Coasties Cover D.C.

Sometimes they buzz my apart­ment on the sum­mit of Columbia Heights in north­west Washington, D.C. They’re bright red with white stripes and black noses, and they make a noise like giant lawn­mow­ers. They’re Eurocopter HH-​​65C Dolphins belong­ing to the U.S. Coast Guard, and they’ve inher­ited an unusual mis­sion, patrolling the skies over the nation’s cap­i­tal to inter­cept infil­trat­ing light air­craft like the one that crashed onto White House grounds in 1994.
It used to be this mis­sion belonged to the Customs Service’s air branch (PDF!) with its sharp black-​​and-​​gold Sikorsky UH-​​60 Blackhawks, aka “Customshawks”. Sharpshooters aboard the air­craft could, in a pinch, put a bul­let or twelve into the infiltrator’s engine to pre­vent it crash­ing into any­thing impor­tant such as, oh, my apart­ment. Or my favorite break­fast spot. Or Congress.
But Customs has been busier now that it has merged with the Border Patrol and finds itself respon­si­ble for 2,000 miles of porous south­ern bor­der. And besides, the Coast Guard has, in recent years, refined the so-​​called “air­borne use of force” mis­sion using a small squadron of MH-​​68 chop­pers based in Jacksonville, Florida. These nim­ble birds are ideal for chas­ing down drug smug­glers’ fast boats and posi­tion­ing snipers to shoot out their engines so Coast Guard cut­ters can move in for an arrest. It was a small step for the Coast Guard to per­form a sim­i­lar mis­sion using its stan­dard HH-​​65 res­cue chop­pers, tar­get­ing air­planes instead of boats. Details about the D.C. detach­ment are clas­si­fied, but the chop­pers’ pres­ence is pretty obvi­ous when they’re fly­ing right over­head.
Five years ago, armed Coast Guard heli­copters were a rar­ity. But the ser­vice has beefed up since 9/​11 to tackle a wider range of increas­ingly lethal threats, from smug­glers to ter­ror­ists and even, while deployed along­side the Navy, water­borne insur­gents. The future of war­fare is look­ing more and more like polic­ing on steroids. So the nation’s coastal cops are becom­ing more like war­riors every day.
I went fly­ing with an HH-​​65 unit over Atlantic City this week. It was great fun. Check out my Flickr stream for pics.
–David Axe

December 7th, 2006 | Planes, Copters, Blimps | 23301 Comment »http://defensetech.org/2006/12/07/coasties-cover-d-c/Coasties+Cover+D.C.2006-12-07+06%3A22%3A11wonk You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.