The Coast Guard has been busy in recent months, carrying out several major drug seizures in the waters near the U.S.-Mexico border. And this past month service members were spotted training with a new tool to help with interdictions: jet skis. Yes, the Coast Guard has tactical jet skis now.
Coast Guard members were recorded testing out the new all-black jet skis in the waters around San Diego on Jan. 14-15. “It’s not any jet ski,” one person says in a video released by the Coast Guard last month. The video shows them cruising through the coastal waters in formation, gunning it at high speed while doing maneuvers. Photos posted to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (or DVIDS) show another implementation of the vehicles: coastal insertion. A team of Coast Guard frogmen rode the jet skis through poor visibility and large waves to make landfall at Coronado Beach before walking away from the surf.
The new personal maritime vehicles were being used for interdiction training, according to the Coast Guard, and are “a component of newly implemented efforts to increase security along the Southwest Border.” It’s not immediately clear how new the jet skis — or “tactical personal watercraft” as the Coast Guard calls them — are, or if they are being actively fielded or are still in testing. The Coast Guard did not immediately respond to questions regarding them. However, according to information posted to DVIDS, the training with the tactical jet skis was being done as part of the Coast Guard’s Office of Rapid Response and Prototyping (CG-RAPTOR) program.
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The service announced the RAPTOR program in January, but said it had been active for 150 days by that point. It was set up as part of the service’s Force Design 2028 plan last year, as part of an effort to update and oversee the Coast Guard’s technology, in everything from vehicles to uncrewed vehicles and other autonomous systems. Much of the Coast Guard’s interdiction efforts have involved larger ships like the service’s cutters; the jet skis offer quick, smaller ways for service members to intercept or pursue a target, even to land.
The Coast Guard isn’t alone in using jet skis. Navy Special Warfare Command has utilized them for years, thanks in part to a combination of their small profile and speed. Some other nations have also fielded military jet skis, including Iran, which had some modified to carry mounted weapons — yes, this creates a wet technical. However the Coast Guard is less focused on direct action combat and infiltration raids and more on interdiction.
While the U.S. Navy has been concentrating ships and other assets in the Caribbean in the name of counter-narcotics operations, the Coast Guard has been heavily active in the waters there and in the eastern Pacific. In August it launched Operation Pacific Viper, a coordinated effort to stop suspected drug boats and seize any narcotics onboard. As of Feb. 5, it has seized more than 200,000 Lbs. of cocaine in the eastern Pacific Ocean since the operation started, the Coast Guard said.
