March 1, 2020 patch proposal to the US Coast Guard:
We drafted a mission patch for our crews and wanted your input on the design and we would like to make it available to your team as well. I need to have feedback by Wednesday at the latest.
I need to verify that the mission is "Arctic Shield" before we go into production. We don’t have a year listed so we can use the emblem for additional years.
Quick rundown on the patch:
Arctic Peregrine carrying the trident from the Marine Safety officer badge superimposed on the coast guard racing stripe. This represents the relationship between the Air Force Auxiliary (CAP) in Alaska and the Coast Guard MSTF. The falcon and the trident are facing forward towards the North Star (patch is worn on the right sleeve for aircrews). The Northstar and the polar bear are on the front representing Alaska and Sector Anchorage and moving forward in the direction of the mission. The three bladed prop (CAP) and the shield from the MSTF badge are in the back providing support forward.
The top scroll is a combination of each organizations motto but instead of "semper" we have "arcticus" to emphasize the "arctic" mindset; arctic vigilant, arctic ready. This emphasizes that there are differences and challenges to our operating environment that requires that mindset.
The bottom scroll is the mission name Marine Safety Task Force Arctic Shield.
Maj Stephen Sammons RN, CAP
Alaska Wing Emergency Services Officer
This was some of the early draft work from winter/spring 2020. The patch is a joint venture between cap and coast guard sector Anchorage. This was a lot of the back and forth. The racing stripe got deleted at the request of the mst’s (marine Science technicians) they said it reminded them too much of being on a boat and this was a shore assignment. We listed the tri-prop as our representation to the mission. The North Star is indicative of our state partners specifically the national guard. Which when the patch was created we didn’t have partnerships with them but were actively pursuing. The sector emblem was shrunk down to delete some of the extra components and simplify the Arctic shield emblem.
The Arctic peregrine (Arctic Falcon, AF) represents the cap aircrews flying as a title 10 under the air force assigned mission. The previous iteration 10 years prior was flown as a cap corporate mission. The falcon is lifting the MSTF (by virtue of their device) across Alaska which cap providing the lift for them to perform the mission.
Late 2019 the Arctic operations shop at sector Anchorage approached us about a brand so they could highlight Arctic specific mission from their shop so we worked together through this design. Once the final design came out, we were working the approval process to have it added to the uniform and hit a wall with CAP-USAF. The statement came up that the Air Force doesn’t have temporary patches and we countered with examples from Operation Northern Watch/ Southern Watch, Provide Comfort, Restore Hope, etc which all had theater specific patches that were worn in theater but removed when back at home station. So when we added it to the 39-1 supplement [EXAMPLE] that stipulation was included.
Mission highlights from 2020(the year the patch was created):
Planning during 2020 got put on hold due to the pandemic. The team of both CAP IC’s and USCG Arctic Operations were able to build a risk mitigation strategy using rapid covid test kits (anticipating that technology would catch up to when the mission would start flying) that had not been created at the time the plan was submitted to USCG PACAREA command for approval. This ended up being the only non-SAR, operational mission stateside the coast guard performed that summer.
For a deployment from Anchorage to king salmon, AK the crew utilized 3 airvans, a 206 and a 172 to perform 32 sorties over two days moving a MSST team (port security) from San
Francisco and the MSTF from Anchorage along with their gear, body armor, weapons, boarding tools etc.
Information provided by:
Lt Col Stephen Sammons, Alaska Wing Chief of Staff
May 16, 2024