Safety is at Our Core

Excerpt from U.S. Coast Guard “Proceedings of the Marine Safety & Security Council” magazine. By ADM Thad Allen, Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard.


One of the Coast Guard’s greatest strengths is our multi-mission character. It allows us to conduct a wide range of functions in the maritime domain, from marine safety, to law enforcement and national defense, to environmental protection and humanitarian response. The Coast Guard has accrued these roles and missions over two centuries of service because these duties serve a collective good and are most efficiently and effectively accomplished by a single federal maritime force.

Our marine safety mission remains the bedrock of the Coast Guard’s value to the nation, and it underpins our security and environmental stewardship programs. This focus on safety pervades all of our mission areas; it is woven into the very fabric of our service, and is the ultimate focus of all we do.

We secure our ports and waterways to keep America safe from terrorist attack, safe from the ravages of illegal drugs, and safe from unlawful entry of any kind. We protect the world’s oceans and our living marine resources. In the event of any natural or man-made disaster, we act to ensure the safety of our citizens and to remove them from harm’s way.

The U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety & Security Council supports these missions, and its members direct and drive these efforts. Our operational model is flexible, adaptive, efficient, and capable of succeeding with innumerable maritime scenarios. This positions the Coast Guard to meet a broad range of national interests.

As we seek to continually improve maritime safety, we will also strive to balance each of our essential mission requirements. Coast Guard men and women serve across the nation and around the world keeping people safe, ports secure, and our waters protected. For hundreds of years, we’ve been there when the nation needed us most. While we live in a changing world, one thing is certain: Marine safety will forever be at our core.

We will be sharing examples of this sentiment in action in the next series of blogs, excerpted from the “Focus on Safety” issue of Proceedings of the Marine Safety & Security Council magazine.

For more information:
Full article and “Focus on Safety” edition of USCG Proceedings is available at www.uscg.mil/proceedings. Click on “archives” and then “2008 Vol. 65, Number 2” (Summer 2008).

Subscribe online at http://www.uscg.mil/proceedings/subscribe.asp.Online survey available at: http://www.uscg.mil/proceedings/survey.asp.

Direct requests for print copies of this edition to: HQS-DG-NMCProceedings@uscg.mil.