The Marine Log is reporting “House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee Chairman Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.) set a no-nonsense tone when he opened up a hearing yesterday to review the Administration’s budget requests for the U.S. Coast Guard…’Congress must make extremely difficult decisions in the coming months to bring our spending under control and cut the deficit’…Chairman LoBiondo commended the service for uncovering some savings through efficiencies in operations and the consolidation of services, but wanted to know ‘if more operational savings can be found that will not adversely impact safety, security, and mission success.'”

He called the Coast Guard’s  five year Capital Improvement Plan “fantastic,” (not in a good way, as in, it is a fantasy) referring to a planned 66 percent increase in funding over the next three fiscal years. (Assuming we are talking about a 66% increase in AC&I over the FY2012 request ($1.4B) that is a $924M increase annually, approximately a 9% increase in the total budget.)

He also took the service to task for its failure to complete a “fleet mix analysis” that the Subcommittee requested over 13 months ago.  “I urge the Service, in the strongest possible terms, to satisfy our request for this document in short order…Second, the Service continues to lack the polar missions plan long sought by Congress. To add insult to injury, the Service intends to spend millions of unbudgeted dollars to refurbish the POLAR SEA’s engine and then decommission the icebreaker.  This is a classic example of throwing good money after bad.”

The Coast Guard is still projecting procurement planned under the discredited “Deepwater” program, almost ten years ago, that included replacing 12 WHECs with 8 multi-crewed National Security Cutters (NSC) and replacing 29 WMECs with 25 Offshore Patrol Cutters (OPC), a reduction of 20% in the number of hulls. Meanwhile, there is little evidence to prove multiple crewing of NSCs will work; UAVs, which don’t seem to be working out for reasons beyond Coast Guard control, were supposed to do a lot of the air surveillance work; drug runners are turning to semi-submersibles and true submarines that are increasingly hard to detect; and new responsibilities are coming with the opening of the Arctic to commerce. It is also possible to make a case that the South Pacific EEZ was never adequately policed. Things have changed and they justify more, not fewer assets.

In an earlier post, FY 2012 AC&I budget request for vessels, I noted that it included new or accelerated procurement that was only possible within that budget amount because there was no money in the budget for a sixth National Security Cutter, only a relatively small amount ($77M) to finish funding the fifth NSC which apparently cost a total of $687M–more than the entire FY 2012 AC&I budget request for vessels. It appeared from the budget justification, that these new and accelerated procurements, notably of six Fast Response Cutters a year and 40 Response Boat Mediums were planned to continue and that; in addition, there were plans to begin refurbishing the 140 foot icebreaking tugs in FY2012 and the 225 and 175 foot buoytenders in the out years. Without a substantial increase in AC&I funding this was clearly incompatible with continued funding of the NSC and procurement of the OPC.

Admiral Papp obviously has a hard job. He needs some support. How can the Coast Guard go before Congress and ask for a 66% increase in AC&I funds when it misses an opportunity to justify its planned force?

If we had good documentation of the need, I think we could fully justify the projected increase in AC&I and more, but the Coast Guard seems to have painted itself into a corner on the assumption that more money will come without providing the documentation to justify the increase.