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The U.S. Coast Guard is now suffering through the worst of all possible worlds. Its ships, aircraft, and land facilities are overaged, overworked, and in severe need of modernization and upgrading. Its people are young, enthusiastic, and endowed with a sense of mission--but they also are seriously overworked, and their numbers are well below what is needed for the multimission service to successfully carry out all of its numerous tasks and responsibilities.

Worst of all, perhaps, is that, at a time when, to recapitalize its antiquated physical plant, the Coast Guard requires an infusion of several hundred million dollars annually, its budget is in danger of being cut by Congress by an estimated $210 million.

Much will depend on what happens in September and early October, before Congress breaks for the elections. Throughout the month of August senior Coast Guard leaders were assessing the possible impact on USCG personnel, and on operational capabilities, if budget relief is not provided. Some operating units could be laid up, but the savings would be relatively small, and with fewer cutters and aircraft available the service would be hard-pressed to meet all of its commitments. There also could be some slight reductions in personnel strength, but the potential savings here would be minuscule, and also would have a negative impact on mission capability.

Exacerbating all of the above are too salient facts well-known throughout the Coast Guard but not fully appreciated, it seems, by the nation's senior leadership at the White House and on Capitol Hill: (1) Today's Coast Guard is now approximately 1,000 persons below authorized strength--and is, in fact, at its lowest manpower level since 1967; and (2) The last three decades have seen a massive workload increase, in scope as well as numbers, across the entire spectrum of Coast Guard missions and responsibilities.

Exponential Growth

It is that three decades of mission creep, unprecedented in Coast Guard history, that gives the Semper Paratus service its most difficult challenge. In the field of national defense, for example, USCG duties and responsibilities have grown exponentially at a time when the Navy and the nation's other armed services have been steadily shrinking in size. Coast Guard area commanders now also serve as U.S. Maritime Defense Zone commanders, Coast Guard active-duty personnel (and USCG cutters) are now routinely deployed overseas on joint-service and/or multinational exercises, and to help enforce U.N. sanctions, and the USCG's reserve units operate deployable Port Security Units and help crew Harbor Defense Commands.

Enforcement of new and/or expanded U.S. maritime laws also has added to the USCG's workload. The Magnuson Act established the 2.25-million-square-mile U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and gave the Coast Guard responsibility for enforcing U.S. fisheries laws throughout the EEZ. The United Nations Moratorium of High Seas Driftnet Convention expanded USCG responsibilities even beyond the EEZ, and the explosive growth throughout the 1970s and 1980s of drug-smuggling and illegal alien migration into the United States significantly added to the Coast Guard's operational responsibilities.

Protection of the marine environment has been another major growth area for the Coast Guard. "Growing environmental awareness and disasters [such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill] also have given the Coast Guard several new missions," a USCG spokesman told Sea Power, "such as maintaining oil-pollution response teams and equipment, regulating oil tanker fleets to stricter standards, overseeing national pollution funds management, regulating international shipping discharges--to mitigate the introduction of new and harmful marine species into U.S. waters--and expanding the number, scope, and reliability of Vessel Traffic Services [VTS]."

An Escalation of Requirements

Following, as spelled out by USCG officials, is a brief summary of how mission creep has added to the Coast Guard's operational requirements in several other major mission areas:

Marine Safety: New federal legislation--as well as the U.S. ratification of various new international conventions--requires the Coast Guard not only to maintain the VTS systems essential to the safe and efficient flow of traffic into, in, and departing from U.S. ports, but also: (a) to ensure that all ships entering those ports meet the relatively strict U.S. safety standards; (b) to inspect containers for hazardous materials; (c) to inspect and regulate the U.S. fishing fleet; and (d) to require that foreign as well as U.S. merchant mariners possess the professional competence needed to operate in U.S. waters.

Navigation Systems: Several recent improvements in technology designed to improve marine navigation systems have added considerably to the USCG's development and oversight responsibilities. The Coast Guard now operates the LORAN-C radionavigation system (which has expanded beyond a marine-only system) as well as the differential Global Positioning System (which is currently being expanded to a nationwide land and marine system).

Recreational Boating Safety: The Federal Boat Safety Act requires the Coast Guard to coordinate and ensure the uniformity of state as well as federal boating-safety programs, and to improve the design and construction of boats and boating equipment. Various "boating while intoxicated" laws also have added to the Coast Guard's enforcement duties in this area.

Bridge Administration: The Coast Guard now approves the location plans and design of bridges across navigable U.S. waters, and is responsible for alterations to bridges "deemed to be unreasonable obstructions to marine navigation."

Resources Vs. Workload

Coast Guard supporters throughout the nation--and, fortunately, in Congress--recognize that the service will continue to carry out all of its missions to the maximum extent permitted by its limited resources. But they also recognize that, because those resources are so limited, a reduction in overall workload will soon be not just probable but mandatory.

How, and where, such a reduction could be implemented is the unanswered question. The Coast Guard is the premier lifesaving service in the world, and no one in the White House or on Capitol Hill would contemplate any cutback in funding for the USCG's SAR (search and rescue) operations. The same is true, however--to only a slightly lesser extent--for the Coast Guard's other major mission areas: interdiction of illegal immigrants, enforcement of U.S. maritime laws, protection of the marine environment, et al. All are essential to the protection of American citizens and their property, and none can be safely ignored, stretched out, or postponed without serious damage to the national economy.

Which is, in the long run, perhaps the most persuasive argument the Coast Guard has in its favor. As USCG Commandant Adm. James M. Loy told a joint meeting of the Altoona (Pa.) Council of the Navy League and the Altoona Kiwanis Club, today's Coast Guard "delivers direct customer value on a daily basis," it provides "an enormous range of services ... to the public," and it provides those services more efficiently, and at lower cost, than any other agency in government. "No other arm of government provides tangible benefits in like proportion to its budget," Loy told attendees at the Kiwanis/Navy League Coast Guard Birthday Luncheon. "The Coast Guard's direct return to the American public for each tax dollar entrusted to it is unmatched in the federal or any other government. ... Bottom line: you get a 4:1 return on investment with your Coast Guard"--i.e., the Coast Guard provides taxpayers with four dollars worth of services for each dollar in USCG appropriations.

Whether that argument will tip the scales in the Coast Guard's favor during the limited time left in the current session of Congress is uncertain. A conference meeting will be required to reconcile differences in the House and Senate versions of the Coast Guard appropriations bills, both of which reduce USCG funding well below the $4 billion that had been requested by President Clinton.

A compromise between the two versions, which seems most likely, would still leave the Coast Guard short of the funds it needs to continue business as usual, and would require some extremely difficult operational as well as budget decisions. As Loy also noted at the Altoona luncheon meeting, the Coast Guard already has cut 4,000 billets in recent years "through normal attrition and voluntary programs," and has implemented a number of "streamlining" initiatives that have produced "recurring savings of $400 million per year out of a budget of less than $4 billion. "

Furthermore," the USCG commandant continued, "we accomplished these savings without cutting services. We're proud of that effort--but frankly, I think the 'do more with less' well has run dry."

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