U.S. coasties conduct anti-terror training at St. Ignace

NEWS RELEASE

U.S. COAST GUARD

************************* CLEVELAND, OH - The U.S. Coast Guard is scheduled to host a tactical boat operators course in cooperation with the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators Boat Operations and Training (BOAT) program, offshore U.S. Coast Guard Station St. Ignace, Michigan, the week of July 11-15, 2011.

The training does not involve live-fire exercises.

Fifteen boat crew members from eight Coast Guard stations across the Great Lakes, one from Station Miami Beach, Fla., and personnel from the Mackinac County sherriff's office will participate.

The purpose is to become familiar with inter-agency security coordination and the waterborne response and tactics required of agencies operating cooperatively within the maritime domain.

Station St. Ignace will host the training.

"The course provides a unique opportunity to bring quality training to our crews and other maritime law enforcement partners," said Lt. Cmdr. Matt White, assistant chief of enforcement, Ninth Coast Guard District. "Safe and effective boat tactics to detect and intercept potential maritime threats are critical skills.

Honing those skills in a controlled environment with other federal and state partners is time well spent.

Waiting until an actual response is needed is much too late to learn how each other operates."

Consisting of five modules, practical exercises and a knowledge-based assessment, the training will demonstrate methods for identifying threats to high-value assets and critical infrastructure within the port environment.

The training features the same tactics, techniques and procedures that the U.S. Coast Guard uses to train its boat operators, enabling seamless security operations among federal, state, county and local maritime law enforcement officers and agencies.

The course is intended for federal, state and local law enforcement officers assigned to the maritime community and is specifically targeted toward personnel of waterborne response teams, marine units, or port security agencies or departments.

Neither the training nor the course involves live-fire exercises.

Rather, it is designed to provide training in boat intercept and defensive tactics that are used to defend maritime infrastructures and key assets.

Although the Coast Guard carries weapons in the course of routine operations, the Coast Guard does not conduct live-fire training on the Great Lakes.

Since the Coast Guard formally withdrew the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to establish 34 safety zones for live-fire training on the Great Lakes on Dec. 18, 2006, it has continued to conduct all live-fire training for its crews at a Department of Defense range facility outside the Great Lakes region.

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