set, and recognize, the adversary does everything 

possible to keep all this from us. I mean, they want this all to remain in the dark. So it is based on our best estimates. 

Mr. HUNTER. So your numbers going down from 18.5 percent to 

13.8 percent over 5 years, that is based on what you had to do the 

job with. Is that how it goes? 

Admiral MICHEL. That is based on the Coast Guard commitment, 

yes, sir. That is what we sign up for in order to—our portion of the 

national goal for the removal rate in the Western Hemisphere 

Transit Zone and then that converts into the number of assets we 

can put into the fight, which varies. Sometimes our assets get 

pulled off in different directions. Sometimes we can do more. Sometimes we can do less. 

Mr. HUNTER. So what made it drop from 18 percent to 13 percent? 

Admiral MICHEL. Ship effort. It is pretty simple math from a 

Coast Guard perspective, sir. It is just—it is the number of ships 

and capable ships that are brought into the fight. 

Mr. HUNTER. Let me ask you a question that I am just curious 

about: Has the Pacific shift for the Navy to Asia had any play at 

all in anything that happens in your AO [area of operation]? 

Admiral MICHEL. I will let Admiral Schultz jump in here, but 

just from a Coast Guard perspective, our admiral, Admiral 

Zukunft, talks specifically about this. And he understands the 

geostrategic perspective and understands the Navy gets pulled in 

a lot of different directions, and that is specifically why he committed additional Coast Guard resources to the Western Hemisphere Transit Zone. He said: This is an area where I can provide 

unique capability and be complementary to the other geopolitical 

moves that the combatant commanders are putting in place. 

Mr. HUNTER. So just, if I could dovetail with that too, then does 

the Coast Guard see a place for itself in the Pacific, in the South 

China Sea, as opposed to the Navy? Because our fellow peer nation 

in that area uses their Coast Guard for that exact thing. 

Admiral MICHEL. I get asked that question all the time, sir. Unfortunately, with every single combatant commander, there is more 

demand out there and more relevance for the Coast Guard than 

there is Coast Guard. And our Commandant has been specifically 

asked to provide resources to not only PACOM [Pacific Command] 

25 

but all the other combatant commanders. And right now his best 

judgment is our Coast Guard resources are going to be put in the 

Western Hemisphere Transit Zone because this is an area of regional stability and national security where the Coast Guard can 

provide unique benefit to the Nation. 

And that is his judgment. But it is a risk calculation, no question 

about it. The Coast Guard is increasingly relevant in the area, and 

when you see the bumping and all the other things going on, they 

are Coast Guard boats and typically not gray hulls doing that stuff, 

sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. Admiral Schultz. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, the only thing I would add to 

that, you know, the pivot to the Pacific obviously is the demand 

signal there. I think there is also sort of the perfect storm of the 

decommission of the fast frigates from a budgetary standpoint. The 

Perry-class frigates, the last one is on patrol today. Once that ship 

finishes up her current JIATF patrol, we won’t see any frigates 

here for the foreseeable future. 

The LCSs, littoral combat ships, which have been renamed the 

frigates, will probably not come to the SOUTHCOM AOR for 3 to 

5 years here, given that pivot to the Pacific and the rate of recapitalization. 

Mr. HUNTER. With that, the ranking member has no more questions. I have no more questions, unless you have any closing comments you would like to give. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HUNTER. Oh, I am sorry. Go ahead. Gentleman from Louisiana. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Thank you. Thank you very much. 

Admiral Schultz, you just talked about the decommissioning of 

the frigates, and as I recall, I believe you have three that are being 

decommissioned now that does affect your area of operation. I am 

just continuing this theme. You talked earlier about the inability 

to meet the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s target of 40 

percent. You are losing frigates. You are not budgeting for new capabilities. Your AC&I [acquisition, construction, and improvements] account is going down not up. Can you comment on the conditions on the ground and how it affects your mission? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Well, I would say from the SOUTHCOM commander’s perspective, you know, capacity is the spigot, you know. 

We still operate with that 16 number that Admiral Michel talked 

about, three large cutters, which would be, you know, your National Security Cutter, your former High Endurance Cutters or 

maybe a cruiser, destroyer from the Navy. And 13, those would be 

your to be built OPCs, currently the Medium Endurance Cutters; 

those were the Perry-class frigates. 

So, at the end of the day, it is about capacity from a 

SOUTHCOM perspective. And, you know, that ship with a helicopter, with the ability to launch a small boat, the ability to move 

around agilely within the AOR, which translates to a Coast Guard 

cutter, a Navy ship, some of our high-end partners, you know, you 

associate a number about 20 million—or 20 metric tons, as Admiral 

Michel talked about. It is a math equation. 

26 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. I certainly don’t want to get anybody 

in trouble here, but is there a way that you can carefully answer 

the question about, you have got a major loss of connectivity here. 

Again, heaping missions upon you, setting targets that I am confident if you were properly capitalized, you could achieve, yet they 

aren’t providing the resources for you to actually do that. Where do 

you see the lack of connectivity here? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Well, I think, sir, the lack of connectivity is 

clearly budgetarily related. I think where we focus our efforts at 

Southern Command, I think where the Coast Guard does is, you 

know, how do you work as smart as possible within the workspace 

you have while you wait for the recapitalization of new ships? 

You know, we look at a resource like the Joint STARS, which 

flies maritime patrol capability. One Joint STARS flight equates to 

about 10 P–3 flights. It can surveil that much ocean on one mission 

here. We will fly that sometimes in conjunction with a B–52 or another type of bomber. Sometimes they will fly solely. We could fly 

a Joint STAR on the Caribbean base, and they could actually see 

traffic in the eastern Pacific. 

So there’s the capacity piece on the surface side, which I talked 

about. There’s other ways to, you know, stay in the game and work 

smarter with what you have here and pray for better days for more 

ships to come to the future. I would tell you, there is no bigger advocate to endorse the Coast Guard’s recapitalization needs because 

of the challenges we have. And, again, it is transnational organized 

crime. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Sure. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. We can take the discussion down to just 

drugs, but it is about regional stability. And the Coast Guard presence down there, the Navy ships with LEDETs [law enforcement 

detachments], they are all about, you know, bringing some sanity 

to that challenge there. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. So you said it is Admiral Michel’s 

fault? 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, you said that, not me. I may 

need to go back and work for the Coast Guard. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. No, Admiral, look, I just want to be 

clear. Every hearing that we have, I think that a number of us are 

going to continue to pound that theme. There is a lack of 

connectivity here. You are being tasked with missions—we described you as a Swiss Army knife at the HASC hearing in regard 

to all the missions that are being heaped upon you. You are not 

being capitalized. There is a loss of connectivity between the work 

that you are being tasked with and the resources of the capitalization that you are being given. 

You have got a great workforce. The men and women of the 

Coast Guard—and I will put my oil spill comments aside for just 

a minute—are some great people that work incredibly hard. And I 

am confident, if given the proper resources, they could hit the targets that you put in place. 

I just want to make sure that you are continuing to beat the 

drum up your chain of command. We obviously are continuing to 

do the same thing. I am looking forward to the appropriations bill 

27 

when it comes to the floor because I think we have got some priorities that need to be addressed. 

Let me ask you one last question. The chairman and Congressman Sanford both addressed the issue of when you have open 

lanes, you can send anything through them, whether it is aliens, 

whether it is drugs, whether it is a terrorist or weapons or what 

have you. I assume you would agree with that? 

Admiral MICHEL. Absolutely, sir. Just take a look at that picture 

of that self-propelled semisubmersible. My guess is that probably 

has a carrying capacity of maybe 5 to 7 metric tons of anything 

that you want, and it can approach the United States almost 

undetectable. Most of those SPSSs—now, they are kind of in 

version four of those things—3,500-, 4,000-mile range, you know, 

the fact that we have sort of through our consumption patterns allowed the creation of really a bad guy battle lab for the development of these dark highly mobile asymmetric maritime targets 

should concern everybody. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. And do you often see comingled loads, 

meaning drugs and aliens together and things like that? 

Admiral MICHEL. Actually, rarely. We do see comingled drug 

loads. So we just had a load of heroin and cocaine. But, interestingly, typically, you will either get a drug boat or you will get a 

migrant boat. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. OK. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. And, Congressman, one thing the DEA has 

said publicly, I think it is 27 of 54 known terrorist organizations 

have proven links through drug trafficking. So there is clearly that 

nexus of, you know, transnational organized crime, illicit drug trafficking, and the potential for more nefarious activities. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Sir. Thank you all very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you. 

One last question here. Marijuana, so say that you legalized 

weed throughout the entire country, right. Would that have any 

impact whatsoever on what you are doing? 

Admiral MICHEL. It is hard to say under what circumstance they 

would be legalized. As long as the traffickers can make a profit, 

they are going to be there. I mean, this goes to Mr. Sanford’s question. You know, if they can undercut the marijuana market by 

growing marijuana overseas and putting it in the United States, 

even under a legalization scheme where you pay more, my guess 

is they would probably do it. I mean, that is—traffickers are going 

to make money. 

Mr. HUNTER. Well, what would it do? Because you interdict more 

cocaine than anything else, right? But that is also what you are 

trying to interdict more of, correct? 

Admiral MICHEL. Absolutely. Cocaine really is the money product. And a lot of the problems in Central America, it is not because 

of marijuana that is being dragged across there. Most of the marijuana is being made in the U.S. or Mexico or somewhere like that. 

It is because of the cocaine trade that exists here, and it is so insidious because it is a very high-value, very small product. 

You have got to smuggle a lot of marijuana to make the same 

amount in cocaine, and that makes it more vulnerable, makes it 

28 

more vulnerable to border tactics, like fences, makes it more vulnerable in the panga arena—I know that you are aware of—in San 

Diego and things. But the cocaine is incredibly dangerous. And 

once it gets past the JIATF forces and the Coast Guard forces down 

there, it is basically done. You are not going to get it. 

When I was JIATF South Director, the average cocaine seizure, 

which was pretty rare on the Southwest border, was 4 to 7 kilos. 

A major seizure was 40 kilos. That one semisubmersible that I 

showed you there, 3,000 kilos. And you got that on the water before 

it got into Mexico and corrupted that government official, killed 

that kid in the drive-by shooting, plus you have got witnesses and 

evidence that can actually get you to the kingpins, so the head of 

the network that set all that stuff in motion. So it is the beauty 

of maritime interdiction. And so traffickers will make money if 

there is money to be made, sir. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. Congressman, I think when we had the conversation about the violence, the judges, you know, I think for my 

boss, General Kelly, when he is down there talking to the CHODs 

[chiefs of defense], the ministers of defense, the MODs, I think 

there is a certain level of credibility here, you know, when they 

look at him and say: Well, General, your country is legalizing marijuana. You know, how committed are you to this fight here? You 

know, we have got our frontline men and women, whether that is 

law enforcement folks, whether that is their military because they 

have to bring their military to establish some security, it creates 

a bit of a credibility gap that the U.S. Government is truly committed to the fight. 

Mr. HUNTER. Last question I have. Have you seen full 

submersibles now? Because I think I was watching something, it 

was either ‘‘Vice’’ on HBO or some documentary, where they had 

the full submersibles. 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, I toured a fully 

submersible vessel that was seized by the Colombian Navy, with 

some help from the United States, at its construction site in Bahia 

Malaga, Colombia. I have toured that vessel. That vessel is capable 

of going from Colombia to Los Angeles unrefueled in a snorkeling 

state. 

We also seized a semisubmersible in San Lorenzo, Ecuador, in 

2010. That is a fully submersible craft that can operate under the 

water. I can talk to you more offline about the operating characteristics, but that can carry 7 to 10 metric tons of anything that you 

want basically undetected from Ecuador to Los Angeles. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. So let’s step away from SOUTHCOM totally. 

I am just curious, when does the Coast Guard realize that you 

got—you will have multinational, you know, terrorist organizations 

mixed with really easy to make full submersibles, where you can 

drop off anybody and anything, when do those two things come together for you? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, I will let Admiral Schultz talk a little bit 

more about the terrorist connections, but the FARC [Revolutionary 

Armed Forces of Colombia], for example, which is declared a terrorist organization, is a drug-trafficking organization, and they are 

the ones who financed the semisubmersible construction, a large 

29 

number of those things. So you already have that convergence, sir. 

It is already there. 

Mr. HUNTER. But the FARC likes to have power and make 

money, right. They don’t necessarily want to kill a million Americans so they can go see their God, right? That is the difference between radical Islam that I am talking about and bad crime organizations. Or, I mean, to a certain extent, I think I am correct there. 

Admiral MICHEL. I am not willing to put my trust in the FARC, 

sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. 

Admiral SCHULTZ. And I think Congressman, you know, when 

you look at that convergence, I think if you look to Latin America, 

you know, within South America, you have upwards of 75, 80 cultural centers, Iranian cultural centers. I think you have a Lebanese 

Hezbollah center of gravity there where I think there is indications 

that they are raising tens of thousands, you know, tens of millions 

of dollars there. You know, is it just fundraising and money that 

goes back to Libya? You know, do they have other activities afoot? 

You know, do we have any connection to IJO type activities? 

You know, I think, we watch that. And one of our challenges at 

SOUTHCOM is we get a fairly small percentage of the overall DOD 

ISR. So our challenge is, we don’t know what we don’t know. But 

with what we have, we try to, you know, stay aware of the 

transnational organized crime, but we are also paying attention to, 

you know, what threats on the counterterrorism front are potentially, you know, to our southern flank there. 

Mr. HUNTER. Would it be fair to say that you would be the first 

ones to know if some folks out of the Middle East started using 

these tactics? 

Admiral MICHEL. I think that that is fair to say, sir. The enterprise that we have arrayed here before you really is the early 

warning sensor for the entire sort of southern approaches to the 

United States. We are it. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you very much. This is probably one of the 

most informative, interesting topics in hearings that we have had. 

So thank you both, gentlemen. Appreciate it. 

And, with that, we are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:33 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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