MESG- 1’s detachments in San
Diego, Guam and Whidbey Island,
Wash., will become CRG- 1 detachments. Similarly, MESG- 2’s detachments in Portsmouth, Va.; Newport, R.I.; and Jacksonville, Fla.,
will become detachments of CRG-
2. CRG- 2 also will command a
detachment in Bahrain, responsible for managing the various
embarked security teams that are
placed on various ships in that area
of responsibility.
CRG- 1 also will command
Coastal Riverine Squadron (CRS)
Three in San Diego, the Reserve
CRS- 1 at San Diego and Reserve
CRS- 11 at Seal Beach, Calif., and a
Coastal Riverine Training Evalua-Alameda, Calif.; Portland, Ore.;
and Fort Worth and San Antonio, Texas. CRS- 11 will
support platoons in Seal Beach; Spokane, Wash.; and
Broken Arrow, Okla.
U.S. AIR FORCE
Two patrol boats assigned to Maritime Expeditionary Security Squadron
(MSRON) 4 cross the Port of Djibouti during training exercises April 6. MSRON-
4 Sailors provide harbor defense for U.S. naval assets in the Port of Djibouti.
In recent years, MESF and Riverine forces have conducted operations with Colombia and Panama and with
the Dutch government in the Netherlands Antilles.
The reorganization will not involve a significant
change in the number of personnel in the coastal
Riverine community, which has approximately 2,800
active-component and 2,000 Reserve personnel.
Gay pointed out the popularity of the coastal and
Riverine forces among Sailors of the surface warfare
community, where a lieutenant can be an officer in
charge of a deployed detachment and a petty officer
first-class can make operational decisions while commanding a patrol boat.
The coastal Riverine force will operate the full spectrum of Riverine and security boats currently in inventory in the MESF and Riverine squadrons.
“By mid to late 2020, most of the boats in the current
inventory are going to reach their life expectancy, so we’re
looking at future craft and we’re doing that now,” Gay
said. “By 2028, they’re all going to be out of inventory.”
“We’re going to be expanding and acquiring larger
boats to give us a better seakeeping ability beyond the
edge of the green and into the blue,” Hamblet said,
speaking of the MK VI patrol boat currently in the
acquisition process unrelated to the merger itself.
Hamblet said the training and evaluation unit based
at Little Creek is going to support “the basic phase the
training of each of these companies across a variety of
missions, from the embark security team mission —
where we’re putting security teams on various ships
across the green-water mission — and then, for the
Delta Company, the brown-water mission.” ■
