US Coast Guard

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is a maritime security, search-and-rescue, and law-enforcement service of the United States federal government. Founded in 1790 as the Revenue Cutter Service and merged into its modern form in 1915, the USCG operates under the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and under the Department of the Navy in wartime. It has a workforce of approximately 42,000 active-duty personnel and operates cutters, aircraft, and small-boat stations along US coastlines and inland waterways.

UAP-Related Activity

US Coast Guard personnel have documented several notable UAP encounters. The 1952 Salem Coast Guard UFO photograph — taken by seaman Shell Alpert at the Salem Air Station — remains one of the best-known American UAP photographs of the 1950s and was later included in Project Blue Book files. In 1988, Coast Guard personnel over Lake Erie reported a UAP-associated anomalous ice and water phenomenon, a case later cited by Luis Elizondo in his memoir Imminent (2024). More recently, USCG cutters have encountered the same Navy drone-wave phenomena documented in US East Coast and Channel Islands operations from 2014 onwards.

Reporting Infrastructure

As a federal armed service, the Coast Guard reports UAP through standard military channels now coordinated by the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Its extensive radar and visual-observer network along US coasts makes the USCG a key data source for maritime UAP analysis.