By consulting with migrant leaders and using migrant cooks, separate menus suitable for the different tastes of Haitians and Cubans were developed. Migrant welfare also encompassed protecting migrants from each other. Major Reasons for Success Three factors stand out as reasons for the overall success of Sea Signal. First, the U.S. military routinely critiques its own performance. Military units review operational performance looking for better ways to accomplish their assigned tasks.
Units adapt to dynamic change in the short-term and develop new doctrine for future operations.
Sea Signal began by drawing on the lessons learned during earlier migrant support operations, and during the operation, the ability to adapt operating procedures to a changing situation led to constant improvements in migrant support. Second, this operation benefited from vastly improved interagency coordination. While the interagency coordination process was not effortless, military and civilian leaders from the many agencies involved in Sea Signal were able to overcome bureaucratic differences to ultimately get the job done. Without such cooperation, the Haitian and Cuban migrants would have quickly overwhelmed either the military's or any civilian agency's capability to control them. In a time of shrinking government resources, the lesson to be learned here is that capabilities can be maintained by capitalizing on the synergy achieved through interagency cooperation.