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

The first two entities, DCMS and DCO, are to be located in headquarters in
Washington, D.C., whereas OPCOM and FORCECOM are field-based commands.
The Coast Guard maintains that these new appointments will centralize Coast
Guard planning and will have the potential to alleviate many of the challenges
observed in recent operations. The DCMS is designed to centralize management
of critical resources (human resources, technology, and procurement) while the
creation of a DCO would integrate policies, and policy interpretations, for all
Coast Guard missions and operations while creating consistency across agencies.
The two field commands, FORECOM and OPCOM, will provide a single force
manager and provider for all Coast Guard forces and provide a common global
operations and intelligence view, respectively. 84
The Coast Guard believes that this organizational restructuring will enable the
service to better meet the challenges of the 21st century. In the coming decades,
the Coast Guard will likely remain the nation’s first responder to maritime environmental
catastrophes, increased drug trafficking, illegal costal immigration, and
disasters at sea as a result of increasing maritime trade as well as increased maritime
and research activity in the Arctic region.
The Coast Guard will also remain an active member of the multinational
Combined Task Force 151 conducting counterpiracy missions around the Gulf of
Aden. 85 The service believes that “by eliminating existing geographical command
barriers and establishing a more centralized and functionally based organizational
structure”, the Coast Guard will be better able to meet these challenges. 86
Despite a concerted effort by the Coast Guard’s leadership to implement these
structural changes, creating new high-level positions requires statutory changes
that must be approved by Congress. A bill, the Coast Guard Modernization Act
of 2009, H.R. 2650, was considered by the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard
and Maritime Transportation and Infrastructure and was then recommended for a
floor vote. The Senate bill, the Vessel Conveyance Act, S. 1194, has been passed by
its respective committee in that chamber but no final action has been taken as of
the time of publication, leaving the Coast Guard with a command structure that is
geographically divided and functionally challenged.
41 Center for American Progress | Building a U.S. Coast Guard for the 21st Century