Customs, Coast Guard Both Wanna Shoot Somebody Down

The whispering campaign seems to have begun with the Coast Guard. "You can't trust Customs," was the message. "They might get the order and then get weak. You need somebody with a military chain of command. You need... us."

As is appropriate for a whispering campaign, the Bureau of Customs and Border Patrol didn't reply directly. Instead, its proxies called into question, not the Coast Guard's willingness (which seems to be more than adequate), but its ability to gun down airspace intruders. Quoted in the Federal Times, Lexington Institute expert Loren Thompson disparaged the Coast Guard's "grab-bag of ancient airframes. It’s ultimately unequipped to deal with even a moderately challenging mission," he said.

Oddly enough, some of the Coast Guard's helicopters are HH-60s about the same age as the Black Hawks operated by Customs. But where would we be without think-tank experts?

Both agencies presented their positions to Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff last week, each one insisting that it was more willing, able, and even eager to shoot Americans down than the other.

So far, in almost 3,500 (!) violations of the ADIZ or FRZ since 2003, none has needed to be shot down. Almost 3,000 of them did not require aircraft to intercept them: they were momentary violations only, or the aircraft responded to air traffic control's calls.

But in 665 cases so far, aircraft have been scrambled, or (more usually) patrolling aircraft vectored, to investigate ADIZ violators. This includes a number of cases when aircraft from one government agency were scrambled to investigate those of another.

Every case so far has been an inadvertent violation; a couple of violators have been escorted to land and arrested, but nobody's needed to be shot to kingdom come to ensure compliance, yet. The door gunners on the Customs helicopters must be feeling a little like the Maytag repairman; all that training, and they don't even have one little Cessna silhouette painted under the waist gun window.

Defense of the airspace is managed by the National Capital Region Coordination Center, which includes DHS, most of the alphabet agencies, and the military. Its resources include Northern Command fighter jets (which might be on patrol or on ground alert), the familiar Customs Black Hawks, and surface-to-air missiles that are believed to be operated by both military and Secret Service anti-aircraft gunners.

Customs believes that they should retain the job. From decades of chasing drug and other smugglers, they have evolved flight procedures that are usually effective in bringing both inadvertent and deliberate violators to ground with no loss of life. But the Coast Guard also has plenty of experience chasing troublemakers -- they just do it over the sea most of the time.

Another problem has cropped up in that Customs' air arm, the Office of Air and Marine Operations, has been moved around repeatedly lately -- from the old Customs Service, to ICE, and it's now about to be placed under the Border Patrol or merged with the Border Patrol's tiny flying unit.

This has the Customs pilots -- about 500 of them -- concerned. Customs has traditionally hired highly experienced pilots with a military or law enforcement background, and the service always depended heavily on its air arm. They operate some very high-performance aircraft, including the Black Hawks and P-3 Orion patrol planes.

The Border Patrol, on the other hand, offers pilot training to outstanding Border Patrol agents, or well-connected higher-ups, and Border Patrol pilots are agents first and pilots second. They fly simpler machines -- the Patrol just bought a fleet of Eurocopter EC120s
-- on a narrower spectrum of missions.

There's a serious cultural clash in the making here, but the idea looks good on paper to DHS managers, so it's probably going to happen.

The new, combined, flying organization, CBP Air, is expected to be less interested in previous homeland security missions. The aircraft are to be parceled out to individual Border Patrol sector chiefs, who will have operational control of the aircraft and crews, while maintenance and logistics are handled by a centralized bureaucracy.

This other battle leaves the Customs and Border Patrol airmen ill-prepared to fight a serious Washington turf (or airspace) battle with the Coast Guard.

And the influential Government Accountability Office, the accounting and investigatory arm of Congress, seems to have taken the Coasties' side. The GAO released a report in July which stressed that Customs' Black Hawk crews are not in the military chain of command, and questioned their willingness to carry out a shootdown as directed.

The stakes have been raised considerably by the current government grab for more restricted and prohibited airspace in the Washington, DC, area. Given the hysteria inherent in airspace violations, and the unfortunate consistency with which pilots mess up in proximity of the ADIZ, the winner of this turf spat will be on TV a lot, which may be good for its budget.

So the Coast Guard is eager to wrest the high-profile mission from Customs. Customs is equally determined to hang on to it. The battle is joined. And so far, the only casualty has been the reputations of both agencies, as their mutual insults attract public attention.

FMI: www.bcp.gov, www.uscg.mil