Staying Ready
"All of the Time"
The U.S. Coast Guard: Still Semper Paratus?
By SCOTT C. TRUVER
Dr. Scott C. Truver is the vice president for national security studies
and director of the Center for Security Strategies and Operations of
the Anteon Corporation, Arlington, Va.
Things look to be different for the U.S. Coast Guard, the smallestand
perhaps busiestof the five U.S. Armed Services. Faced with "pay
me now or pay me later" dilemmas throughout its aging operating
forces and hampered by chronic underfunding, the service has "lived
or died by the 'Supplemental,'" according to Rear Adm. David R.
Nicholson, director of resources at Coast Guard Headquarters. During
the 1990s, he pointed out, the Coast Guard's budgets "were routinely
cut by Congress, which affected our operations, research and development,
and acquisition at the same time that our missions and commitments were
increasing.
"Only in the last few years has Congress appropriated more than
the President's request," Nicholson continued, "But when situations
beyond our control created consequences for us--the FY 2001 National
Defense Authorization Act [NDAA], with pay and benefits increases that
the Coast Guard had to accommodate out of hide--we have had to rely on
supplemental funding to get us through to the next year." In FY
2000, Congress approved a $250 million supplemental to cover unbudgeted
costs for the Coast Guard. "We have requested an additional $98
million in the DOT [Department of Transportation] FY 2001 Supplemental," Nicholson
said, "to cover the extra costs we face this year."
"Even with that, we are still looking at a 10 to 20 percent reduction
in optempo," said Coast Guard Chief of Staff Vice Adm. Timothy W.
Josiah. "We will focus on providing the most critical services demanded
by the nation--SAR [search and rescue] and maritime safety--and we will
not compromise on the safety of our people. But we will have to cut our
law- enforcement and maritime-security tasks--principally counternarcotics
operations, illegal-migrant interdictions, and fisheries patrols."
Congress is poised to correct previous underfunding. Earlier this year,
the House and Senate both passed a budget resolution adding $250 million
to the President's request for the Coast Guard's $5.18 billion FY 2002
budget. This amounts to a nearly 12 percent increaseon papercompared
to FY 2001. And on 7 June the House passed, by a 411-3 vote, a $5.35
billion authorization bill (HR 1699) giving the Coast Guard $736 million
more than last year. This is a 20 percent increase and $300 million more
than President Bush requested.
Attention then switched to the Senate and the White House, to see if
both would concur with the House's action.
Big Job, Small Service
With 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline, an exclusive economic zone (EEZ)
of some 3.35 million square miles, and more than 300 ports to patrol,
the Coast Guard has a huge job. It does it all with only 34,000 active-duty
people and 8,000 reservists, and a budget that is miniscule compared
to those of the other services. Each year, Coast Guard personnel conduct
safety inspections on 50,000 ships and barges and 7,000 marine facilities.
They respond to 40,000 distress calls (many of them hoaxes, it is worth
noting) and environmental emergencies, some of them as far away as the
Galapagos Islands, and many of them involving dangerous lifesaving work.
They also protect fisheries; maintain vessel-navigation and maritime-transportation
systems; carry out numerous maritime-security operations (including alien-migrant
and counternarcotics interdictions), and serve alongside the Navy and
Marine Corps in peacetime, crisis, and war.
When he assumed duty as Coast Guard commandant three years ago, Adm.
James M. Loy expressed concern that the military, multimission, maritime
Coast Guard had become a "dull knife--a dangerous tool--dangerous
both to Coast Guard people and to the American people who depend on us." Later,
in his first "State of the Coast Guard" address in 1999, Loy
made this sobering assessment:
"I would offer that you are beyond the limit when 81 percent of
small boat stations are standing 24-hour duty days for three days straight.
You are beyond the limit when only 70 percent of VTS [Vessel Traffic
System] radarman billets are filled. You are beyond the limit when HU-25C
[Guardian aircraft] not-mission-capable hours are on pace to double their
rate from 1997. You are beyond the limit when the availability rate for
41-footers [utility boats] drops 20 percent in four years, and the availability
rate for 44-footers drops 35 percent over the same period. You're beyond
the limit when hull, machinery, and electronics casualties on cutters
increase by almost 50 percent in a decade. Dull knives have to work harder
to cut, and they don't produce clean slices."
The Coast Guard saw its funding shrink by 12 percent during the second
Clinton administration, at the same time that the service's missions
were still increasing. Ironically, a Clinton-approved Interagency Task
Force on Roles and Missions all but concluded that if the United States
did not have a Coast Guard it would have to invent one. The task force
not only validated the continuing importance to the American people of
the Coast Guard missions, but also predicted that the need for all of
them would increase in the years ahead--and that several new tasks would
be added to the Coast Guard's portfolio.
The Primary Need
There are signs that the Coast Guard's "dull knife" is being
sharpened for 21st-century operations, but significant challenges remain,
as Rear Adm. Terry M. Cross, assistant commandant for operations, explained.
The primary need is for stable and sufficient funding. Last year, new
and/or increased personnel entitlements required the service to take
$40 million out of other accounts. Then fuel costs increased by about
40 percent over what had been anticipated, affecting the operations of
all of the service's physical assets--cutters, aircraft, shore stations,
and training facilities. "The result," Cross noted, "was
that in February we reduced ship operating days by about 30 percent and
aircraft flight hours by 20 percent."
"Although our FY 2002 request shows a 12 percent increase of about
$550 million over FY 2001, $100 million of the increase is for retired
pay, with no impact on readiness and modernization," Nicholson explained. "And
the $110 million increase in AC&I [Acquisition, Construction, and
Improvements] funding is overstated. Our FY 2001 request included $110
million for the Great Lakes icebreaker, which was funded in an emergency
MILCON [military construction] supplemental ... and $80 million of the
FY 2001 bills are associated with fuel and NDAA entitlements not provided
in the DOT appropriation. We therefore had to request recurring funds
to meet FY 2001 needs in our FY 2002 budget in an attempt to catch up.
"Still," he added, "growth needed to keep pace in FY
2001 is understated by $80 million. All things considered, we expect
no more than a 6 percent increase, or $200 million, in operations funding."
Heavy Lifting Ahead
Fiscal year 2002 looks to be almost a carbon copy of FY 2001, for Coast
Guard purposes. The FY 2002 NDAA is likely to provide another increase
in pay and benefits for personnel that will have to be accommodated,
on the order of about $85 million more than the Coast Guard anticipated.
Squeezing that amount of "savings" elsewhere would be "a
'major lift' for the Coast Guard," Nicholson acknowledged. "To
be sure, fiscal constraints have affected all of the armed services,
but the Coast Guard doesn't have the luxury of standing down or deferring
deployments. As a response agency, we must be ready all of the time."
Meanwhile, the lack of spare parts and deferrals of essential maintenance
have taken their toll. Coast Guard men and women serve the nation in
cutters and boats that range in age from about 20 to 60 years. "We
are plying the Bering Sea in assets that fought for this nation in World
War II," Loy testified in early May. Last fall, the 58-year-old
cutter Storis suffered damage to its boat-lowering systems during an
attempted boarding of a Russian fishing vessel caught poaching inside
U.S. waters. Nine crew members were dumped into extremely choppy, freezing-cold
waters and were recovered safely only though the heroism of their shipmates.
The Russian vessel got away.
The Coast Guard's HC-130H aircraft provide another case in point. Each
HC-130H in the Coast Guard's inventory is supposed to be overhauled every
48 months, but lack of funds has extended the time between overhaul periods
to as much as 63 months. In addition, three C-130s are being grounded
this summer and fall, leaving only 26 fully operational.
Bridging the Gap
"We are retiring or taking assets out of service to help bridge
the gaps," according to Cross. "The potential 6 percent increase
[in appropriations] for FY 2002 has already been overtaken by fuel, pay,
and health-care costs that have jumped 10 percent, so we've dug ourselves
a 4 percent funding 'hole' for next year. To get around that, we're laying
up eight boats, three cutters [Courageous, Durable, and Cowslip], and
some ex-Navy T-AGOS ships and their deployable pursuit boats as well
as three HH-65 helicopters, three HC-130s, and 13 HU-25s [one-half the
force] ... and are closing two air facilities--on Long Island, New York,
and in Muskegon, Michigan.
"Meanwhile," he said, "We are working to strengthen our
response capabilities and to improve the professionalism and training
of our people."
Personnel readiness always presents challenges, and people account for
60 percent of the Coast Guard's operating expenses. "We are doing
well in recruiting," Josiah said, "but the 'streamlining' [of
the active-duty force] during the 1990s went too far. We overshot our
mark in several critical areas, and are now trying to get back to where
we should be in certain skill areas. Some billets are going unfilled,
and some are being filled with people who do not have adequate training
or experience.
"Recruitment has been good, probably among the best of all of the
armed services," he added, "[but] our retention has been down."
Spot Shortages Continue
In 1998, when Loy took the helm, the Coast Guard was 1,500 billets short
of uniformed-military requirements, and "restoring the work force" was
a critical need. By FY 2000, the work force had been "restored" in
terms of overall numbers, but there still are shortages in senior pay
grades and certain skill specialities that must be remedied. "As
we address the need to modernize our platforms and stations, particularly
those that will be funded under the Deepwater Project," Nicholson
said, "we are also focusing on the need to attract, train, and retain
the skilled people to operate them. We are losing people in critical
midgrade levels, particularly pilots and IT [information technology]
experts, who are much in demand in commercial sectors.
"We have experienced a significant decline in petty officer experience
at the 7- to 8-year point," he also noted. For that reason, he said, "We
see an increasing need for back-to-back tours in critical skills in critical
districts to build experience, and a renewed emphasis on schoolhouse
and distance-learning."
"Our experience level in coxswain billets in small boat units is
now less than one year, and we do a lot of on-the-job training," Cross
added. "This is a serious problem with our new 47-footers [motor
life boats], as these are high-performance, high-tech boats that demand
great boathandling skills, particularly in rough seas.
"We also have 50 empty seats, about 5 percent, in our fixed-wing
aviation billets. And qualified people fill only 70 percent of our surfman
billets. This is a very demanding job, which is exacerbated by rotations.
We sometimes take highly skilled people from very demanding regions,
like the 17th District in Alaska, and reassign them to other districts,
where the environmental and geographical challenges are not as tough,
and expect their reliefs to do as good a job."
Long Work Weeks and Aging Systems
Increasing the number of trained people on active duty will help in
reducing the work weeks that now average 80 hours at many small boat
stations, significantly exceeding the service's standard 68-hour work
week. Coast Guard personnel on sea duty report even longer work weeks,
and a 1999 internal Coast Guard survey reported that personnel at the
boat stations had, on average, less than six hours per day for eating
and sleeping combined. During hearings this spring, Loy testified that
the Coast Guard needs another 2,300 people to achieve the 68-hour work-week
objective.
Force reductions and retirements will save an estimated $28.2 million
in operating expenses in FY 2002. However, even with the possible $300
million congressional increase now projected, the service plans to retire
a number of its cutters and aircraft that are too costly to maintain,
and to operate others at reduced tempos to stay within budget. "Throwing
good money after bad" by trying to maintain obsolete cutters and
other aging systems is not being "a good steward" of the taxpayer's
money, Loy told the House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on
Transportation on 2 May.
The effect of such reductions on the Coast Guard itself is exactly what
might be expected. "It's debilitating when we have a great success--the
largest single drug bust in history--and we have to cut back because
of a lack of funds," Josiah said. "What message does that send
to our people?" In May, the crew of the cutter Active seized some
13 tons of cocaine from the Svesda Maru and took its crew of two Russians
and eight Ukrainians into custody. Future successes of that magnitude
are now less likely.
A Message For DOD
Funding shortfalls also have affected the Coast Guard's ability to support
the other services. In December, then Secretary of Defense William S.
Cohen and USGC Commandant Loy announced, in the wake of the attack on
the USS Cole (Sea Power, February 2001) that the Coast Guard would send
one of its port security units (PSUs) to the Persian Gulf to provide
increased security. "We have the special skills needed by the United
States for port security and force protection," Cross noted. Today,
because of the more rigid funding constraints, the Coast Guard has no
other alternative than to bring its personnel home. This sends a hard
message to the Defense Department as well, of course.
The Coast Guard's most critical short-term needs are the National Distress
and Response System Modernization Project (NDRS MP) and the Deepwater
Project. The NDRS MP will replace the service's obsolete communications
equipment, eliminate communications gaps throughout the United States,
and add direction-finding and recorded voice-playback capabilitiesshortfalls
that contributed to the Morning Dew tragedy off Charleston, S.C., and
the loss of two crew members of Coast Guard Station Niagara in March.
The Coast Guard is requesting $338 million in FY 2002 and an average
of $500 million per year thereafter (in FY 1998 dollars) for the next
20 years or so to pursue the Deepwater Project. The Coast Guard has spent
$116 million since 1998 on the first phase of the project, which will
replace 93 cutters and 206 aircraft and address current C4ISR (command,
control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance)
deficiencies by replacing current systems, many of them incompatible
with one another, with a unified "system of systems" for its
offshore missions.
A Valuable National Asset
"Our great value to the nation is that we do all things wet that
are not reserved for the U.S. Navy," Admiral Loy said earlier this
year. "We work for the Department of Defense, for Justice, for State,
for Commerce. That is a blessing for the taxpayer and a challenge for
me. Seventy percent of what I do is outside the Department of Transportation."
"We have many Members in this body who individually expressed strong
support over the years for the work that the Coast Guard does," said
Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on the
Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation.
"Now is the time," LoBiondo said prior to the House vote on
the service's authorization act, "for us to stand up for them. They
stand up for America every day. It is our time to stand up for them during
this authorization bill so we can provide the resources to the men and
women who do this job every day unselfishly the way they really deserve,
with the assets that they need."
Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2001 - House of Representatives, 7
June 2001
Mr. Steven Kirk (D-Ill):
"Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this legislation.
"In 1976, a young man 16 years old took the family out for a sail
off the coast of my district. After capsizing several times, his judgment
became impaired, and he decided to swim for it. In the cold May waters,
he had only about a half hour to live. [His] body temperature fell; he
went through a classic near-death experience, and eventually passed out.
"Mr. Chairman, this young man woke up inside a Coast Guard vessel
from the auxiliary station out of Wilmette, Illinois. He asked the Guardsman
if he was going to live or die, and the man said, 'I do not know.' But
thanks to the prompt rescue by the Coast Guard, that young man survived.
"Mr. Chairman, I am that young man. Every day of my life after
my 16th year is a borrowed day given to me by virtue of the United States
Coast Guard. It is a difficult thing to say for a Navy man, but the Coast
Guard saved my life; and that is the essence of their mission here.
"The kind of lifesaving that happens off of the coast of the 10th
Congressional District of Illinois is critical because Lake Michigan,
most months of the year, is lethal, due to temperature. It is the kind
of work carried out by Air Station Waukegan, now providing lifesaving
services via helicopter throughout the entire south Lake Michigan region.
"Mr. Chairman, I am incredibly supportive of the Coast Guard. I
strongly support this legislation. But for the Coast Guard, I would not
be here."
