Q&A: Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft
CGF 2011 Volume: 3 Issue: 6 (December)
Maritime Environment
Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft
Assistant Commandant for Marine Safety,
Security and Stewardship
Rear Admiral Zukunft assumed his current position as assistant commandant for marine safety, security and stewardship in May of 2010. He is responsible for developing and promulgating national marine safety, security and environmental protection doctrine, policy, and regulations, as well as ensuring policy alignment throughout the federal government and with international maritime partners. In addition, he leads and oversees the important work of numerous federal advisory committees and international partnerships related to marine safety, security, and environmental protection.
He recently served as the federal-on-scene-coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf where he directed federal, state and local agencies in response efforts. His previous Headquarters flag assignments included the director of response policy and the assistant commandant for capability. Zukunft has also served as the commander, Eleventh Coast Guard District. His responsibilities as district commander included command and control over all Coast Guard missions along the Pacific coast from California to Chile culminating in the removal of more than 120 tons of cocaine; 5,800 lives saved; safety and security of three of our nation’s top five port complexes; and implementation of the Transportation Worker’s Identification Credential to more than 75,000 members of the maritime industry. Zukunft’s first Flag assignment was as the director, Joint Interagency Task Force West. In that capacity, he served as U.S. Pacific Command’s executive agent for strategic planning and tactical execution of counter drug related activities throughout 41 countries and across more than 105 million square miles. He was promoted to Flag rank in 2006.
His senior staff assignments included chief of operations, Coast Guard Pacific Area and chief of operations oversight, Coast Guard Atlantic Area where he directly supervised all major cutter operations in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. He also served as chief of staff, at the Fourteenth Coast Guard District in Honolulu. Zukunft has commanded six units and served extensively in the cutter fleet where he commanded the cutters Cape Upright, Harriet Lane and Rush. He also served as chief of Port Operations, Marine Safety Office (now Sector) Corpus Christi where he supervised a $100 million Superfund clean-up.
Zukunft graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science degree in government; from Webster University in 1988 with a Master of Arts degree in management; and from the U.S. Naval War College in 1997 with a Master of Arts degree in strategic studies and international affairs. He is a graduate of the Asia Pacific Center for Strategic Studies Executive Seminar and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government National Preparedness Leadership Initiative course.
He wears the permanent Cutterman pin and his personal awards include the Department of Homeland Security Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit (2), Meritorious Service medal with “O” device (5); Coast Guard Commendation Medal (2) and Coast Guard Achievement medal with “O” device (2).
Rear Admiral Zukunft was interviewed by CGF editor Maura McCarthy.
Q: Could you offer a brief sketch of your background and experience in the Coast Guard? How have your past commands prepared you to be assistant commandant for marine safety, security, and stewardship?
A: Over my career I’ve had six commands, so I have a lot of experience leading at the very front. A number of those have been at sea, but I’ve also commanded a district and a joint interagency task force doing global counter-drug efforts. Since my title is marine safety, security and stewardship, when I was a lieutenant I was also the chief of port operations at a marine safety office, which are now called sectors. I was very involved in marine safety programs, which is somewhat unique in our service as usually there are two discreet career paths; I was able to that but also spent a lot of time doing more fundamental law enforcement, counter-drug and migrant interdiction operations as well.
Q: In Admiral Papp’s State of the Coast Guard address he outlined four pillars to help guide the Coast Guard in its work, which included sustaining mission excellence, recapitalizing and building capacity, enhancing crisis response and management, and preparing for the future. How as assistant commandant for marine safety, security and stewardship can you implement this guidance?
A: The commandant has actually given me some specific guidance, especially in regard to sustaining mission excellence. I’m leading an overhaul of some of our specialized capabilities, we’re calling it a Stem to Stern review, of some high-end capabilities the Coast Guard acquired post-9/11, particularly with our maritime safety and security teams and our enhanced capabilities that are almost on par with what special operations programs do. I’m certainly leading that effort.
On recapitalization, I come from a cutter fleet and I can speak firsthand of the challenges that I faced—at that time operating a 40-year-old cutter, which was almost 10 years ago—in the Bering Sea. The challenges were really on the crew to keep that cutter mission ready; when I go back to my command assignments and think of the need for recapitalization, it’s really felt hardest on the people that we ask—and require—to maintain these aging platforms to conduct our nation’s business.
As far as enhancing crisis management, I was the federal-on-scene coordinator and was in the Gulf for seven months last year leading the effort for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response. Actually, I just signed out a fairly lengthy federal-on-scene coordinator’s report that outlines all of the activities that we undertook, many of which are not in our national contingency plan, which will help prepare us in the future for worst case scenarios, especially as we look in the Arctic where there are drilling initiatives afoot. How do we prepare to respond in a contingency in a remote arctic region?
The other aspect of preparing for the future is preparing to sustain mission excellence in what is looking to be a very budget-constrained environment, certainly with the budget control act that was passed the day after Coast Guard day on August 5, 2011. That act applies to all services, all agencies. What that means in my line of work is questioning how we better integrate our work with those of the other DHS components and continue to leverage the relationships we have with DoD.
Q: Could you discuss the Coast Guard’s approach to maritime border security?
A: This has been, I think for some, when we talk about prevention and response, probably not widely understood. We really look at that and we ask how we can preserve the resiliency of the global supply chain. That really starts at a point of departure for any ship destined for the U.S. That outermost layer of the border, if you will—you always hear about a layered security regime—the outermost layer is really in the foreign ports of the countries with which the U.S. conducts trade. We have an international port security liaison program where Coast Guard officers go out to hundreds of foreign ports and then use the international port security code as a checklist to audit that port’s ability to abide by international port security regimes. If they are found to be in compliance then we have a good trade agreement with them, but for those ports and countries who are not in compliance, any ship that would stop at that port, or in any of its previous five ports prior to coming to the U.S., would be subject to more stringent boarding and inspection regimes upon arrival to the U.S. That is one layer—determining where the high threats are overseas.
The next layer is when a vessel over 300 gross tons is coming into the U.S., they are required to provide at least 96 hours of advance notice of arrival. With that advance notice information—cargo and crew information—we work with Customs and Border Patrol at the National Targeting Center, and prior to its arrival we go through a very detailed vetting of the crew, their background, the cargo and the shippers, to determine what threat the crew or cargo may pose to the U.S. This then informs the captain of the port: one, do we allow the vessel to enter, and two, if we do, do we need to apply additional safeguards prior to that vessel’s arrival?
That’s just in our day-to-day trade on the international scheme; probably more of the familiar aspect of border security is our counterdrug activity. We have 44 bilateral agreements with other nations, primarily in the source zone where drugs come from, and a number of these countries don’t have the means to conduct detection, monitoring or interdiction of drugs, especially on vessels that transit the waters of those nations. We’re forward deployed in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific where many of these drugs originate and we conduct law enforcement on behalf of those countries, including the interdiction and prosecution. Similarly, where we have significant migrant flow, especially in the Straits of Florida, we have vessels pre-positioned to apprehend the smuggling vessels, particularly since we’re responsible for the protection of life at sea and second to make sure those people don’t gain illegal entry into the U.S.
Q: How will the new Maritime Operations Coordination Plan facilitate information sharing and coordination across DHS components?
A: The Coast Guard has a program of record called Watchkeeper; it’s an information sharing tool if you will. Our concern would be that some of these information sharing systems become proprietary; if they become proprietary what they do is create stovepipes within the interagency process. Using this Watchkeeper system, it allows us to share information, not just across the DHS enterprise, but also with our port stakeholders. Not just providing them situational awareness, but also with the ability to coordinate operations. As we look in a resource-constrained environment, we may have a vessel that poses a threat, maybe in a given day we have Coast Guard boats and cutters that are conducting emergent search and rescue; this allows us to work with other port partners—CBP, maybe harbor police—where we can leverage their platforms so we can continue to conduct the mission. What it does is bring all of port-centric law enforcement into a common operating picture, to not just share information but also to coordinate operations.
Q: What are the challenges, or competing priorities when developing doctrine and policy during these austere economic times when the Coast Guard must do more with less?
A: I think that’s been our mission since 1790 when we started with 10 revenue cutters to enforce trade laws for a young nation. With that said, we’ve never been more relevant; there are new fronts that have opened up, particularly in the Arctic, and that does present a challenge for us. Our immediate concern is recapitalization of our aging fleet. These are very capable but very expensive platforms in what portends to be very austere budget times. At the same time, today we have one operational ice breaker, cutter Healy. The Polar Star is undergoing a life extension program and we’re preparing to decommission cutter Polar Sea. In the not too distant future, our capacity in the Arctic will diminish, short of a recapitalization of our ice breaking fleet in the Arctic— that is certainly a challenge as well. If this year is any indication— and I don’t attribute it necessarily to global climate change, although some do—we’re seeing more frequent and severe events, whether it’s earthquakes in Haiti, flooding in the Midwest, or frequent hurricanes with flooding. The second order effects these may have as well, especially the displacement of people in underprivileged countries, such as Haiti, may trigger a mass migration. As we look out the window and not too far over the horizon, we certainly see more challenges ahead but also a resource base that is dwindling.
You might ask, ‘How do we deal with that?’ We don’t have a force in garrison if you will. I was involved in the Haiti earthquake and just like after Katrina, in Haiti the Coast Guard was the first to have resources on scene. Our secretary asked us how we did that. Well, we were already down there doing drug and migrant interdiction operations. We shifted to do humanitarian relief in Haiti, but in order to do humanitarian relief we were no longer doing migrant interdiction or counter-drug operations, so it really comes down to a triage approach: What is the highest priority mission for the United States and the Coast Guard in those contingencies?
Q: How does the Coast Guard leverage its domestic and international strategic partnerships when it comes to drug and migrant interdiction?
A: Primarily through our bilateral agreement process. As I mentioned we have 44 counter-drug bilateral agreements; we have a Coast Guard flag officer as the director of our JIATF both in Key West and Honolulu for the Asia Pacific region. This becomes a rallying point for forging international relationships, sharing information, and adjudicating the prosecution of cases. In fact, on at least a weekly basis we work through a process known as the Maritime Operational Threat Response Program. If we interdict a vessel at sea carrying drugs, maybe it’s a stateless vessel, it may have a number of different nationalities on board, we convene a call—all hours of the night—with Department of Justice, State Department, Homeland Security, DoD— just to name a few—to determine how we want to prosecute this case. Do we want to bring this case to the U.S. or do we want to return it to either the home state of those nationals or to the flag state of the vessel? It’s done in a collaborative process, which is important when you go back to the Simas Kudirka case in the early 1970s, where the Coast Guard unilaterally made a determination to remove a Russian defector, which quickly escalated into an international incident. Through this process, we are able to convene a whole of government—not just a call, but a coordination process—to determine who the lead agency is and what the ultimate disposition of a given case may be. This again works across the interagency and international spectrum.
Q: As the Arctic becomes increasingly more navigable, what challenges do you see for the Coast Guard in developing marine safety, security and environmental protection policy and then executing this mission?
A: Our biggest challenge right now is infrastructure. I actually participated in the deliberations on the Arctic Council with the eight Arctic Council nations, and we signed a binding search and rescue agreement, basically a treaty, which lays out a number of protocols. If there were to be a mass rescue requirement in the Arctic, our ability to get there, establish communications, to have full situational awareness is very constrained. There is a trend over the last four years toward increased human activity in the Arctic—everything from cargo ships using that route as a shortcut between Asia and Europe, to ecotourism and passenger vessels travelling there in the summer months.
Probably even more pressing is an initiative on behalf of Shell Corporation to do exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea, probably within next eight to 10 months in the late spring of 2012. What would happen if we had a Deepwater Horizon event in the Arctic? We’re severely constrained in terms of the muster of response organization. We had 47,000 people working at the peak of the Deepwater Horizon response, whereas in Barrow, Alaska, I think you’d be hard-pressed to put up more than 100 people there, let alone the tens of thousands required; infrastructure is clearly a big challenge. At the same time, as a nation we are looking to provide more independence from foreign sources of oil and to go a little more domestic. There’s a fine balance of meeting economic security needs while at the same time balancing the environmental risks associated with that. Ultimately, how do you establish the necessary infrastructure—ships, piers, hangars—to be ready for a contingency in the Arctic? Infrastructure, bottom line, is our biggest challenge in the Arctic domain.
Q: As federal-on-scene-coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon incident, what lessons did you learn and how will the Coast Guard integrate them?
A: I think the first thing we learned was when the drilling companies submit a lease—back then it would go to Minerals Management Services— and within that lease they would determine what the worst case discharge would be. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, if we were to look at their oil spill response plan based on that vessel—Deepwater Horizon had a capacity of about 1 million gallons of fuel. So we were looking at that vessel from a million gallons of fuel that it had, but our planning activity didn’t take into account that it was working over a reservoir that may contain 300 million barrels of fuel. There was a big gap between our review process and back then Mineral Management Service; we have since made that correction. We concurrently review these plans with Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement [BOEMRE] and Coast Guard to look at that.
Another thing I learned firsthand in the Gulf was that many of these communities have been exposed time and time again to the Stafford Act due to natural disasters—hurricanes—that fall under a national response framework, which is really driven from the state up to the federal level orspill of national significance, we’ve done a number of exercises, but we have not had a spill of national significance since the Exxon Valdez, so it’s been over 20 years. These communities were not attuned to the nuances of the national contingency plan, which is very much driven from the federal level down. The awkwardness within the national contingency plan is that the responsible party is also responsible for the cleanup. So, you’re working in a community that first of all sees the responsible party as the bad guy, but also as the one doing the cleanup. My role as the federal-on-scene coordinator was to ensure the responsible party is doing everything required to minimize the impact of the spill. The perception is that the federal government is aiding and abetting the responsible party. That was just the perception that we had to overcome.
A more significant challenge was the technology that was required to control the well—we could keep skimming and burning and dispersing oil until the cows came home, but every day we had a major spill occur and that happened for 87 consecutive days. The real challenge was stopping the source of the oil spill 5,000 feet below the surface. In order to do that you need remotely operated vehicles, you need all the different approaches that were used—we had junk shots, top kills, top hats, capping stack, which was the final procedure that killed it, and then the relief wells that were drilled. None of these technologies exist within the federal government. There were a number of pursuits for the federal government to take over the spill, but if we in fact had to relieve BP of those duties, we would have had to turn around to another oil company to provide that technology because again, that does not exist in the federal government.
Another key point in what we came to appreciate is that the solvency of a responsible party is equally critical. When I left at the end of last year in December, the cost to date of the response was already in excess of $16 billion. If the feds were to have taken that over, or if we had a non-solvent responsible party, it would be then incumbent upon the federal government to provide those dollars. Again, it comes down to austere budget times—that was not a cost that we want to bear.
The final piece is how do you stay in front of the news and not just react to it, and that is a challenge whether it’s a hurricane, fire, oil spill or any event. It did challenge our ability to consolidate all the information, to get it out in a coherent fashion to the national media outlets, and to do so in a way that would inspire public trust. The way I found to finally do that, was for almost every press release I did, I took the media in a helicopter or plane out to the source, to the front line of where the action was. To really lead the operation from the front, you can’t lead it from an air-conditioned office and provide third-hand reports, you really have to provide firsthand reports to provide credibility that the federal government has full situational awareness. I think a quote Admiral Allen and I used was that it was an ‘all hands on deck’ response.
Q: What do you see as the most pressing tasks for the Coast Guard in the year ahead?
A: Clearly, how do we balance a declining budget with an aging fleet and ultimately recapitalize our aging fleet? To date we’ve done quite well, but we’ve gone through a period of nearly 10 consecutive years of budgetary growth and those days have ended; I see that as a challenge and a task for us, especially here in D.C. Mission excellence, as I alluded to, will be a challenge. There are going to be days where some missions may take priority over others; we have 11 statutory missions. During Deepwater Horizon we pulled in about seven of our buoy tenders who do aids to navigation to respond to an oil spill. In order to provide mission excellence we will have to, on a daily basis, assess what our greatest risks and requirements are to be able to meet those needs.
Finally, this probably goes back to the beginning of our conversation, I’ve had the great pleasure of having a number of various commands, and the last ship I left had a very complex systems of weapons, fire control, turbines. When you’re the commanding officer of a ship, you probably know how to flip eggs, apply paint, but you’re not the subject matter expert in all of the systems who keep the platform running. It’s fairly junior enlisted people who are the backbone of our service, and as we look at the challenges ahead we need to be very mindful of the future leaders of our Coast Guard, who are those very junior people right now. They look to us to provide a sense of optimism that we will work through this budget cycle and we will come out just as strong a Coast Guard as we went in.
Q: What are some of the most significant lessons you’ve learned since assuming your current position?
A: I would go back to last year’s Deepwater Horizon incident. There was a tendency to say that the Coast Guard should just take charge of this; however, there’s a fine distinction between what I call unity of effort and unity of command. Unity of command works very well in a hierarchical organization such as that which exists in DoD. I didn’t have that with the 47,000 responders; on any given day, all but the 7,000 Coasties could have walked off the job and I would have been left hanging. So, how do you build unity of effort? I actually went to a course at Harvard to try to get a little bit smarter on this. At the Kennedy School of Government they teach a course called the National Preparedness Leadership Institute; they have a term called meta-leadership. It’s the principles of how you lead up an organization, how you lead down, and how you lead horizontally. In the context of the Deepwater Horizon, when it came to leading up, it went up as high as the White House; when it came to leading down it came down to impoverished communities that depend on the sea for their livelihood and how you connect with them. Leading horizontally was how do I provide leadership to all of the people trying to minimize the impact of the spill?
The other component is how you communicate strategically. I’m not the smartest guy in the room, so the key is to make sure you find the smartest people, make sure you surround yourself with them, and make sure you don’t have yes people. You want them to tell you, ‘Emperor, you have no clothes.’ I really found that surrounding yourself with smart people and applying common sense, and when you communicate, communicate so that it makes sense and everyone understands what you’re saying, was critical.
Q: Do you have any closing thoughts?
A: I was just up at the Coast Guard Academy when the new class of swabs came in; when you look at the diversity of people and the talents they bring into the service, I think our future looks very bright. I’ll give you one quick sea story. My last command afloat was on the cutter Rush, one of our high-endurance cutters, and I would meet with our new graduates from Cape May all the way up to the chiefs and officers in focus groups. So as I was meeting with our new graduates—we call them non-rates, but I just call them seamen or firemen—the first question I asked them was, ‘How many of you have graduated from high school?’ 100 percent. ‘How many of you have been to college but didn’t complete it?’ 60-70 percent.’How many of you have an associate degree?’ About 40 percent. ‘How many have undergraduate degrees?’ About 25 percent. ‘How many have master’s degrees?’ About 10 percent. Ten percent of that crew, journeymen in the Coast Guard, had master’s degrees. So I asked one, ‘What did you do before enlisting in the Coast Guard?’ He was a little bit older. And he says that he worked for a major defense contractor. I asked where he went to school and he said, ‘MIT. I have a master’s degree in mechanical engineering.’ I thought, ‘Why did you enlist, you were making six figures?’ He said he wanted to be a naval engineer in the Coast Guard and the only way to learn it is to learn from the bilges up. The rest of the story was that one of our engines broke in the Bering Sea, we had a four strath blower without a spare part, but we had a machine shop on board. So we call this kid up and tell him we’re down hard in the Bering Sea in the winter, can you help us out? He says, ‘Sure, I’ll have it fixed in 90 minutes.’ Sure enough, he had us back up and running. That’s just an anecdote of the quality and strength of our people. With people like that, I’m very comfortable that as my service is probably in its twilight, the dawn of the next generation of the Coast Guard men and women coming up is brighter than it’s ever been before. ♦