Coast Guard is one of the national organizations, armed military force, assigned with Customs and Security duty along with law enforcement powers and take part in search and rescue tasks as well.
Few of the main responsibilities of the coast guards are search and rescue, ensuring the safety of vessels in the territorial waters, maintaining sea marks, border control and the are entrusted with the duty to enforce maritime laws of the country. Also being a Military force, they are responsible for defending the harbors, patrolling the seas and naval counter intelligence during the wartime. The coast guards will be having Ships , fixed wing aircrafts, helicopters etc at their disposal.
The duties of the coast guards may vary depending upon the country. The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is a law enforcement agency as well as a military body. USCG has a wide variety of resources at their disposal, which includes Ships , which are traditionally called as Cutters and patrol boats, They maintain a fleet of around 210 aircrafts ranging from Dolphin Helicopters to C-130 Hercules military transport plane. The USCG operates under the department of Homeland security during the peacetime and can be transferred to the command of department of Navy by the president during the time or war. USCG have jurisdiction over both territorial as well as international waters for carrying out law enforcement operations.
USCG established new command knows as deployable operations group (DOG) specializing in anti terrorism and law enforcement. It enables supply of specialized force units for deployment to various units that come under dept of Homeland security and Dept of defense. The Coast guard reserve has around 8500 reservists.
Her Majesty’s Coastguard in UK is purely a search and rescue unit, the customs and law enforcement comes under the jurisdiction of UK Border Agency and they lease life boats, tugs and aircraft through private organizations or government.