First Honorable Mention, Coast Guard Essay Contest
The downsized Coast Guard has been stretched too thin answering the call to protect the country's shores and valuable marine resources. The Deepwater recapitalization project offers the service the best shot at achieving its myriad of missions.
The start of the new millennium is a time of stark contrasts for the U.S. Coast Guard. In February, a blue ribbon presidential task force concluded that the roles and missions of the Coast Guard will not only endure well into the 21st century but also are likely to increase in national importance. This was a strong endorsement for the future of a military, multimission, maritime service with a proud 210-year heritage. Yet less than a month later, the Coast Guard Commandant and top field commanders announced that chronic readiness shortfalls required a cutback in operations, an unprecedented action for a service with the motto Semper Paratus—Always Ready.
To grasp the depth and impact of the Coast Guard's readiness challenges, one must first appreciate the substantial diversity and value of the missions the service performs. Several well-publicized operational examples lend valuable perspective to the challenges confronting America's fifth armed service. The Coast Guard's long-term solution for its readiness challenges rests on an ambitious recapitalization effort known as the Deepwater Project. The ultimate success of this vital initiative, however, depends on a dramatic increase in recapitalization funding during a time of austere agency budgets.
Coast Guard in the News
During the summer and fall of 1999, the Coast Guard was drawn to the forefront of the nation's attention in the wake of two aircraft tragedies off New England. The Coast Guard played a lead role in the search-and-rescue and subsequent search-and-recovery operation for John E Kennedy, Jr. and his passengers. Regrettably, just three months later the service again was on every major television network professionally responding to the tragic crash of Egypt Air Flight 990.
In the area of illegal drug interdiction, the Coast Guard made headlines in September 1999 with the unveiling of its new policy on the use of force from aircraft. This operational tactic proved very effective in combating the elusive "go-fast" threat as part of America's effort to reduce the flow of cocaine and other illegal drugs, contributing to record annual cocaine seizures. In 1999, the Coast Guard interdicted nearly 112,000 pounds of cocaine destined for America's streets and schools, including the second- and third-largest cocaine seizures in U.S. history. As Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater remarked, the Coast Guard's cocaine interdiction efforts by themselves represent a street value of more than $4 billion, which illustrates the substantial positive return on the nation's $4.4 billion total annual Coast Guard budget.
Last summer, the spotlight focused on the Coast Guard's apprehension of six Cuban migrants in the Miami surf and their desperate attempts to reach dry land and freedom. In accordance with the President's "feet wet, feet dry" immigration policy, it was the Coast Guard's responsibility to stop these men from making the last few hundred yards to shore. A few months later, the Coast Guard's assistance in the rescue of a six-year-old Cuban boy sparked another heated domestic and international controversy. These two cases highlight the Coast Guard's role in protecting the sovereignty of U.S. borders, however difficult and occasionally unpopular these actions may be.
The Coast Guard is the sole government agency with statutory authority for at-sea enforcement of U.S. laws and treaties protecting marine resources and environments. In August 1999, CNN reported how the service's authority was challenged in a tense showdown in the Bering Sea. After the Coast Guard cutter Hamilton (WHEC-715) apprehended a Russian vessel illegally fishing in U.S. waters, the situation quickly escalated, with as many as 19 Russian fishing vessels surrounding and menacing the lone cutter on scene and the threat of the incident precipitating World War III. Showing prudent restraint, the Hamilton's captain defused the situation by relinquishing the seized vessel to Russian authorities for domestic prosecution.
Although the idea of World War III starting over fish may seem a bit farfetched, an October 1996 U.S. News & World Report article was entitled just that. The world's population is expected to increase from 6 billion people today to more than 8 billion by 2020, increasing the stress on the global food supply. This case was just one of 92 incidents in 1999 in which foreign fishing vessels were spotted encroaching on U.S. fishing grounds in the Bering Sea.
The Rest of the Story
As concluded by the presidential task force, the Coast Guard can expect an increasing role in national security and in protecting the country's maritime sovereignty far into the 21st century. The service's chronic readiness shortfalls pose formidable challenges—not just in meeting projected future demand, but in handling today's demand. Consider what radio personality Paul Harvey might call the "rest of the story" regarding those few media examples described earlier:
As the public watched the continuous television coverage of the Coast Guard's search for John Kennedy Jr., it did not see that staffing reductions of 15% since 1995, coupled with increasing recruiting and retention problems, have resulted in an 80-hour work week for many crews stationed at search-and-rescue units. This rigorous operation tempo comes with a high cost. After the Kennedy case, half of the Command Center personnel who coordinated the massive search said, "enough is enough," and left the service.
The public saw an intensive search-and-rescue effort. What it did not realize was that this is the norm for the Coast Guard. The service performs its missions 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is not possible to schedule downtime to regroup, replenish, and recover. As a dramatic case in point, the subsequent crash of Egypt Air Flight 990 had the New England Command Center staff hard at it again.
Despite the record year for drug busts, it is estimated that in 1999 the Coast Guard seized a mere 12.2% of the vessels smuggling drugs.5 For this reason, the service radically changed its tactics and instituted the new policy for the use of force from aircraft—but the Coast Guard could afford to introduce this new tactic only after receiving supplemental funding over and above its 1999 appropriation. Despite very positive initial results, the program's desired implementation plans had to be cut in half as a result of funding limitations in the fiscal year 2000 budget.
The controversial engagement with six Cuban migrants in the Miami surf and the tragedy of a six-year-old boy watching his mother die at sea are symptoms of an even larger and more pervasive problem that receives no media attention: the Coast Guard's inability to consistently meet the President's directive to interdict migrants as far from U.S. shores as possible. The Coast Guard simply does not have the necessary cutters, aircraft, and surveillance capabilities to stem the flow of illegal migrants effectively.
Finally, the incident with the Russian fishing vessel in the Bering Sea clearly illustrates the rising stakes in the protection of valuable marine resources. What the CNN story did not explain is how the Coast Guard is so overstretched that the closest backup to the solitary cutter on patrol was more than three day's sail away. Nor did CNN cover the exhausting challenges faced by the cutter's crew. The ship had started its patrol shorthanded, as most cutters do these days, and the strain was compounded by the cutter's need to field an unusually large boarding team to control the hostile Russian vessel. As a result, the cutter did not have enough experienced sailors remaining to meet its heightened readiness condition, which meant some sailors had to stay on watch more than 48 hours straight.
The Coast Guard is expected to safeguard U.S. national security as well as to protect the resources and environments of the nation's 3.4-million-square-mile exclusive economic zone. In addition, the service enforces other international treaties and agreements, such as the international ban on high-seas drift nets, across huge expanses of open ocean. The Coast Guard simply does not have the cutter and aircraft fleets, or the surveillance and intelligence systems, to meet these national demands. As shown in Figure 1, the Deepwater assets it does have are aged and obsolete. The average age of the Coast Guard's major cutter fleet is 28 years, which is older than 38 of 42 comparable maritime forces worldwide.
The Deepwater Solution
The Coast Guard has initiated several short-term initiatives, such as scaling back operations, to address current readiness problems, but the Commandant is trusting the service's future to an innovative and aggressive recapitalization effort known as the Deepwater Project.
Through Deepwater, the Coast Guard has embarked on a unique system-of-systems acquisition approach unprecedented in the federal government that has earned it distinction as a Federal Reinvention Lab. Rather than focusing on specific hardware, like a class of cutter or aircraft, the project awarded three competitive contracts to design an integrated system of surface, air, logistics, sensor, and communications systems necessary to perform the entire portfolio of Coast Guard missions worldwide. The project's overarching goal is to maximize Deepwater operational effectiveness while minimizing the Coast Guard's total ownership costs. The industry team that best optimizes this fundamental cost versus performance tradeoff will be awarded the contract in January 2002 to build out the Coast Guard's integrated Deepwater system for the 21st century.
The project's innovative approach affords several compelling advantages. By encompassing all of the Coast Guard's Deepwater assets, the project is able to determine the most effective types and efficient mix of assets. The project's focus on acquiring capabilities versus specific hardware affords substantial design flexibility for industry to leverage innovative new technologies and processes. Also, by acquiring an integrated system of assets, interoperability is designed into the system right from the start.
Cohesive interoperability between Coast Guard platforms and assets from other services and government agencies will enable seamless, coordinated mission performance by multiple assets that will be a force multiplier. The Coast Guard believes it can obtain more effective capital assets at a lower cost by designing and acquiring an integrated system as opposed to following the traditional asset-by-- asset acquisition approach.
The Real Coast Guard Challenge
The Coast Guard's innovative system-of-systems strategy to recapitalize has garnered significant positive recognition. The presidential task force found the Deepwater approach to be sound and strongly endorsed its process and timeline. The Secretary of Transportation and the Vice President designated the project a national Reinvention Lab, emphasizing that "the Deepwater Project will enhance America's national security by helping the Coast Guard perform its duties with maximum efficiency and savings to the taxpayer." Even traditional critics have acknowledged the strong merits of the Deepwater approach. Department of Transportation Inspector General Kenneth Meade testified that "the Deepwater planning process is comprehensive, sound and innovative." And the U.S. General Accounting Office reported that "the Coast Guard's [Deepwater] acquisition approach seems an appropriate way to avoid the costly one-for-one replacement of ships and aircraft."
Although this represents a daunting fiscal challenge, the past provides perspective. Consider the following excerpt from the Commandant's testimony to Congress: "I must stress the importance of undertaking as soon as possible the construction of new vessels to replace our major cutters.... I can mention steadily increasing repair costs, inability of our crews to keep ahead of deterioration and the day-to-day shipboard maintenance, and finally, a difficulty in obtaining replacement parts for the older machinery and equipment."
An obvious assumption would be that Admiral Loy, the current Commandant, made this statement. In fact, it was made by Admiral Roland in 1961, and as a result the Coast Guard's recapitalization funding escalated and continued at an annual average of $640 million (adjusted to 2000 dollars) for the next 25 years. When viewed as a national priority, the Coast Guard has received the necessary recapitalization funding.
From an operational performance perspective, the Coast Guard appears to have a compelling need to recapitalize. But how valid is the service's requirement for increased capital funding from a business perspective? To evaluate, consider that the current value of the Coast Guard's entire capital plant—cutters, planes, stations, surveillance systems, etc.—is approximately $20 billion. Average annual recapitalization funding of $446 million during the 1990s enabled the annual renewal of only 2.2% of this capital plant. A 2.2% recapitalization rate means the equipment and systems acquired must remain in service for 45 years. It is impossible for any military service, government agency, or business to maintain its effectiveness and efficiency when saddled with such a capital constraint.
The ultimate winner in the Coast Guard's quest to recapitalize is not just the service. The United States expects the Coast Guard to answer the call for help and to protect its shores and valuable marine resources. Yet the Coast Guard is getting dangerously close to the day when it may be unable to meet those expectations. This is especially true as the new century begins with expanding national expectations for the service. The Coast Guard must receive the necessary funds to recapitalize its fleets to continue to be Semper Paratus when the United States calls. Now you know the "rest of the story."
Commander Anderson serves as the assistant project manager for C4ISR on the Deepwater Project. His previous assignments include lead electronics design engineer for the USCGC Healy (WAGB-20), supervisor of West Coast shipboard electronics projects, and commanding officer of a regional electronics support command.