HITRON: 1,000 and Beyond

Itron is the specialized unit in the United States Coast Guard whose sole purpose is to interdict GO-FAST vessels to stop the flow of drugs from Central and South America to the streets of the United States. I would argue there's no more life-saving mission in the United States Coast Guard than what we do. Every single kilo we seize has got 832 lethal doses in it. If you round it down to simply one human life saved per kilo of cocaine, that's 10,000 lives in a single interdiction. All we do at this unit is airborne use of force. That's the only thing we train for, the only thing we do. So we are single subject matter experts and we bring that skill and that clarity and that safety to an interdiction. As someone who had little to no shooting experience, Hitron does a tremendous job at getting us to the point where we're able to make these complex shots and precise shots. We're shooting from an aerial platform which is very different than anywhere else. So the way that we train is specific to this mission so that when we are in these scenarios we aren't second-guessing ourselves. We do have the finest shooters in the military inventory. Whether they're both flight mechs or basic air crewmen, they need to be able to turn their hat around in flight and go from handling an aircraft issue to being able to shoot and successfully interdict, stop someone who's a law enforcement agent. We're taking great pilots and we're making them better to do a counter-drug mission. Taking a six-man aviation detachment, they're taking the aircraft three to four thousand miles from home station, far offshore where they lead autonomously. They're getting their their ABDET into and out of multiple foreign countries while also working with a cutter, which is a completely different command and a completely different way of living, and executing United States law on the high seas completely autonomously. It took us 18 years to get to 500 interdictions and it took us an additional eight to get to 1,000. So the 1,000th interdiction, this is my first case, my first time taking off. I just got certified. A hole opens up in the cloud and I see a wake in the distance and I'm like, hey man, like that's it. Cutter's working its way closer. They launched the VBAT. That way the VBAT could take over reconnaissance and monitoring of this vessel. While we head back to the cutter to gas up, we were able to launch from the cutter with our authorization to conduct airborne use of force. See the vessel, the vessel sees us, they start kicking contraband overboard and they take off. Every contingency that we practice and we think that we're going to have to encounter, we ended up running into during this interdiction and because we had trained for it, we were ready. We are the Coast Guard's fleet air arm right now. It is an awesome way to live and to be the literal tip of the spear is very rewarding. The things we're doing, the 1,000th interdiction, the 10,000 kilos, it's a testament to what we do and how we do it and it's just a great and rewarding job.