The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Adak (WPB 1333) transits at maximum speed. Adak is assigned to Commander, Task Force 55 and is supporting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by: Quartermaster 2nd Class Kendall Mabon/Released)
Commissioned in 1989, U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Adak (WPB-1333), is one of the last remaining 110-foot Island-class patrol boats in the service.
She is also perhaps the most historic.
Serving initially in New York City, operating from the now-closed Coast Guard base on Governor’s Island, she was the on-scene commander for the response to TWA Flight 800. Then, on Sept. 11, 2001, she was the command boat for the “American Dunkirk” seaborne evacuation of more than 500,000 people trapped in lower Manhattan.
Then, deployed to the Persian Gulf in 2003 with three of her sisters, Coalition Warship 1333 carried Navy SEALs and Polish GROM special forces on raids to seize Iraq’s two primary oil terminals intact before they could be destroyed. During that mission, on 23 March 2003, she was one of the first units to capture Iraqi PWs.
Still forward deployed to Bahrain, she has seen more of the Persian Gulf than many, and most of her recent crews have been younger than the aging patrol boat. Slated to be disposed of in the coming months, replaced by a larger and more capable 158-foot Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutter that is already in the Med and on the way to the sandbox, a group wants to bring her back home instead.
From the USCGC Adak Historical Society, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that wants to bring her back from overseas and install her as a museum ship in Tampa Bay, where she would also help with a youth program, a worthy idea that, when the size and condition of the vessel are taken into account, very achievable:
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Adak is slated to be decommissioned on July 14, 2021. The Adak is a historic ship that led the largest waterborne rescue in world history in New York City on September 11th, 2001, and later captured some of the very first enemy prisoners of war in Iraq. Without a budget to bring her home, and due to current limitations on how to dispose of the ship, the Coast Guard is planning to give the USCGC Adak to the government of Indonesia. This ship is a national historic treasure and we cannot let this happen!
210412-N-NN369-1046 SAN DIEGO (April 12, 2021) Littoral combat ship USS Freedom (LCS 1) returns to Naval Base San Diego from her final deployment, April 12. Freedom returned after supporting Joint Interagency Task Force South’s counter illicit drug trafficking mission in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jessica Paulauskas)
SAN DIEGO (April 12, 2021) – The inaugural littoral combat ship returned from a U.S. Fourth Fleet deployment, April 12.
Littoral combat ship USS Freedom (LCS 1) was deployed to support Joint Interagency Task Force South’s mission, which includes counter illicit drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.
“The success of this deployment is a testament to the hard work and dedication of Freedom’s Sailors and our embarked detachments,” said Cmdr. Larry Repass, Freedom’s commanding officer. “Every Sailor and U.S. Coast Guardsman on this mission has lived up to Freedom’s motto of ‘Fast, Focused, Fearless,’ and they have made great contributions to maritime security in the region.”
During their deployment, the crew of Freedom and a detachment from Helicopter Sea Combat squadron 23 completed joint operations with a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment in support of counter-illicit trafficking, improving Navy-Coast Guard naval warfighting readiness and interoperability. Additionally, Freedom sailed with naval assets from both El Salvador and Guatemala, strengthening naval partnerships and improving regional readiness.
Written off by Big Navy as a beta test vessel for an increasingly troublesome class of under-armed warships not even worthy of being deemed a frigate and too expensive to upgrade, Freedom is set for decommissioning in September just shy of her 13th birthday.
The basic problem with the “80 percent” designation is that it is a marketing gimmick just as much as the term “Ghost Gun” is, and is not a real-life thing. The ATF looks at a firearm as being 100 percent a firearm, or 100 percent not a firearm. There is no such thing under the law as being anything between, hence the ability to sell such kits through the mail with no checks or regulations– because they just are not guns.
It is too hard to come up with a realistic rule for such things.
Take an AK47 or G3 style rifle. They have a receiver made from folding a flat piece of sheet steel together and making the required cuts. Super simple tech. A guy even famously made an AK from a shovel once.
How do you regulate that?
Even ARs begin life as a plain block of aluminum that doesn’t need that many steps to mill out to a receiver– a process that is in the public domain.
Then there are guns like the STEN and the like, for which a myriad of plans and parts kits are floating around, which were specifically designed to be made DIY-style with commonly available parts and simple hand tools. Have you ever heard of Harbor Freight?
Finally, the biggest elephant in the room: criminals will still find a way to make guns. In England, after intense gun control was established, blank guns and starter pistols were converted to fire projectiles while a cottage industry sprouted up to make obsolete 19th-century ammo for relics that had not seen factory-loaded a cartridge produced since Victoria was on the throne. The answer? More gun control on Sherlock Holmes-era firearms. Sure.
Take this specimen recently picked up by the SFPD– a town without any (legal) gun stores since 2017 and in a state with an “assault weapon” ban since 1989.
Homemade with a DIY frame, this Glock-pattern 9mm also has a selector switch on the back of the slide to make it full auto. Now such switches have been illegal without a tax stamp since 1934 and banned from new consumer production since 1986, but here one is, just floating around the Bay Area. Guess making something illegal doesn’t magically mean it will vanish and that no one would break the law to make one.
You just can’t really regulate this stuff and expect it to have an effect on crime.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, stepping down off my soapbox. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
As part of Russian wargames in the Arctic, three Russki submarines just surfaced from under the ice, a pretty decent show of force for the region and a nice ICE-EX for any nation.
From the Russian Ministry of Defense:
Today, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, listened via video conference call to the report of the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, on the ongoing Umka-21 complex Arctic expedition. Admiral Nikolay Evmenov reported that since March 20, 2021, in the area of the Franz Josef Land archipelago, Alexandra Land island and the adjacent water area covered with continuous ice, under the leadership of the Main Command of the Navy, a comprehensive Arctic expedition “Umka-2021” is being conducted with the participation of the Russian Geographical Society … “For the first time, according to a single concept and plan, a complex of combat training, research and practical measures of various directions is being carried out in the circumpolar regions,” the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy emphasized.
During the expedition, according to Admiral Nikolai Evmenov, 43 events are envisaged, of which 35 have been completed to date, including 10 jointly with the Russian Geographical Society. All activities of the expedition are carried out as planned. The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy said that more than 600 military and civilian personnel and about 200 models of weapons, military and special equipment were involved in the expedition. All planned activities take place in harsh climatic conditions: in the area of the expedition, the average temperature is minus 25-30 degrees Celsius, the thickness of the ice cover is up to 1.5 meters, the wind in gusts reaches 32 meters per second.
Admiral Nikolai Evmenov reported to Vladimir Putin that within the framework of the Arctic expedition, for the first time in the history of the Russian Navy, three nuclear submarines surfaced from under the ice in a limited area with a radius of 300 meters; flight to the polar region with refueling in the air of a pair of MiG-31 fighters with the passage of the geographic point of the North Pole; practical torpedo firing by a nuclear submarine from under the ice, followed by equipping a hole at the torpedo’s ascent point and lifting it to the surface; tactical exercise with a subdivision of the arctic motorized rifle brigade in adverse weather conditions.
“Based on the results of the measures taken, the samples of weapons, military and special equipment participating in military-technical experiments have generally confirmed their tactical and technical characteristics in conditions of high latitudes and low temperatures,” said the commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy. Admiral Nikolai Evmenov also added that the Arctic expeditions of the Navy will continue in the future.
As noted by The Drive, the three subs are all top-shelf boomers:
[T]wo sails belonging to Delta IV class submarines, also known as Project 667BDRM Delfins. It’s possible that the third boat could be either a member of the Borei class, or the lone Borei-A class submarine presently in service, the Knyaz Vladimir. The Borei and Borei-A designs are Russia’s most advanced ballistic missile submarines.
In January 1965, USCGC Hamilton (WHEC-715) the first of the country’s 378-foot High Endurance Cutters– and the largest designed for the service up to that time– was laid down. Equipped roughly as a destroyer escort with six ASW torpedo tubes, sonar, and a 5″/38, they were also the country’s first CODAG engineering suites introduced into service.
The Hamilton-class cutters were one of the first naval vessels built with a combined diesel and gas turbine propulsion plant. “The twin screws can use 7,000 diesel shaft horsepower to make 17 knots, and a total of 36,000 gas turbine shaft horsepower to make 28 knots. The diesel engines are Fairbanks-Morse and are larger versions of a 1968 diesel locomotive design. Her Pratt-Whitney marine gas turbine engines are similar to those installed in Boeing 707 passenger jet aircraft.”
Over the years, they stood on the front line of the Cold War and saw some combat during Vietnam’s Operation Market Time providing naval gunfire support for troops ashore while busting blacked-out munition-laden trawlers poking around the littoral at night. In the 1980s, they FRAM’d with the provision to carry Harpoon AShMs while trading in the old 5-inchers for a 76mm OTO and a CIWS, then continued to soldier on.
When Hamilton struck in 2011, it started a slo-mo fuze on the 12 ships of the class that will burn out at the end of the month with the decommissioning of Kodiak-based USCGC Douglas Munro (WHEC-724), which joined the fleet in 1971– 50 years ago.
U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Munro in Kodiak, July 2018. USCG Photo/ENS Jake Marx.
From COMDT COGARD, WASHINGTON DC:
UNCLAS ALCOAST 088/21 SSIC 4500 SUBJ: USCGC DOUGLAS MUNRO (WHEC 724) 49 YEARS OF SERVICE 1. On 31 Mar 2021, after 49 years of faithful service to our Nation, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO will transition to In-Commission Special status. This status begins the decommissioning process. Throughout the cutter’s service, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO crews embodied the cutter’s motto – “Honoring the Past by Serving the Present.” 2. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO was named in honor of Coast Guard Signalman First Class Douglas Albert Munro, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of extraordinary heroism in World War II. As the Officer-in-Charge of an eight-craft amphibious landing force during the Guadalcanal Campaign, Munro bravely used his landing craft and its .30 caliber machine gun to shield and protect several hundred Marines who were under heavy enemy fire. He was mortally wounded during this effort, but his actions allowed for the Marines to be extracted by other landing craft. Commissioned on 27 Sep 1971 as the tenth cutter in the Hamilton Class, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO was originally homeported in Boston, MA but quickly moved to its Seattle, WA homeport in 1973. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO again shifted homeport to Honolulu, HI in 1981 and then to Alameda, CA in 1989. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO made a final homeport shift to Kodiak, AK in 2007. 3. Over the course of the cutter’s distinguished career, those who sailed aboard CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO served in a multitude of domestic and international theaters including the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, Persian Gulf and Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia and Eastern Pacific Ocean. 4. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO’s proud legacy of honorable service to the Nation began in the early 1970s patrolling Ocean Stations Delta, Bravo, and November, providing weather data to trans- Pacific flights, supporting oceanographic research missions, and performing search-and-rescue operations. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO also patrolled the Pacific for decades as a critical enforcer of fisheries regulations, particularly with the international fleets of the former Soviet Union, Korea, Indonesia, and Russia. In 1998, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO interdicted over 11.5 tons of cocaine on a Mexican flagged vessel, the XOLESUIENTLE, in what remains to this day one of the largest single drug seizures in USCG history. The following year, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO seized the motor vessel WING FUNG LUNG, which was attempting to transport 259 illegal Chinese migrants to the United States. In early 2005, at the beginning of a six-month, 37,000 mile global circumnavigation that included support to Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and ENDURING FREEDOM, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO diverted to render assistance to countries affected by the devastating December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO’s legacy was epitomized on March 23, 2008 when the cutter and its embarked MH-65 Aviation Detachment worked with a forward deployed Air Station Kodiak MH-60 to recover 20 survivors of the F/V ALASKA RANGER that sank in the Bering Sea early that morning. The Seventeenth Coast Guard District Commander at the time of the rescue, RADM Arthur Brooks, declared it “One of the greatest search and rescue efforts in modern history.” 5. During the cutter’s last year of service, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO completed 159 days away from homeport patrolling over 23,000 nautical miles in the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Pacific Ocean to enforce laws, treaties, and regulations critical to detecting and deterring Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) fishing. This included an operation NORTH PACIFIC GUARD deployment and two Alaska patrols, concluding the cutter’s long legacy of safeguarding mariners in some of the world’s most perilous waters. 6. The decommissioning of CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO comes 10 years after CGC HAMILTON was the first WHEC-378 to be decommissioned in March 2011. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO’s decommissioning marks the end of service for the 12-cutter HAMILTON class fleet, whose crews proudly served the Nation for more than half a century. The spirit of Douglas Munro will continue to live on in the sixth National Security Cutter, CGC MUNRO (WMSL 755), the second cutter to bear the name of the Coast Guard’s sole Medal of Honor recipient. 7. To current and past CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO crews, Plankowners, Shellbacks (Golden, Emerald, Horned, or otherwise), subjects of the Golden Dragon, Blue Noses, and even Pollywogs: Well Done! Through 49 years of service, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO crews admirably served the Coast Guard and the Nation. Congratulations and Bravo Zulu! 8. ADM Karl L. Schultz, Commandant (CCG), sends. 9. Internet release is authorized.
As with all 11 of her sisters, Douglas Munro will be given a light refit and transferred to an overseas ally, namely Vietnam, which already operates the former USCGC Morgenthau (WHEC-722) and is slated to receive ex-USCGC Midgett (WHEC-726) this year. The 378s are all currently still afloat and in fleet use with Bangladesh, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka in addition to the Vietnamese ships.
As for her name, that of the service’s only MOH recipient, the Coast Guard commissioned the new Pascagoula-built 418-foot National Security Cutter USCGC Munro (WMSL 755) in 2017, leading to the curious state of the service having two large cutters on its active list named for the hero at the same time.
378-foot Hamilton-class Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Munro (WHEC 724) and the new 418-foot Berthoff-class USCGC Munro (WMSL 755), working together off the Hawaiian Islands, Aug. 29, 2020. USCG Photo
The USCG does a lot of unsung nation-building operations around the world and has done so for years. The fact is, a low-tech cutter is often a better training mesh with the navy or maritime patrol force of a small coastal nation. One of the longest relationships is with the Japan Coast Guard, which was founded in May 1948 as the Japan Maritime Safety Agency– notably six years and two months prior to the current Japan Maritime Self Defense Force.
In an ode to the past, and with eyes on the future, the huge (9,300-ton) Shikishima-class patrol vessel Akitsushima (PLH-32) of the JCG last month conducted exercises near the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands in the Philippine Sea with the West Pac-deployed 4,600-ton Bertholf-class National Security Cutter USCGC Kimball (WMSL-756). The drills included operating “helicopters, small boats, and unmanned aerial vehicles to practice interdicting foreign vessels operating illegally inside Japanese waters.”
The two ships looked great together.
Of note, Akitsushima, while the same size as a DDG, is very lightly armed for her tonnage, carrying only two 35mm twin Oerlikons and two optically-trained 20mm Vulcans. She does have an impressive 20,000nm range and the capability to carry two large Super Puma helicopters.
Kimball is a bit better armed, roughly to the level of an old OHP-class frigate (once they lost their one-armed bandits) or to nearly the same standard as the baseline LCS with a 57mm MK110, a CIWS-1B/BL2, and six crew-served MGs as well as soft-kill countermeasures and a Slick-32. Would be a whole lot nicer if they had an ASW suite, an 8-pack of NSMs, and another of VLS ESSMs, but hey, it is still 2021.
Of note, the Ogasawaras are some 600 miles south of Tokyo and are sparsely populated, earning them the nickname of the “Galápagos of the Orient,” making them a target for illegal fishing and other activities. Naturally, military history buffs will recognize the names Chichijima and Iwo Jima in the chain.
Ships assigned to the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group sail in formation with Indian navy ships during a cooperative deployment in the Indian Ocean, July 20, 2020. Photo By: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Donald R. White, Jr. VIRIN: 200720-N-MY642-0207M
The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group is returning after operations in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Central Command areas of responsibility. It was the first carrier strike group to deploy under COVID-19 protocols. By the time the carrier strike group reaches home, the sailors and Marines aboard will have been gone for 321 days.
The Nimitz, the cruiser USS Princeton, and the destroyers USS Sterett and USS Ralph Johnson made up the group.
Overall, the carrier strike group steamed more than 87,300 nautical miles during its deployment. The carrier launched 10,185 sorties totaling 23,410 flight hours logged.
I’m not sure the value of wearing out ships and crew on year-long deployments when there are no major conflicts underway, but you damned sure don’t see other fleets able/willing to pull off this type of crap, which is a statement of deterrence all its own, I suppose.
Of note, Nimitz is our oldest active warship in fleet service– and the oldest commissioned aircraft carrier in the world– slated to celebrate the 46th anniversary of her commissioning in May. Princeton is no spring chicken either, as the early Tico left Pascagoula for the fleet in 1989.
Feb 1943. Official caption: Coast Guard Auxiliary. Guardians of inland waters. The Marblehead unit of the Coast Guard Auxiliary includes among its members Bill Welch, a Boston lawyer, junior commander of the flotilla. He contributes twelve hours a week to patrol duty, during which time he assumes regular Coast Guard status as a temporary reservist.
Photo by Alfred T.Palmer, via Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress) LC-USE6-D-010130
Welch and his flotilla were part of the so-called Hooligan Navy or Corsair Fleet, members of the volunteer Coast Guard Auxillary ordered on 4 May 1942 by Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Ernest J. King to organize into an anti-submarine patrol force officially termed the Coastal Picket Patrol.
Made up primarily of private yachts– the plan was advocated King by the Cruising Club of America– and fishing boats, crewed by their owners, and converted for ASW use, the small craft of all sizes made regular sorties along the American coast into October 1943. Equipped and outfitted with whatever arms and uniforms the service could spare, these vessels were assigned 15-mile patrol squares extending from the beach to the 50-fathom curve.
In all, a remarkable 2,067 converted private motor and sail craft, numbered CGR1 to CGR9040 served with the patrol, with missing numbers in that range for boats that were surveyed but not taken into service.
The program peaked November 1942 with 1,873 boats in commission with the Coast Guard Reserve, a figure that slowly declined from there, dropping below 1,000 in November 1943, under 500 in April 1944, and under 100 in June 1945, with the last craft disposed of at the end of that year.
Private “Commuter Yacht” Aphrodite built by Purdy Shipyard in May 1937, serving as CGR557 Corsair Navy. Schena notes that CGR557 was 73 feet oal, was assigned to the 3rd Naval District, taken into service April 1942, and disposed of in July 1945, at which point there were only 80 CGR vessels left on the roster. She was reportedly used as a chase and security boat for the Elco PT-boat factory in Bayonne, New Jersey, and tapped from time to time during the war to transport President Roosevelt to and from his home at Hyde Park on the Hudson River. She was originally built for Wall Street financier and later Ambassador to the Court of St. James, John Hay (Jock) Whitney of Manhasset, Long Island.
Coast Guard schooner CGR 2502 of the Corsair Fleet on patrol for German submarines. Note the Coastie on the bow with a Thompson gun. The craft is listed as a 90-foot schooner, formerly the Duchess, that was taken into service in June 1942. She served in the 1st Naval District out of Boston until July 1944. NARA 026-g-014-057-003
Coast Guard Hooligan Fleet member, the 97-foot schooner CGR-2469, came to the Olson & Winge Marine Works yard as the Columbia for conversion during World War II. She had been built in 1914 as the King & Winge, one of the most famous ships ever constructed in Seattle, spending the 1920s as a well-known rum runner after her initial years as a halibut schooner. After the war, she would be a pilot boat, yacht, and crabber. She sank in high seas in the Bering Sea, without loss of life, in 1994. Image via the Museum of History and Industry, Seattle.
Coast Guard schooner CGR 2520 of the Corsair Fleet, with another behind her. This vessel is listed as a 52-foot schooner that was taken into service July 1942, decommissioned in December 1943, and disposed of, likely returned to its previous owner, in July 1944. During her wartime service, she served in the 1st Naval District (Maine-Massachusetts) on nearshore/offshore patrol. NARA 026-g-014-059-001
Humphrey Bogart, who served in the U.S. Navy during the Great War as a helmsman of the captured German liner SS Vaterland/USS Leviathan, tried to re-enlist during WWII. When he was rejected because of his age (74), Bogie volunteered for the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve and patrolled the California coast with his 55-foot staysail schooner, Santana, as part of the Hooligan Navy assigned to the 12th Naval District.
“Humphrey Bogart, who starred in Casablanca, Dead End, and The African Queen, first enlisted in the [tag] U.S. Navy during WWI on the USS Leviathan. In 1941, Bogart volunteered with the USCG Temporary Reserves (now the USCG Auxiliary) along with his 1935 Sparkman & Stephen’s designed 55-foot schooner, the Santana, to patrol the Balboa, California area of the West Coast as part of the Corsair Fleet. During this time, Bogart starred in Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and To Have and Have Not. ” At Bogart’s funeral in 1957, a scale model of the Santana was present, Photo and story by The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary History Division.
Although actual combat with U-boats was slim for the group, they did provide lots of help in so far as OPSEC was concerned as they often shielded coastwise convoys from random small boat traffic and would board vessels to seal their radios in such instances so that random commo traffic wouldn’t accidentally give away positions to those who were listening for that type of thing.
The nicknames of the force were fitting, as the volunteers, at least in the early days of the patrol, ran the gamut from semi-reformed smugglers and rumrunners to boy scout troops and yachtsmen such as the good Mr. Welch, our trusty lookout in the first image.
Hunter Wood, a skilled maritime artist in the New York City area, joined the Coast Guard in WWII and served as a combat artist. He captured a few of these CGR schooners at work.
Eyes Off Shore, 6/7/1943, Coast Guard Reserve schooner of the Corsair Fleet by Hunter Wood NARA 205575831
Coast Guard Corsair on U-Boat Hunt, 2/11/1944, by Hunter Wood NARA 026-g-022-015-001
There was even something of an embrace of the term, with Disney pitching in to make an unofficial insignia, that sadly was never issued to the units and men involved.
Cutting edge when introduced, the Sig Sauer P229 was foisted on me in 2005 and, after we learned to get along, has grown to become a favorite.
That was the year Hurricane Katrina sucker-punched the Gulf Coast and left my then-profession with Ma Bell somewhat on the ropes. Dusting off my firearms trainer certs, I soon took a gig with a Department of Homeland Security contractor to train guards working the myriad of FEMA sites that sprang up like mushrooms. Intending this to be a temp job until I moved back into telecom, I wound up with the company for almost a decade, running courses all over the country on a variety of different contracts. Long story short, I stood on the range and watched well over 100,000 rounds of ammo burned through four pallets of Sigs in very short order.
And I still have a couple P229s from that era around today.
When I first got into LE in 1998, the standard-issue defensive “tools” on the duty belt were an S&W Model 66 in .357 (with a dump pouch and two speedloaders!) and a PR-24. Talk about TJ Hooker…
Over time, the wheelgun/loaders got ditched for a semi-auto and extra mags, and the good-ole steel “prick 24” was left in the trunk in favor of an ASP collapsible baton, augmented by OC spray.
Soon, I became an impact tool instructor, so-called because the word “baton” can have negative connotations in court and– as any course in its use will tell you– it can be an amazing little widget that can serve as a lever, guide, or pry bar during crowd/riot control, resistive handcuffing or clock in for non-standard use such as in those occasions where a window has to be adjusted.
My personal tagalong for over a decade was an ASP Airweight, which weighed in at just 9-ounces and went from 8- to 21-inches when needed.
Sadly, in recent years many new officers have hit the streets lacking a “less lethal” alternative other than a Taser device, with both the ASP and OC spray today being seen as obsolete. While I never did like OC– for a myriad of reasons it is a bad idea– deleting the ASP in my humble opinion is a fundamental mistake.
Tasers are not absolutely effective/affective in many cases, and their stand-off ability can only be used once per pack, limited its capability to dry contact stuns after that. An ASP never runs out of juice and offers a lot more options than riding the lightning. Sure, the laser on a Taser provides a moment of pause that can help de-escalate a situation, but so does the “rap” of opening an ASP with a corresponding determined look on your face.
With all that being said, it was encouraging to see that the FBI recently has remained “old school” and has adopted a new model ASP for standard issue to agents.
The FBI has, appropriately, adopted a version of the ASP Agent baton
From ASP:
The FBI chose the A40 baton model, which extends to about 16” in length, and collapses—via a pushbutton release mechanism—to under 8”, for easy, discreet carry. The standard version of the A40 features two aluminum shafts and a steel striking surface, but the special variant being fielded by the agency is constructed entirely of 4140 steel, for increased striking potential. The baton also features a spring-loaded clip that facilitates carrying in a pocket or waistband, making it ideal for plainclothes use.
In a statement, ASP said, “It is a distinct honor to continue to be trusted by the men and women of the Bureau for the equipment and training they need to perform their duties and keep themselves safe.” According to the company, the FBI is one of a growing number of major federal agencies that have adopted the Agent Baton.
