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What is a typical workday? Is it eight hours slouched behind a
desk answering the phone and writing emails? Or is it meeting after
meeting with PowerPoint? Does it involve a 30-minute lunch break
where coworkers have halfhearted conversations while watching the
clock tick slowly toward 5 p.m.?
A typical workday doesn't exist for a Coast Guard HC-130
Hercules airplane crew.
This 11-member team from
Air Station Barbers Point works nine to 10 hours a day in a metal
tube 97 feet long and 10 feet wide. Their workplace soars thousands
of feet above the water's surface. Conversations are transmitted
through headsets that muffle the reverberating hum of four engines.
Eyes are always searching, straining to find a shadow the size of a
dust particle in a computer screen filled with shades of gray.
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Crew members aboard an HC-130 Hercules airplane from
U.S. Coast Guard Air Station
Barbers Point use aircraft surveillance equipment to monitor as a
small boat from USCGC Campbell (WMEC 909) intercepts a 30-foot panga
carrying drugs in the Eastern Pacific, January 25, 2016. The
Hercules crew located and tracked the panga and coordinated with the
Campbell crew who interdicted the vessel. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Melissa E. McKenzie)
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This job is anything but
ordinary.
From the moment wheels leave
the runway until they touch down again, this aircrew is on a
unique mission: they are on a 14-day counter-narcotics
patrol in Central America.
The
aircrew acquired a target bearing approximately two eight
one at five point five.
The plane circles its prey
moving closer with each passing turn. Its white exterior
camouflaged in the clouds.
They've spotted an alleged
go-fast. It is about 30-feet long with two outboards riding
low in the water and cruising. Three people are on board the
vessel with bales visible on the starboard side.
This
aircrew is hunting for suspected drug runners.
Shortly after the aircrew spotted the suspected smuggling
vessel, the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Campbell from
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, gave chase as the suspects
allegedly jettisoned their cargo. The Coast Guard men and
women retrieved more than 1,870 pounds of cocaine jettisoned
in the chase worth nearly $28 million and apprehended the
three suspects without incident. All this thanks to their
eyes in the sky; an aircrew dutifully and patiently
searching, monitoring and coordinating the end game.
U.S. military, law enforcement agencies and regional
partner-nation law enforcement agencies patrol the waters in
the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Pacific on a
year-round basis in an effort to detect, monitor and
interdict illicit traffickers.
Operation Martillo
(Hammer) includes the participation of 14 nations working
together to counter transnational organized crime and
illicit trafficking in coastal waters along the Central
American isthmus. This operation is just one component in
the U.S. government's whole-of-government approach to
countering the use of Central American littorals as
transshipment routes for illicit drugs, weapons and cash.
“No one realizes how many people and assets are involved
in a mission like this,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class Mandi
Stevens, an aviation maintenance technician and airplane
sensor system operator. “When the American people learn
about drug busts in the news, it's the Coast Guard cutter
they see. They only hear about Coast Guard aviation
conducting search and rescues, but we are also heavily
involved in drug interdictions.”
Drug interdiction is
a collaborative effort between Joint Interagency Task Force
South, a national task force under U.S. Southern Command,
U.S. and multi-national law enforcement agencies.
The
aircrew's job is to locate the vessel and use aerial
surveillance equipment to record as much information about
the target as possible including location, speed, direction
of movement and visual confirmation of any drugs onboard.
That information gets passed to the nearest assisting vessel
which races toward the target to intercept it before it
reaches shore. The aircrew must then maintain visual of the
target until the assisting vessel arrives on site, which
could be hours or days.
Once intercepted, the aircrew
moves to the next target connecting dots over the Pacific.
Increased threats in our hemisphere required the Coast
Guard to create a new Western Hemisphere Strategy with the
following priorities: combating networks, securing borders
and safeguarding commerce.
“This isn't a new mission
for us,” said Lt. Eric Casida, aircraft commander. “But our
efforts have been more focused to fall in line with the
Commandant's new Western Hemisphere Strategy.”
The
Coast Guard removed more than 319,185 lbs. of cocaine and
78,262 lbs. of marijuana in fiscal year 2015, which runs
from Oct. 1, 2014 to Sept. 30, 2015. Those removals were
valued at $4.4 billion wholesale based on DEA estimates for
average drug prices for fiscal year 2014.
Through
unity of effort, the Coast Guard along with its federal and
international partners provides enhanced international
maritime law enforcement capabilities enabling greater
safety, security and economic success.
Of known drug
shipments, it's believed that 97 percent are transported via
maritime means. Through the Coast Guard's role as America's
premier maritime security force, servicemembers seek to
better understand, identify, aggressively pursue and
prosecute transnational organized crime networks in the
Western Hemisphere.
“As long as people want illegal
drugs in the U.S., people are going to try to smuggle it
in,” said Casida. “And we'll be there continuing the
mission.”
By U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Melissa E. McKenzie
Provided
through
Coast
Guard
Copyright 2016
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