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Overview

The US Coast Guard is the main organization recognized by the state and tasked with the role of providing security, and navigation guidance in the marine areas of the US ports and waterways. The Coast Guard defends more than 100,000 miles along the coast of the US and inland water routes. It also protects the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which comprises 4.5m miles2, which covers from above the Arctic Circle to below the equator, which is from Puerto Rico to Guam (United States Coast Guard 2016). The area covered is comprised of nine time zones, and this makes it the biggest EEZ.

The Coast Guard is part of the defence forces in the US and the only military branch in the Department of Homeland Security. It is not only part of the defence forces tasked with protection, but it is also the first respondent in disasters. The Coasts Guards are the first to respond and offer humanitarian help during distress, especially during natural and human-made disasters onshore and in the sea. The Coast Guard is also a law enforcement agency and a member of the intelligence community that has the regulatory role as well. The Coast Guard has a legal mandate on issues that revolve around maritime transportation, the shipping in and out of hazardous material, oil spillage responses, administering bridges, piloting, and operation of vessels and the building of vessels (United States Coast Guard 2016). Although the Coast Guard is usually under Homeland Security, it can be moved temporarily to the Navy, especially during cases of war.

Roles and Missions of The US Coast Guard/ Strengths of US Coast Guard

The US Coast Guard has several strengths when it comes to its roles and missions. One of the strong points of the Coastal Guard is maintaining maritime safety. In maintaining maritime safety, the Coastal Guard works towards eliminating deaths, injuries, and property damage that may occur in the course of transport, fishing, recreation, and any other activities on the water. The Coastal Guard also conducts missions such as investigations, preventing disasters from happening, and responding when disasters happen. They make sure that all the people operating vessels in the sea are licensed. They also conduct ice patrol to ensure that vessels do not run into the areas that are frozen.

The other strength of the Coastal Guard is that they participate in national defence. The Coastal Guard supports the National Security Strategy. Often, they operate under Homeland Security, but in instances of war, they are shifted to operate under the Navy. In national defense, the Coastal Guard is supposed to conduct maritime military interceptions, respond to military distress calls, secure ports, engage in peacetime military engagements, and oversee the coastal sea control operations.

The other strong role played by the Coastal Guards is facilitating maritime mobility. The Coastal Guard has been able to reduce the interruptions that may affect the economic flow of goods and people. They also ensure that the people who are on the sea for recreational purposes can move around without any distractions. The Coastal Guards is responsible for managing the waterways, and they mark the navigable using easy to notice tools such as buoys and other electronic and visual signals. They also provide vessel traffic services by using technology such as AIS, where they prevent vessel collisions and groundings. The other strength of the Coastal Guard is in protecting the natural resources. They do that by working to manage the rate of environmental degradation by controlling the rate of recreation and commercial transport and fishing. The Coast Guard seeks to protect the habitats of maritime habitats and their inhabitants, especially the endangered species (Nixon 2017). To be in a position to effectively preserve and protect natural habitats, the Coastal Guard is collaborating with other parties such as the Federal On-scene Coordinators (FOSCs) who manage oil spillages. They also combine forces with foreign parties such as the Canadian Arctic Shipping Pollution Prevention Regulations.

The other area of strength that the Coastal Guard has is in ice operations. The Coast Guard provides support to the US in the arctic areas that are covered with ice. They are tasked with ensuring that the government can operate effectively in the ice-covered polar areas. Through the use of the vast icebreaking operations and resources, the Coastal Guard facilitates government operations in the polar areas (Nathan 2018). In the polar regions, the activities that the Coastal Guard does includes, providing an enabling environment for scientific research, they provide logistics and supply services, supporting research, ship demonstrations during developments, and testing of other projects in the polar regions. They also support diplomatic missions, and they coordinate the exchange of information regarding ice operations.

Weaknesses of The US Coastal Guard.

The US Coast Guard has been using the Marine Information for Safety and Law Enforcement (MISLE) systems to manage its data. However, the MISLE system has been identified to have serious flaws, which make the US Coast Guard have challenges in trying to accomplish its mission. Over the years, the US Coast Guard has improved the system by conducting routine changes based on the audit reviews they receive (United States Department of Homeland Security (n/d). However, a lot is still to be done to ensure that the MISLE system can secure and handle all the data that belongs to the Coast Guards.

One of the weaknesses of the MISLE system is that the user administration procedures are not complete. The US Coast Guard has successfully developed the system, which allows privileged access for some high priority personnel. The system is supposed to allow controlled access. However, they have not established enough controls regarding the creation of accounts for the Marine Safety Network users. The accounts that have access to the MISLE system do not go through regular reviews, which makes the data vulnerable to exposure to unauthorized personnel (United States Department of Homeland Security (n/d). The people that are in charge of the Vessel Documentation Systems users, which makes it challenging for them to use the MISLE system.

The other weakness of the US Coast Guard is that the MISLE is not enough. The audit of the performance and the accuracy of data managed by the MISLE system is supposed to be done regularly and to a deep extent. However, the audit is not done well and regularly enough. Due to the inadequate audits, the system often faces operational challenges, and the data is often faulty. When the MISLE system is not performing to its best, the capacity of the US Coast Guard is hugely impaired (United States Department of Homeland Security (n/d). The system not being adequately managed through audits and testing makes it vulnerable to failure; when it fails, it also takes significantly longer to restore it promptly especially during disasters.

The other weakness of the MISLE system that makes the US Coast Guard is that the access of the MISLE system is not properly restricted. The system does not have strong authentication and identification procedures, which makes the data that is managed by the MISLE system vulnerable. The fact that there is no enough restriction on who can access the system, data is likely to fall in the hands of the wrong people. Data falling into the wrong hands may lead to the duties of the US Coast Guard being impaired (FAS (n/d). The other weakness of the MISLE system is that the system is not properly configured. The system is not in a position to protect data and files over the network.

Crime and Global Issues in US Coastal Guard

Crime and criminal activities continue to impact the role of the US Coast Guard. One of the famous criminal activities that affect the US Coast Guard is the illegal maritime trade. One of the most difficult to control trade is the drug market. Due to the huge coastline, the US is one of the most targeted drug markets. The business of narcotics is very intense along the coast of the US, and the US Coast Guard has been constantly challenged in trying to solve the issue. The most-traded drugs along the coast of the US are cocaine and marijuana. The other criminal challenge is the location of the major drug producers, such as Jamaica, who produce marijuana, Mexico who produce cocaine, and Afganistan, who produce heroin (US Coast Guard 2018). The three countries have easy access to the coast of the US, and they are tempted to use the waterways to ship in the drugs into the US. The other criminal activity that affects the US Coast Guard is the illegal arms trade. Weapons are bulky, and those seeking to bring illegal arms into the US tend to bring them through the ocean and seas (Law of the Sea (n/d). Therefore, restricting such interest in the US is a huge challenge to the US Coast Guard. The US Coast Guard has not been in a position to conduct proper inspections on the cargo containers that are coming into the port, and this creates a leeway for the entrance of illegal arms and drugs into the country.

One of the global issues that affect the US Coast Guard is the illegal immigrant entry into the country. The US Coast Guard can monitor the waterways, but the illegal immigrants have devised means to get past the guards. One of the ways the immigrants get into the country is by assisted methods where the immigrants get help from people who are in the country already. Such assisted techniques include the use of bulk freighters where the smugglers can ship people into the country past the coast guards. They also use speedboats to move immigrants over short distances. Cubans have been shipped into the US countless times using the speedboats. The other way that the people get assistant to get into the US is by the use of fishing vessels. Smugglers use the fishing vessels to transport illegal immigrants, especially to the less monitored coastlines. Other immigrants used their means to get to the US. Mass migration of illegal immigrants into the US by any vessel they can find is very rampant especially for people living in countries not so far away (Ackerman 2015). The other way that people get to the US is by being stowaways in the vessels that are legally traveling to the US. It is usually hard for the Coast Guard to manage illegal immigrants because most of them get in through the points of least supervision, such as unmanned coastlines.

The other global and criminal issue that affects the US Coast Guard is pirating and armed robbery. In the attempt to ensure that there is smooth flow of commercial and recreation vessels, pirating is a major challenge. Pirates have advanced weapons, and it is usually challenging to deal with them (Ackerman 2015). The other global issue is waste dumping and maritime accidents that cause the maritime environment to be polluted.

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