Coastal Trident

Coastal Trident (CT) was established in 2007 as a comprehensive training and exercise program for the Port of Hueneme. The program was originally intended to satisfy the Port’s annual security exercise requirement and familiarize local government partners in responding to an emergency at the Port with the unique operational challenges of the environment.

Coastal Trident is an annual education, field experimentation, and exercise program that is designed to advance the state of the art in addressing potential threats to the U.S. Marine Transportation System.

Historically, the program was organized into an iterative “crawl, walk, run” format to address routine personnel turnover and constantly evolving priorities in port safety and security. In 2011, however, the annual exercise was leveraged to combine three regional training and exercise efforts, reducing the collective planning burden and limiting “exercise fatigue” among participants. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) leveraged the unique operational environment established by CT to evaluate several developing technology systems, integrating training of personnel and field experimentation of the technologies into multi-domain, multi-jurisdictional exercise activities.

The program is planned and conducted by Global Trade & Technology’s Center for Threat Management in order to support evaluation of capabilities and identify areas for improvement during scenario-based activities in port and maritime areas of operation. It is unique as a capability to balance the diverse, evolving priorities of sponsors and participants in the public and private sectors through “whole of society” innovation and collaboration.

Coastal Trident achieves this capability through establishment of the following opportunities:

• Provide a relevant operational venue to evaluate current response plans, capabilities, and tactics, techniques, and procedures
• Provide an effective venue for test and experimentation of developing and transitional technologies
• Emphasize a regional focus to address complex interagency response issues in the port and maritime domains