I’m not from the US and have no military experience either. So the US has apparently 3 maritime branches in the uniformed services and the Coast Guard is, well guarding the coasts of the US. And the other branches can’t do that?
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The navy is for boats to fight a war. The Marines are for when you need people to get off the boats and fight on land. The coast guard is for everything else to make sure people in the country can use the water safely and legally.
The navy wants you to stay away from their ships and they don’t want anything to do with civilian boats.
The coast guard is the police and search and rescue. They wait for calls and also go on regular patrols, looking for suspicious boats and ships/people in distress and even simple safety inspections (enough life vests, drunk boating, etc). They do thorough inspections of passenger and cargo ships.
They also “security” on the water in ports, especially mixed civilian/navy ports. They maintain navigational aids (bouys, foghorns, etc)
The military isn’t supposed to have the power to act inside US borders. The Coast Guard acts inside US borders.
The coast guard is the police and the navy is the army. You wouldn’t see a soldier stopping cars in traffic
The biggest difference is the Coast Guard can enforce US laws on any US vessel and US citizen. The DOD (Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines) cannot.
These laws range from Criminal to safety.
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Also go into poverty whenever the annual defense spending bill slips and they only make protections for DoD.
Think of it like the difference between the police and life guards at a beach.
The police could do life guard jobs, but its a waste of trained personnel and its not really their job.
Lifeguards could stop crimes at the beach but they’re not the best trained or equipped for it.
The Navy is geared for combat operations against enemy naval assets. They can, and sometimes do things that the Coast Guard can do (drug interdiction, search and rescue), its just not what they are geared for and they have other priorities.
The Coast Guard on the other hand do have some assets that can cross over into some light combat operations, but their focus is more domestic, like policing the coast, routine maintenance of waterways, providing assistance etc..
Trying to do everything can spread your resources thin and make it difficult to shift to other tasks, so having two separate but seemingly similar groups can make a huge difference in effectiveness.
Fun fact- the US Coastguard piloted the amphibious boats dropping off soldiers onto the Normandy beaches.
In the US, the military is legally prohibited from domestic law enforcement barring some crazy emergency. We would really have to be approaching a war on our own soil in order to call in the military, though that may not stop Trump from trying if he becomes president again. He seems to think the rules are whatever he wants them to be, but that’s another story.
Anyway. When we were colonies, the British used the military as law enforcement and this was one of the big complaints of the colonies that went ignored, and (it’s not important here) there were a couple other episodes in American history where the topic came up. The moral of the story is – we made it illegal to use the military for non-military purposes here at home.
At sea, the Coast Guard is a service with a command structure similar to the military, but they do not engage with foreign hostiles and do not enter the waters of other nations without some sort of invitation. They serve a similar purpose to border & customs patrols, but they do it at sea. Coast Guard do not have the ability to allow people in or out of the country, theirs is strictly law enforcement to intercept smugglers, aid stranded people, and provide services similar to what regular police or firefighters would do if they were on land. *edit: like the National Guard, they can be incorporated into a military command, but this is not their primary function and one that is not active during peace time.*
On land, we have several agencies:
* Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) that maintain land borders and look for smugglers, etc crossing by land or across rivers (but not at sea).
* National Guard – each state maintains a state-level “military” that can deploy for earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, riots, and other domestic emergencies; the president can commandeer these into the regular military but that’s only happened a handful of times. Their principle service is emergency response to large-scale events in their own state or multi-state region. They are under control of the governor of the state. They do a lot of similar training to the Army and most states maintain a variety of basic equipment, including artillery and transports, as well as facilities/properties for training and equipment maintenance just like a regular military unit. Most people serving are volunteers, you do intermittent weekends throughout the year plus two weeks every several months to once/year and work or go to school the rest of the time like anyone else.
* Others – there are several law enforcement agencies that work domestically at the inter-state or federal level, too many to list here. They cover a lot of duties and have a range of specialized responsibilities. The FBI is the famous one but there are quite a few others, most are focused on just one or two topics or types of crimes. None are military.
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