The US Coast Guard is currently experiencing the largest manpower shortage in its 235-year history.

While striving to maintain its longstanding domestic protective services during this manpower crisis, the Coast Guard, in a classic example of poor timing, has been slowly but steadily assigned the additional tasking for ports and waterways security, maritime border protection, Indo-Pacific and Middle East issues, and most recently, the maritime drug interdictions and vessel seizures, in South and Central America and the Caribbean.

All of which is adding further stress and strain to the world’s premier maritime law enforcement agency, which is already overworked, undermanned, and still no larger than the New York City Police Department.

And this is where Division 7 of the US Coast Guard's District One, Southern Region Auxiliary hopes it can be of service.

Following the establishment of the U.S. Coast Guard Innovation Program, the mandates in Force Design 2028, and the Commandant’s directive to foster a culture of continuous innovation and learning, the Division 7 Special Projects Group (SPG) has been formed to provide, maintain, and support a collaborative environment where skilled and talented members can share their expertise and perspectives on research and development projects that affect the safety and security of the recreational boating community.

While the Auxiliary will continue to provide the recreational boating community with education classes and free vessel safety inspections, (along with direct operational support through its airborne, surface, and communications services), the SPG recognizes that recent world events and rapid technological advancements clearly indicate that, moving forward, the Auxiliary will also need to focus on recruiting individuals with specialized life skills and knowledge in emerging areas such as organizational administration and training, artificial intelligence, talent acquisition, cybersecurity, and unmanned aerial systems, where their intellectual assets could help maintain the safety and security of recreational boating, especially during this critical manpower shortage.

To support this Coast Guard-wide effort to increase the efficiency and accelerate the process of turning innovative ideas or solutions into mission results, the SPG provides an environment and structured framework that encourages subject-matter experts among us to contribute their experience and expertise to a single, well-defined research project without worrying about the all-too-common occurrence of being “volunteered” to run an entire program because the results of a single project they worked on was so successful.

By combining people's imagination and creativity with expert-level knowledge and experience within an open dialogue framework that fosters collaborative brainstorming and the cross-pollination of ideas, the SPG ensures that the path from initial idea to meaningful impact remains clear and achievable by maintaining a nexus where leadership can directly request ideas from the group and the group can directly share ideas with leadership.

Disruptive Innovation in Recreational Maritime Safety and Security

Disruptive Innovation in Recreational Maritime Safety and Security

Division 7 Special Projects Group