More attention urged for maritime defense.

• Author: Fein, Geoff S.
• Position: Security Beat

The United States should rely more on naval reserve forces to help boost domestic maritime defense, Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, mid a luncheon gathering of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the National Defense Industrial Association.

The U.S. Coast Guard--now part of the Department of Homeland Security--patrols the nation's coastline, ports, harbors and other navigable waterways, and the Navy takes the battle to faraway shores, he noted. McHale worried that a seam could emerge between the Coast Guard's "close-in" area of responsibility and the Navy's "far out" role.

"I think that the naval reserve is ideally suited to filling that seam," McHale said. The reserve, which represents about 20 percent of the Navy's total assets, could play a more important role in helping the Coast Guard and the active-duty Navy, he said.

McHale takes a personal interest in the reserves. He is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves, and his wife is a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve. In 1996, as a member of Congress, he co-founded the National Guard and Reserve Components Caucus.

In early 2003, McHale took on his current assignment, supervising all homeland defense activities within the Defense Department...