Members of the U.S. Coast Guard's 312th Port Security Unit patrol Gladstone Harbor, Australia, July 26, 2023. (Georia Napier/U.S. Army)
GLADSTONE, Australia — The U.S. Coast Guard has sent 100 members of its high-risk “deployable specialized forces” to the massive Talisman Sabre exercise underway in Australia.
The special teams are training to secure sea lanes and ports during the two-week exercise along Australia’s eastern coast. Talisman Sabre incorporates 30,000 troops, mostly from the U.S. and Australia, and partner nations in a series of drills ending Friday.
The special teams, Down Under for the first time, join the drills after more than a decade of regular reports of Chinese coast guard and maritime militia harassing vessels from neighboring countries in disputed Western Pacific waters. Coast Guard special teams handle high-risk law enforcement, anti-terrorism and naval warfare, among other activities.
Sending security personnel to Talisman Sabre is part of the Coast Guard’s effort to synchronize with other service branches, according to Capt. Matt Michaelis, deputy chief of operations for Coast Guard Pacific Area.
“Our primary mission is related to homeland security, but our area of operations covers 74 million square miles, including the high [latitudes] and Oceania, and the Western Pacific,” he told Stars and Stripes at an army depot near Gladstone on Sunday.
Members of the U.S. Coast Guard's 312th Port Security Unit patrol onshore at Gladstone Harbor, Australia, July 26, 2023. (Georia Napier/U.S. Army)
Deployable specialized forces can fly into a partner nation and train ahead of a Coast Guard cutter port call, Michaelis said.
Most of the Coast Guard personnel taking part in Talisman Sabre are providing security in Bowen for soldiers and sailors moving fuel, water, vehicles and other equipment from ships at sea onto local beaches.
A dozen Coast Guard members are in Gladstone, almost 400 miles to the south, providing security alongside Australian soldiers for naval forces from the two nations honing mine-hunting skills offshore.
“The maritime safety and security team members in Gladstone assist with coastal defense — securing key infrastructure and ports and critical shipping,” said Michaelis, who is based in Alameda, Calif.
The Coast Guard also practiced setting up entry control points in Gladstone and patrolling with the Australian army, Lt. Cmdr. Keifer Wells, a reservist with the San Francisco-based Port Security Unit 312, said at the depot.
Coast Guard personnel are patrolling Gladstone’s harbor in a pair of 29-foot deployable security boats. On Sunday, the boats were moored in a secure area at the end of a floating dock used by private yachts.
The vessels can be transported in U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III or C-5 Galaxy aircraft, said Michaelis, who in 2003 deployed to the port of Umm Qasr, Iraq, on the cutter Aquidneck, one of four patrol boats providing security for humanitarian shipments arriving there.
As for China’s growing coast guard fleet, Michaelis noted that coast guards enforce international norms.
“Flying a racing stripe on a white hull doesn’t make you a coast guard,” he said.
