Recruitment and retention challenges have led the U.S. Coast Guard into a system-wide service retreat. A 3500-person shortfall—a nearly 10% shortage in the enlisted ranks—is forcing the Coast Guard to take ten cutters out of service, transfer five tugs to seasonal activation, and shutter 29 boat stations.
The moves, couched as a bland “AY 24 Force Alignment Initiative”, present an unprecedented loss of maritime capability at a time when the United States is facing an array of complex challenges at sea. But the Coast Guard simply “cannot maintain the same level of operations” going forward. Behind the scenes, the service is using the crisis to advance an array of modern management and personnel initiatives to help bring more people into the Coast Guard—and keep them there.
The cuts, coming as the Coast Guard has, according to Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan, “never been in greater demand around the world,” will hurt, but leaders were quick to assure the realignment will not cause a decay in existing Search and Rescue capabilities. But, at a minimum, the Coast Guard’s retreat does reduce redundancy and raises risk. The cuts will roil the enforcement of America’s maritime border, opening new and dangerous opportunities for migrants, drug smugglers and criminal networks.
The Coast Guard’s emergency service drawdown, however painful, is necessary. The Coast Guard’s underfunded and overworked force of 57,000 active duty and reserve personnel have been stretched thin for a long, long time. But Fagan’s decisive action, coming just days after the Coast Guard was boxed out of a $100 billion funding supplemental for security and the border, is more than just a prudent effort to redirect Coast Guard personnel towards 1700 mission-critical billets. It is a cry for help.
The Coast Guard certainly needs more funding, but, right now, it could breathe a lot easier if the service was given the flexibility to simply fund recruiting efforts and allowed to test out new personnel management approaches.
Expect Drastic Service Cuts At Sea:
The cuts to the Coast Guard cutter fleet are deep and unexpected.
Three east-coast based Reliance-class cutters, the USCGC Confidence (WMEC-619), the USCGC Dauntless(WMEC-624) and the USCGC Dependable (WMEC-626), will each enter layup in mid 2024, becoming little more than in-reserve “parts-barns” for active, in-service cutters. Add in the March retirement of the Decisive (ex-WMEC-629) with the long-planned retirement of the USCGC Steadfast (WMEC-623) later this year, and the loss of Coast Guard cutter capability becomes quite significant.
If the cuts are allowed to go through, the Coast Guard will, the space of two years, have cut their fleet of mid-sized oceanic workhorses by almost 19 percent. And, once the capability is lost, help is not coming anytime soon. Modern replacements, the Offshore Patrol Cutters, are years behind schedule. The first Heritage-class OPC, the future USCGC Argus (OPC-1), is, at best, two years from seeing an operational deployment, and the Stage II Heritage-class cutters may face additional challenges.
Put in naval terms, the Coast Guard cuts are incredibly drastic. They are as if the Pentagon suddenly decided, virtually overnight, to send 14 of America’s fleet of 73 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to the scrapyard, while looking hopefully to a handful of Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, some lower-capability Littoral Combat Ships—and the Coast Guard—to fill the capability gap.
The Coast Guard’s emergency drawdown will have immediate implications on the integrity of America’s maritime border. Admiral Fagan, in an address earlier this year, noted that the Coast Guard is facing maritime migration pressure “on a scale we’ve not seen in decades.” To manage the massive migratory flow, medium-endurance cutters have led the way to “prevent the loss of life at sea and deter those dangerous voyages.” With the cutters gone, seaborne migration will increase and the chances of large-scale loss of life at sea will go up.
The abrupt departure of three East Coast cutters, coupled with the reassignment of the Famous-class medium-endurance cutter Harriet Lane (WMEC-903) to the Central Pacific, will force major changes to maritime border enforcement in the Caribbean. The Coast Guard’s smaller Sentinel-class cutters will need to do more, but far more work will likely fall upon the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations (AMO) division as well as state agencies that handle maritime law enforcement.
It will be tough. The soon-to-depart cutters were not troubled, pier-bound slouches. They made a real difference, and their absence will be felt throughout the United States. USCGC Confidence, returning from a 62-day, 9,000-mile deployment this Fall, halted the flow of some $85 million dollars of illicit substances into the United States and rescued 42-migrants aboard an unsafe, makeshift vessel. In August, USCGC Dauntless completed a 42-day patrol, highlighted by the rescue of an overloaded 60-ft vessel with 274 people aboard.
While old, the ships handled a ferocious operational tempo. In the first 182 days of 2023, slated-to-retire USCGC Dependable was on deployment for 92 of them. While embarked, the ship recovered 1100 pounds of illicit contraband and interdicted/processed some 800 migrants.
The cuts, however painful, make sense. The Reliance-class cutters, all approaching six decades of service, are some of the oldest ships in the Coast Guard’s already venerable fleet. As cutter repair costs and operational casualties grow, the Coast Guard cannot afford to keep the old, solid-state vessels operational, at sea and relevant in the increasingly contested, high-tech maritime.
Other Coast Guard platforms were cut as well. In addition to the draw-down of the medium-endurance cutter fleet, seven of the Coast Guard’s sixty remaining 87-foot Marine Protector-class Patrol Boats will enter layup, and five of the Coast Guard’s 11 65-foot harbor tugs will become seasonal assets, activated only to break harbor ice in the winter.
Service Cuts Hurt But They Are Needed:
Action was overdue. Despite a brave face, the Coast Guard has struggled for years to keep remote bases operational and big cutters at sea. On land, bases would sometimes battle along with 60% of approved staff levels, with everyone busy and yet, no ability to do any of the many Coast Guard missions well. At sea, cutters often went on deployment short-handed or key personnel were yanked from shore assignments to help support the Coast Guard’s ferocious operational tempo afloat.
While the Coast Guard celebrates their personnel flexibility and an individual’s commitment to mission, the grinding uncertainty of constant “mission-juggling” aboard balky, hard-to-run platforms has taken a toll on morale, exacerbating the Coast Guard’s already-big retention challenges.
Admiral Fagan’s tough action to cut Coast Guard services is a healthy break from the past. Traditionally, Coast Guard personnel shortfalls were masked, spread across the fleet, leaving the short-handed cutter fleet to muddle through a blistering operational tempo and demanding mission requirements. Today, the Coast Guard’s newer and more capable vessels are designed for personnel efficiency, making them far less able to absorb random crew shortfalls. On a Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutter, every member of the 24-person crew is essential. It’s how the Coast Guard is eking near-mid-endurance cutter performance out of a far smaller vessel.
The cuts ashore are, in part, driven by safety and redundancy concerns. There’s simply no way to operate a small boat team safely if it is short-handed. Given the staffing challenges, consolidating services in areas where the Coast Guard can still meet statutory search and rescue response expectations makes sense.
The Coast Guard’s action will be politically contentious, and it should be. The Coast Guard does need more help from supporters and stakeholders, and service cuts may just be the thing that forces potential Coast Guard advocates into action. While the capability cuts are galling, it is the only way forward. There’s no going back.
By cutting deeply now and accepting additional risk, the Coast Guard can keep America’s beloved sea service from collapse. But, as the Coast Guard starts implementing these massive cuts over the next year, it should, as more migrants drown and more smugglers begin moving more cocaine, fentanyl and other dangerous items into America from the sea, become very obvious that the Coast Guard needs more funding, more public support and more champions at every level of the U.S. government.
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