Navy Drug Chasers Return for Homeland Defense: CORONADO -- Returning from one war, they find themselves heading into another. But the sailors whose ships are among the smallest and fastest in the Navy never dreamed the front lines would be defined by the coastline, ports and harbors of America. After six months of chasing drug smugglers in South America and the Caribbean, the Hurricane and Monsoon returned to the Naval Amphibious Base yesterday to the embrace of family and a new mission. Operation Noble Eagle, a main thrust in the nation's new homeland defense campaign, will employ two of the four 170-foot Cyclone Class Patrol Coastal ships based here and three more berthed at a Navy base in Little Creek, Va. The ships, built in the early 1990s, had been considered for decommissioning as part of Pentagon cost-cutting, but that was before the events of Sept. 11.