The U.S. Coast Guard is at a crossroads, and there is no shortage of discussion about its Deepwater modernization program, including in the pages of Proceedings (for this issue's coverage of the troubled program, see pages 62-72). But rather than asking what went wrong and who should be hung out to dry, the two questions that should be asked are as follows. First, why is it going to take more than 20 years to complete this modernization program? And second, will non-state actors and Mother Nature reduce their operations tempo and play nice long enough for the Coast Guard to set sail with a modern inventory of cutters and aircraft?
The time is now for the Coast Guard to become fully modernized. Stretching the service's modernization program over two decades is based solely on fiscal constraints and is the maritime equivalent of the Army waiting 20 years to solve the improvised explosive device problem. A nation with a $10 trillion GDP can and must do better than procuring a handful of platforms a year. Today, the Coast Guard's entire fleet of cutters and aircraft are better suited to museums than active operations. Every other service branch has benefited from a significant build-up at one time or another in their proud histories. The Coast Guard should be no different.
Outside the Beltway, the $24 billion price tag for Deepwater is a lot of money. But inside, it falls between decimal dust and a rounding error in a $2.9 trillion dollar budget. Moreover, according to the Government Accountability Office, $24 billion is equal to several years' worth of waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare program, yet no one is calling that program a lemon or threatening to cancel it. And while we are at it, $24 billion is not even a hefty emergency defense spending bill.
If you don't believe that lives are hanging in the balance as Coast Guard modernization proceeds at an agonizingly slow pace, just ask the mother who is worried about illegal drugs on her child's playground that originated from a go-fast that was not even detected let alone destroyed in the transit zones. Better yet, ask the longshoreman if he can wait for a modern Coast Guard to safeguard our 95,000 miles of waterways and 361 ports.
I bet both would be surprised to learn that shoppers will spend more money in one day at Wal-Mart than the Coast Guard will spend in a year to build a 21st-century force. I know I was. Don't believe me? Do the math. Wal-Mart's total sales for the fiscal year that ended 31 January 2007 were approximately $344 billion. In contrast, $837 million is budgeted in the Fiscal Year 2008 budget for the Deepwater program.
The worried mother and seasoned longshoreman are in good company because students of naval history are probably just as puzzled about the reasons why a maritime power such as the United States is underfunding the Coast Guard.
In this era of Fourth Generation warfare, in which non-state actors rely on the maritime arena to fund their acts of war against Western civilization, Coasties deserve ships and aircraft that are combat ready so that they can sail into action without worrying about an engine catching on fire or breaking down. Jihadists and narco-traffickers who seek to end our way of life want to do it yesterday. They don't have 20-year modernization plans. Neither should the United States and its Coast Guard.
Financing the future of the Coast Guard is simply common sense for a maritime power. However, failure to provide a healthy infusion of taxpayer dollars to modernize the force will only embolden our enemies, who know that history has seen more than one great naval power (e.g., Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) become a mere shadow of its former self.
The time is now to modernize the Coast Guard's antique fleet of cutters and aircraft. No less than the future of this proud service is at stake and that's why we should borrow a line from Larry the Cable Guy and just "GIT-R-DONE!"
Lieutenant Dolbow is a member of the U.S. Naval Institute's editorial board and a student at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C.
Modernize the Coast Guard Now
By Lieutenant Jim Dolbow, U.S. Coast Guard Reserve