| By L. EDGAR PRINA
Editor Emeritus
For the first time in 17 years, a
comprehensive study of the roles and missions for the United States Coast Guard is
underway.
An interagency task force--formally
designated as the Presidential Council on Coast Guard Roles and Missions--is conducting
the review. It is due to report its recommendations to the White House by the end of this
summer.
Mortimer L. Downey, deputy secretary of
transportation, chairs the task force. A Transportation Department announcement listed 14
members--none from the U.S. Navy or the private sector--but said that representatives from
the Defense and Treasury Departments and the Office of National Drug Control Policy would
be added later.
One reason the Coast Guard itself
believes the task force may be key to rallying in-house support for the perennially
underfunded service is that three high-level White House officials are members of the task
force: Thurgood Marshall Jr., assistant to President Clinton and cabinet secretary;
Michael Deich, associate director for general government and finance, Office of Management
and Budget; and Paul Weinstein, special assistant to the president and chief of staff of
the Domestic Policy Council.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. James M. Loy
was the only military person named to the task force. A staff of eight Coast Guard
members, headed by Rear Adm. Dennis Sirois, will provide administrative support. The
Center for Naval Analyses is under contract to provide analytic support.
"The critical importance of the
Coast Guard to maritime safety, security, and environmental protection demands that we
take a focused look at how it can carry out its mission most effectively," Downey
said.
The job of the task force is to seek to
identify and distinguish which Coast Guard roles, missions, and functions may be: (a)
added or enhanced; (b) maintained at current levels of perform-ance; (c) reduced in scope;
or (d) eliminated. The task force also will consider whether the service's roles,
missions, and functions may be better performed by private-sector companies or
organizations, local or state governments, or other federal agencies.
Loy has made it clear that one of the
moving forces behind the review is the Coast Guard's urgent need to recapitalize its aging
ships and aircraft and the command-and-control systems that are key to the multimission
service's ability to carry out its missions beyond the U.S. coastal zones. "We call
this recapitalization effort our Deepwater Project. ... It is the largest acquisition
effort in the history of the Coast Guard," he said.
Analysis and Validation
"The need for the recapitalization
is well-grounded in a rigorous analysis of the gap between our capabilities and our
mission requirements," Loy pointed out. The service's future capability requirements,
he said, derive from Coast Guard 2020, a vision document that specifies in detail
the future mission profile of the Coast Guard and the services the American people expect
from the Coast Guard.
"We want to complement rather than
compete with the Navy, so I signed an agreement with the chief of naval operations
establishing the concept of a National Fleet to ensure that we avoid redundancy and
maximize interoperability between Deepwater procurements and Navy assets," he said.
Under Deepwater, Coast Guard acquisition
decisions are to be based on total life-cycle costs rather than on initial purchase
prices. Loy pointed out that fiscal responsibility requires "an independent
validation of the future mission expectation" for the Coast Guard before it is
committed to the major investments that the Deepwater Project requires.
He said he would welcome the judgment of
the task force as to whether the environment and mission profile envisioned in Coast
Guard 2020 presents the "real world" of 2020, or the world that "we
would just like to see."
The task force faces a daunting
challenge, as Loy noted, in seeking to define requirements and capabilities 20 years into
the future. In his introductory remarks to members of the task force, Loy asserted that
even well-informed private citizens and government officials "are amazed" when
they learn the full range of value that the Coast Guard provides to the nation.
"Many know of our search-and-rescue
and law-enforcement missions, but are surprised that we also maintain 50,000 aids to
navigation along all ... [U.S.] coasts, waterways, and overseas territories," he
said. "Then they encounter other missions like recreational boating safety and
realize the safety challenge in enabling millions of people to take to the waters each
year with a minimum loss of life and property. Likewise, [we have] dozens of other
important functions--commercial fishing vessel safety, radionavigation, oil pollution
prevention and response, icebreaking, [and providing] humanitarian aid after natural
disasters and human tragedies like TWA Flight 800."
Loy conceded that it is possible that
some missions currently assigned to the Coast Guard could be performed by some other
entity--but it also is possible, he added, that functions now performed elsewhere could be
carried out more efficiently by the Coast Guard. |
