CG to do more with next to nothing with 2011 budget cuts

[LTGunner]

Navy Times: Coast Guard would cut 1,100 in 2011 budget

By Susan Schept - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Feb 2, 2010 10:49:17 EST
   
The Coast Guard has requested $10.08 billion for fiscal 2011, down 3.3 percent from the $10.42 billion appropriated for fiscal 2010.

The budget also reflects a 2.6 percent cut in active-duty end strength.

As part of the budget request, the Coast Guard would get money to replace aging aircraft and ships, but also to decommission some of its older assets including the high-endurance cutters Hamilton, Chase, Rush, Jarvis and Acushnet.

Coast Guard officials believe they can get by without them, as two national security cutters should be operational by 2011: Bertholf already has been commissioned, and Waesche should be commissioned by May.

“Bringing on two national security cutters in FY11 and expansion of the law enforcement detachment program will alleviate some of the lost patrol time,” Capt. Ron LaBrec, chief of Coast Guard Public Affairs, wrote in an e-mail response.

Those actions will not, however, replace all the operating hours of the high endurance cutters that are being removed from service without fiscal 2011 replacements, he said.

“There will be a decrease in cutter operations, and we will manage our available vessels to the most vital activities as a result,” LaBrec wrote. “This short term decrease in capacity is needed so that we can invest in continuing to replace aging cutters and aircraft with modern, more capable assets so that the Coast Guard can successfully accomplish our missions into the future.”

The recapitalization budget includes:

• $538 million to construct the fifth NSC.

• $240 million to produce four new fast-response cutters.

• $156 million for C4ISR, logistics and acquisitions management.

• $101 million for aircraft, including production of one HC-144A Ocean Sentry.

• $83 million for shore facilities and aids to navigation, including $14 million for Coast Guard housing.

• $45 million for the selection of a design for the offshore patrol cutter.

• $42 million for 10 response boats-medium.

• $36 million for installing an upgraded radio network, Rescue 21, in California, the Great Lakes region, Hawaii, Guam and Puerto Rico.

The Coast Guard also plans to get by with 1,100 fewer service members, but it is unclear how or where those positions will be eliminated among the 42,000-strong active-duty force.

The budget requests $6.65 billion for Coast Guard operating expenses, a 1.3 percent increase over what was enacted for fiscal 2010. Operating expenses include operation and maintenance of Coast Guard assets, pay and allowances, bills, and training and recruiting.

As part of the operations budget request, the Coast Guard plans to decommission maritime safety and security teams in San Francisco; New Orleans; New York; Anchorage, Alaska; and Kings Bay, Ga. Part of that $18.2 million in savings — $3.6 million — will be rolled into the Law Enforcement Detachment program to meet higher demand for those services in support of combatant commanders and counter-drug operations in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, according to the budget request. The remainder of the savings will be put toward recapitalization of ships and aircraft, said Lt. Nadine Santiago, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard.

The service also will retire four HU-25 Falcon aircraft; remove five HH-65s Dolphins from service; and close air facilities in Muskegon, Mich., and Waukegan, Ill.


Source: NAVY TIMES

[EX-CG-GM]

Hard to believe that once again the CG is failing to push REALLY hard for additional funding, as the 40+ year old cutters continue to deteriorate.  Adding LEDETS does NOT replace ships being decommissioned!  Decomm 5 ships with only two replacements?  Am I missing something here?  

[BuoyJumper]

Cutters HAMILTON, CHASE, RUSH, JARVIS
and ACUSHNET to be decommissioned in 2011

The FY 2011 President’s Budget requests $10.08 billion for the Coast Guard.

OPERATING EXPENSES: The budget requests $6.65 billion for Coast Guard operating expenses, an $87 million increase (+1.3%) over FY 2010 enacted. The request supports the operation and maintenance of Coast Guard capability, pay and allowances, required bills, and training and recruiting. The budget includes the following decommissionings, reallocations, and efficiencies:

Decommission four High Endurance Cutters and one Medium Endurance Cutter:  USCGCs HAMILTON, CHASE, RUSH, JARVIS, and ACUSHNET.

Decommission five Maritime Safety and Security Teams (MSST):  MSSTs Anchorage, San Francisco, New Orleans, New York, and Kings Bay.
Reinvests savings from MSST decommissionings to create one new 12-person Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) and increase existing team size of remaining LEDETs from 11 to 12 members.

Decommission the National Strike Force Coordination Center; absorb functions at the Deployable Operations Group (DOG) and Coast Guard Headquarters.

Retire four HU-25 Falcon aircraft:  Three scheduled for HC-144A transition at CGAS Miami; one at CGAS Cape Cod.

Reduce and realign rotary wing capacity:  Relocate four H-60s to CGAS Traverse City – two from Operation Bahamas, Turks, and Caicos (OPBAT) (CGAS Clearwater), two from Maritime Security Response Team (MSRT) (CGAS Elizabeth City); remove five HH-65s from service; close Air Facilities (AIRFAC) Muskegon, MI and Waukegan, IL.

Consolidate Maritime Intelligence Fusion Centers (MIFC) into a single operational command.

Reduce and realign Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS) field unit capacity.

You can read the full Budget Fact Sheet HERE

[BuoyJumper]

USCG 378' WHEC Inventory

EAST COAST 378'S
•DALLAS (WHEC 716)  Charleston, SC
•GALLATIN (WHEC 721)  Charleston, SC

WEST COAST 378'S
•MELLON (WHEC 717)  Seattle, WA
•MIDGETT (WHEC 726)  Seattle, WA
•BOUTWELL (WHEC 719)  Alameda, CA
•MORGENTHAU (WHEC 722)  Alameda, CA
•MUNRO (WHEC 724)  Alameda, CA
•SHERMAN (WHEC 720)  Alameda, CA

•RUSH (WHEC 723)  Honolulu, HI
•JARVIS (WHEC 725)  Honolulu, HI
•HAMILTON (WHEC 715)  San Diego, CA
•CHASE (WHEC 718)  San Diego, CA


IMO:  Decommissioning RUSH and JARVIS without a
replacement leaves the 14th in a bit of a jam.  That's a lot
of ocean between California and Hawaii to be covered by
three seagoing buoy tenders.

CGC Ahi (87')
CGC Kittiwake (87')
CGC Assateague (110')
CGC Galveston Island (110')
CGC Kiska (110')
CGC Washington (110')
CGC Kukui (225)
CGC Sequoia (225)
CGC Walnut (225)

[EX-CG-GM]

Ron,

I suspect they would either shift another 378 or two to Hawaii or maybe one of the new ships.  The buoy tenders just can't make the speed necessary for some of the situations that arise.

[BuoyJumper]

Ron,

I suspect they would either shift another 378 or two to Hawaii or maybe one of the new ships.  The buoy tenders just can't make the speed necessary for some of the situations that arise.

That's what I would imagine too Stan.  We have four 378's at Alameda as well as both 418's.  So I would speculate that two of the Alameda based 378's will be reassigned to Hawaii.  It will be interesting to see if the CG reassigns the crews for the two 378's being decommissioned in Hawaii to the two 378's that will be reassigned to Hawaii from Alameda.  I would think they would do it that way and reassign the crews from the two Alameda based 378's being reassigned to Hawaii.  That would make for the least amount of disruption to the families involved if the Hawaii crews remained in Hawaii.  

[EX-CG-GM]

You could easily be right on the crew transfers.  When the Barataria, homeported on the east coast, returned from Nam the CG decommed the Dexter and we took over the B while that crew was flown back east.  Saves a lot of money as well as turmoil involved in transferring 300+ people.

[JekelKat]

Wow... thats a scary scary Coast Guard future.

Decommissioning of 5 WHEC's on the West Coast in the SAME YEAR? Baaaaaaad idea

[EX-CG-GM]

Wow... thats a scary scary Coast Guard future.

Decommissioning of 5 WHEC's on the West Coast in the SAME YEAR? Baaaaaaad idea

I agree.  Actually more like "brain dead" then merely a bad idea!  I suppose the net loss would be three since by then both the Bertholf and Waesche will be around.  Still, there's gonna be one hell of an optempo for the remaining ships!

Did ya' see my suggestion on the other site?  Posted something like "If it doesn't float or fly, or train those that do, outsource it."

Did it for grins.,   I expected a really loud reaction from all those that hate the idea of going to sea.  Nothing yet though.   

[BuoyJumper]

February 11, 2010

David HelvargPresident,
Blue Frontier Campaign

Save the Coasties

The U.S. Coast Guard is an odd duck, a multi-mission maritime agency that is both a military and a law enforcement service. It saves far more lives than it takes -- about one million since its founding 220 years ago.

Maybe that difference is why it's getting the prop screw in President Obama's 2011 budget even though it had the first ship, first planes and first military doctors on the ground after the Haitian earthquake last month and did the surveys that discovered the main port needs massive reconstruction before it can handle significant long-term relief shipments. Less than five years ago the Coast Guard was the only part of the U.S. government that functioned in the first critical days after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. "Coasties," as they call themselves, rescued over 33,500 of some 60,000 citizens saved in the wake of the disaster. They also coordinated the largest maritime rescue in world history on 9-11, helping evacuate half a million people from lower Manhattan.

The Coast Guard's maritime missions cover a broad range of activities including not only search and rescue but port security, buoy tending, oil spill response, narcotics and migrant smuggling interdiction and fisheries enforcement that provide us the safety, security and stewardship on our public seas we've come to expect. As the 21st century advances into its second decade it's become increasingly clear America needs its odd duck.

Unfortunately the Coast Guard has always been an institutional orphan in Washington, shuttled between the Treasury Department, the Navy, Department of Transportation and, since 2003, the Department of Homeland Security. Without strong institutional support or advocates in the White House or on Capitol Hill this smallest of the armed services, with just over 42,000 active duty members, has been forced to adopt an operational culture of "doing more with less."

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001 the Coast Guard budget, that had until then seen a decade of cutbacks, grew from around 5 billion to just over 10 billion dollars, but most of that was focused on security. Its armed responders grew in number from around 300 to 3,000 and its small boats and helicopter fleet were equipped with machine guns and .50 caliber sniper rifles. But as a top admiral explained to me as I was working on my recent book, Rescue Warriors - The U.S. Coast Guard, America's Forgotten Heroes, "We shifted assets to security, and we've failed to keep pace on the safety and environmental side."

President Obama's 2011 budget not only fails to address this huge challenge but actually mandates a 3 percent cut for the Coast Guard that will require a reduction in force of some 773 active duty positions. At the same time the budget provides 2.3 percent growth for the Pentagon giving the other four military services that operate under the Department of Defense over $708 billion.

So why is it that the armed services that kill people get more than 70 times the support than the one whose primary mission is to save lives? Part of the answer is the corrosive effect of top-tier defense contractors who have learned to lobby Congress both through direct campaign contributions and political favors as well as through subcontracting major defense jobs into as many Congressional Districts as possible.

But I think there's also something deeper going on. For thousands of years warfare has been the main rite of passage by which young men proved themselves as warriors and heroes and those who survived went on to become the leaders of their clans, tribes and nations.

Today, given the social and economic interdependence of an increasingly crowded planet, and faced with growing impacts from environmental and natural disasters, terrorism, industrial poisonings and pandemics, I see an alternative role model for our youth emerging.

In the future, our warriors and heroes may more often arise from the ranks of young women and men willing to go in harm's way to confront a wide but unknowable range of catastrophes in unusual and dangerous settings on a planet that's two-thirds saltwater. That, to me, sounds very much like the definition of a Coastie.

So when you look at the collapse of global fisheries and rise of piracy, seaborne migrants, coastal populations at risk, the growth of commercial shipping and impacts of fossil-fuel fired climate change including the opening of U.S. Arctic waters, the sensible response would be to double the Coast Guard in this decade and double it again by 2030 so it's closer in size to the U.S. Marine Corps than the New York Police Department. You could grow the Coast Guard 25 percent this year just with the price of extra C-17 transport planes that the Pentagon says it doesn't need to defend the nation but that contractor-friendly politicians on Capitol Hill keep promoting.

Unfortunately the administration's budget totally fails to recognize Coast Guard expansion as the kind investment in our future we need to commit to. Rather it seems to penalize the Coast Guard for being as effective as it is, implicitly saying, "If you can do more with less, maybe you can do everything with close to nothing."

Original Article

[ET1-Once]

Ron, this shouldn't come as any surprise.  The Coast Guard has always had to beg, borrow and steal to accomplish their mission.  I don't really understand the thinking behind these cuts myself.

[bill12353]

Well gentlemen I'm afraid I have to defend Pres. Obama when it comes to budgets and governing.

Since he has no real talent whatsoever in those areas.... and considering the fact that he has a one track mind which is locked in on socializing America, the community advisor takes up all his energy, time and political know-how to appease his associates. He probably doesn't even realize the situation with the Coast Guards needs and lease it to the White House lawyers.

He only makes decisions after his cabinet plus his 40 something member czar militia makes the unimportant decisions and details of governing.

When you're surrounded by advisors who best are questionable choices and worst only concerned about the inner circles welfare and social programs, the administration as a functioning body is lacking in visionary abilities.

His secretary of state has all but disappeared from the scene and spends most of her time gallivanting across the world making unwanted suggestions and derogatory remarks.
 
The person that should be taken up for the Coast Guard's welfare is Secretary Gates, but after serving with President Bush as a right pocket warmer, has now taken that place on Obama's left side pants pocket.
Makes you wonder if there's any Billiard games going on here.  (Inside joke) 

But there could be hope since the Congress holds the purse strings and has the last say on the budget. A Few of the more common sense centralists Democrats... along with the the majority of Republican may just realize your needs and entices the president to accept a little sugar with the salt for the coast guard.

I highly doubt that he will veto any bill that comes out of this Congress.

[EX-CG-GM]

The person that should be taken up for the Coast Guard's welfare is Secretary Gates, but after serving with President Bush as a right pocket warmer, has now taken that place on Obama's left side pants pocket.

I disagree with you one that one Bill.  As long as Gates gets what DOD wants he will be happy.  Sec. Napolitano is the one that needs to fight for CG funding.

[captjamie]

Thanks ron for posting that- but I must say that I am suprised that the Huffington Post would publish anything that would show any goverment agency not linked to social progress in a positive light. after all its is one of the most liberial rags around. that said I find the article a good one, except that I take offense to being called and "odd duck", but since that is the only negitive in the article I applaud the post for it. Maybe I should run for congress after all, my district is open this year.  

[EX-CG-GM]

...except that I take offense to being called and "odd duck",

They probably couldn't fir "Puddle Pirate" in the space they had.