The U.S. Coast Guard-known for generations as a service stretched too thin-is at a crossroads. The Integrated Deepwater System (the service's long-term acquisition program to build an entirely new Heel of ships and aircraft) is inching from drawing board to delivery.
The Coast Guard is also acquiring a new class of boat, the response boat-medium, to boost its shore-based capability. Furthermore, the service has stood up sectors around the country to consolidate command-and-control functions while simultaneously implementing the Maritime Transportation Security Act. But none of these gains in securing the homeland addresses the logistical, financial, or operational deficiencies caused by being overworked. The Coast Guard can acquire new vessels, it can reorganize its command-and-control systems, and it can increase its size (as it has since 11 September 2001, from 38.000 to 41.000 active-duty personnel), but unless the service commits to a total transformation of its force, it is destined to wallow in a state much as it exists presently: doing too much with too little and wasting precious resources in frantic efforts to maintain a taxing operational tempo.
The time has come for the Coast Guard to fully transform to the post-9/11 environment. Updating a few old manuals and commissioning a few new units is not enough. Instead, the service must embark on a three-pronged process of clearly defining its essential roles, changing its force structure, and altering acquisition plans. In short, it must revisit its core competencies, restructure its force to maximize effectiveness as an agency dedicated to those core competencies, and finally, revise current and future acquisition plans to achieve those competencies. The transition will not he painless, hut it must he as swift as it is complete. America's maritime security depends on it.
Revisit Core Competencies
The Coast Guard traces its roots to a 1789 proposal by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton to have ten cutters patrol the coastline of the United States to deter and prevent smuggling. The cutters of what was then called the Revenue Cutter Service scored tremendous success both as enforcers of law and as a coastal defense force, battling smugglers as well as the navies of Britain and France over the first decade of its existence. Law enforcement and coastal defense can thus be called core competencies of the Coast Guard-two complementary missions that are just as deeply rooted in the history of the service as they are relevant to its operations today.
Around the same time the keels were being laid on the Revenue Cutter Service's ten original cutters, states and municipalities were forming shore-based response organizations to perform search and rescue along the coast of the new nation. In time, these agencies were absorbed by the Federal government in the form of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, which in turn was amalgamated with the Revenue Cutter Service and a number of other agencies to form the modern-day Coast Guard.
Search and rescue is another Coast Guard core competency, rooted in history and critically important today. While the service has taken on myriad other missions since the days of the new republic, it is valuable to emphasize that at its core, today's Coast Guard has three critical missions, unchanged since the late 18th century: enforcing laws, guarding the coast, and saving lives. Furthermore, the area in which it operates is (despite its far-flung aspirations) narrowly tailored: the Coast Guard carries out its missions along the U.S. coast.
Today, the Coast Guard has strayed far from its core competencies by adopting missions only tangcntially related to the duties that are most basically important to the national security of the United States and the safety of its citizens. The service has evolved into a catch-all maritime agency whose mission cannot be described coherently. Significant amounts of its resources are devoted to jobs more logically performed by civilian agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). It is time for the Coast Guard to get hack to basics: search and rescue, law enforcement, and coastal defense.
Restructure the Force
The Coast Guard must shed any mission that cannot he logically connected to its core competencies. It is time to leave behind those responsibilities that can be carried out by other agencies and are little more than a drain on valuable resources. Yet it is neither realistic nor beneficial for the Coast Guard to discontinue all operations that are not actual search and rescue, law enforcement, or coastal defense. To be sure, today's Coast Guard plays a major role in some unique missions.
Trimming missions must be deliberate and methodical. Those that should be removed must meet three criteria: First, they must represent a disproportionately high cost-to-benefit ratio for the Coast Guard. Second, they must be easily transferable to other agencies. Finally, any mission transferred from the Coast Guard must be carried out by the receiving agency without degradation in mission effectiveness, and preferably, with increased efficiency. In light of these criteria, the picture of the new Coast Guard becomes clearer.
Chief among the missions to he shifted to other agencies are those Coast Guard operations carried out in deep water. Leading the way is polar icebreaking. The Coast Guard's polar icebreakers-the red-hull fleet-includes three cutters, the sole purpose of which is to assist in scientific research. Of the three cutters, one, the Polar Sea (WAGB-11), is hopelessly inoperable. Her sister, the Polar Star (WAGB-10). is battered and bruised from an increased workload (as well as simply being old), and merely keeping her running is phenomenally expensive.
The polar icebreaking mission is an anomaly within the Coast Guard. This purely scientific mission is more logically a duty of NOAA, which has an officer corps solely devoted to the operation of research vessels. Finally, the NOAA corps can operate the polar icebreakers more efficiently. The Coast Guard mans and equips the Polar Sea and Polar Star using a military model of redundancy, while NOAA could operate the vessels with significantly fewer personnel with streamlined funding sources.
While this is obviously a mission that must be transferred out of the Coast Guard, the service must also transfer yet another seagoing mission. The service has a fleet of 12. 378-foot Hamilton (WHEC-715)-class high-endurance cutters, with primary missions to conduct counternarcotics patrols and to patrol the Bering Sea and the Maritime Boundary Line with Russia in the Pacific area.
The maritime counternarcotics mission is not the exclusive domain of these cutters, though. Thankfully, other Department of Homeland Security agencies, the U.S. Navy, and the navies of allied countries conduct the lion's share of maritime drug interdiction. To fill the void created by having too few cutters (and even fewer that function reliably), the Coast Guard embarks Law-Enforcement Detachments on board naval ships of both the United States and allied nations. These detachments (elements of Tactical Law-Enforcement Teams based in Norfolk. Tampa, and San Diego) are as inexpensive to operate as they are effective. The host navy pays tor the tremendous expense of operating the vessel, while the detachment carries out the boardings and seizures that slop drugs from reaching American shores.
Coast Guard high-endurance cullers are anachronisms in the war on drugs. Old, slow, prone to breaking down, and with crews of approximately 160. they patrol the counternarcotics operating area, piteously trying to keep up with faster, better-supported Navy ships that are doing the same job with a mere eight Coast Guardsmen.
Rather than desperately trying to maintain these old cutters in an environment far from its geographic area of expertise, the Coast Guard should take a less parochial approach and rely on interagency partnership to stop drug traffickers. Of course, the Coast Guard will always play a primary role in counternarcotics; the service must expand its tactical law-enforcement teams and increase cooperation with the Navy to ensure enough vessels have embarked law-enforcement detachments to effectively carry out the campaign against illegal drugs.
The days of Coast Guard cutters patrolling in deep water should come to a close. The three criteria for mission transfer of the Coast Guard's largest assets have clearly been met. There is no sense in wasting Coast Guard resources trying to conduct long-range patrols when the world's foremost experts in blue-water operations, the U.S. Navy, can do the job better.
Without a doubt, some will say that the disappearance of the Coast Guard's deep-water operations is unconscionable. Others will claim the Coast Guard needs to maintain the Hamilton-class cutters because the service has had the high-endurance vessels for generations. And still others will rationalize their existence out of the mistaken belief that these cutters, little more than miniature destroyers, provide a capability the Navy does not have. The list of reasons to keep them may be long, but none is very valid when objectively considering the deplorable cost-to-benefit ratio.
The Coast Guard has a rich tradition of sending ships to sea. hut in the past, its cutters have largely been confined to coastal waters. The service's hodge-podge, barely operational deep-water fleet is not only a vacuum for resources, it requires skills largely outside the Coast Guard's area of expertise. Moreover, logistical support for the service's largest cutters is woefully inadequate. The Coast Guard is trying too hard to do too many jobs, and it must lake a more realistic look at what missions it can perform effectively. It is high time the Coast Guard focused its operations to provide better protection to the American public. It is time for the service redefine what it means to be a seagoing Coast Guardsman: rather than trying at once to be a presence on the high seas, an expeditionary littoral force, and a deep-water smuggling blockade, the Coast Guard should return to its core competencies of patrolling the U.S. coast in small, fast patrol boats that are multi-mission and cost-effective to operate.
Revise Acquisition Plans
The Coast Guard is in the midst of acquiring a number of new systems, ranging from small arms to large cutters, and the centerpiece of Coast Guard acquisition is Deepwater, a so-called "system of systems" designed to replace its large cutters and aircraft. But the cutters planned under Deepwater are derided by the operational Coast Guard as being both too slow and undermanned. And yet. there is time for the contract to be changed to meet the needs of the service.
Construction on the largest class of cutters planned under Deepwater, the maritime Security cutter, large (WMSL) has only just begun. The contract calls for an end strength of between six and eight of them. That number should be reduced to four at most, and they should all be home-ported in the Pacific Northwest and sent exclusively to patrol the Bering Sea, conducting fisheries patrols and search and rescue in the world's most dangerous waters. The notion that these cutters will soon be steaming alongside a Navy expeditionary strike group thousands of miles from home should be relegated to the trash heap.
Design and construction of the second largest cutter under Deepwater, the maritime security cutter, medium (WMSM), should be accelerated, and the cutters' top speed must be increased from a derisory 29 knots to nearer 40 knots, a speed comparable to the Navy's littoral combat ship. Finally, construction of the smallest Deepwater surface asset, the fast-response cutter (FRC), must be accelerated. These are designed to replace the Coast Guard's Island-class 110-foot patrol boats, and the service needs them now. The structural integrity of the Island-class cutters is so degraded that some may not be safe to take to sea. It is time to equip Coast Guard personnel with the tools they so desperately need to keep the American people safe.
Recently, there has been political pressure to deliver Deepwater assets sooner than called for under the original 20-year contract. It is abundantly clear that the Coast Guard needs new ships, command-and-control systems, and air assets, and that the contract must be accelerated beyond current plans. The entire Deepwater program must be accelerated, but not if it means hurtling toward mediocrity. There is no sense in building new ships if they will not improve the Coast Guard's ability to perform effectively.
The acquisition of large cutters is not the only contract that must be revised. The response boat-medium purchase should be accelerated. The plans to upgrade and arm Coast Guard helicopters must also be expedited. By decommissioning the service's largest cutters, the resulting glut of personnel can be assigned to valuable operational units throughout the Coast Guard. Tactical lawenforcement teams should be enlarged so that more law-enforcement detachments can go to Navy ships to conduct counternarcotics patrols. Likewise, shore-based response units service-wide should see an increase in billet strength (concurrent with the acquisition of more small boats) that would not just ease their operational burden, but actually increase their hours under way-a valuable deterrent to terrorism and a tremendous benefit to public safety in the form of decreased search-and-rescue response time. By assigning more personnel ashore and to patrol boats, the Coast Guard would simultaneously conserve valuable resources and, most important, keep the United States safer by providing a credible deterrent and effective response force in the event of a terrorist attack in U.S. coastal waters.
A New Course
The Coast Guard is an organization of factions with too many missions to carry out any of them well. By making painful decisions now to reclaim its status as a military service that conducts the critical missions of search and rescue, law enforcement, and coastal defense, the Coast Guard may in fact be saving itself. Should the next terrorist attack occur in the maritime domain (as so many experts predict), the political leadership will restructure the Coast Guard. This scenario nearly played itself out during the stand-up of the Department of Homeland Security and is inevitable in the event of a maritime attack. By working to restructure itself today, the Coast Guard can better protect the homeland tomorrow.
Lieutentant (j.g.) West was recently assigned to the Coast Guard Intelligence Coordination Center alter completing a tour as a deck watch officer in the high-endurance cutter Midgett (WHEC-726). Prior to his commissioning, he served as a quartermaster third class in the Coast Guard Reserve in the coastal patrol boat Poinl Doran (WPB-82375) and the coastal buoy tender Henry Blake (WLM-563).