Building a U.S. Coast Guard for the 21st Century - Center for ...

This sentiment is shared at the most senior level of the Coast Guard’s enlisted
ranks as well. In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and
Maritime Transportation in the midst of heavy operations in Haiti, Master Chief
Petty Officer of the Coast Guard Charles Bowen stated that “Our people deserve
operational assets that are equipped to twenty-first century standards in order to
protect our country from various maritime threats. And yet we ask them to work
and live on platforms that are years—and in some cases—decades past their
designed service lives.” 4 According to Bowen, the “afloat workforce maintain[s]
these aging platforms to the best of their abilities and capabilities…sometimes the
age forces lengthy unscheduled maintenance periods, adversely impact[ing] mission
execution, or creat[ing] risks to personnel.” 5
Accordingly, the Coast Guard’s FY 2011 budget request focuses resources on the
service’s top budgetary priority—the continued recapitalization of aging assets
and infrastructure. 6 But in order to underwrite and sustain the recapitalization
and replacement of these assets while operating in a constrained fiscal environment,
the Coast Guard is decommissioning a significant number of surface vessels
and aircraft that it would otherwise not immediately retire given proper funding. 7
This year, the service will decommission:
• Five major cutters (four High Endurance Cutters and one Medium
Endurance Cutter)
• Nine aircraft (four HU-25 falcon jets, and five HH-65 Helicopters)
• Five Maritime Security and Safety Teams, or MSSTs—antiterrorism teams
established to protect local maritime assets. There will now only be seven
MSSTs, down from 12 in FY2010
These decommissionings are the primary reason why the Coast Guard decided
to decrease its military workforce by 1,112 positions; fewer operational platforms
require fewer service members to operate them. Together, the five MSST decommissionings
will decrease the service’s operations expenses by $18.2 million, while
the ASSET decommissionings will reduce the Coast Guard’s operating costs by
some $59.6 million, for a combined savings of $78.8 million. 8
The majority of these funds will be reprogrammed toward the service’s equipment
recapitalization plan, the much maligned Deepwater acquisitions project, which
will be discussed in detail in the Coast Guard recapitalization section below.
10 Center for American Progress | Building a U.S. Coast Guard for the 21st Century