Navy Times recently interviewed the Commandant. There is both a written report and a video interview, and in this case, the two are different, so you might want to look at both.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog
Navy Times recently interviewed the Commandant. There is both a written report and a video interview, and in this case, the two are different, so you might want to look at both.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
One thing I thought was interesting is that the commandant specifically mentioned the PC’s. He was referring to the fact that once the LCS are deployed in numbers to Bahrain, the PC’s might come back to the Coast Guard. The thing is, they’ll be all used up by then. Realistically we are talking 5-10 years before the LCS are deployed to to Bahrain. The PC’s are going to be 30 years old by then.
There are never going to be enough LCS to go around. They’ll be in Singapore, either Guam or Darwin, they’ll have a few in Japan eventually for minesweeping, maybe as many as 8 eventually in Bahrain, some in Florida, some in San Diego, some probably stationed in the Gulf of Mexico. But there’s never going to be enough of them to go around. (which is actually an argument for the LCS that the frigate fanatics never seem to acknowledge).
Regardless, we are going to need something to replace the PC’s eventually. Could be a Coast Guard Cutter, or could be a new PC. But something is going to have to fill that gap, the projected inventories won’t work 10 years out.
The PCs were of course one of the classes that was supposed to be replaced by the LCS. The way I read it, the Commandant was not suggesting that the PCs would be transferred to the Coast Guard, but that when they com back to CONUS we would put LEDETs on them.
I’m not sure if it matters if they were transferred back to the Coast Guard again or if they just had LEDET’s on them. I think the LCS is replacing them in that role, but my argument is there aren’t going to be enough SSC’s to meet the demand, and I’m including Cutters in my definition of SSC.
The Cyclones aren’t going to be around a decade from now either way. And I don’t think they’ll be relieved in Bahrain before then.
It actually irritates me. We have intractable problems. The national debt, adequately funding our national defense without bankrupting ourselves, an aging population and how to deal with entitlement reform, nuclear proliferation, long term drought in areas of the country, homelessness, and a host of other things, those are intractable problems. But this isn’t one of them. If we need 20 or 30 more patrol boats and more planes for maritime security in the Persian Gulf, to police the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, and enforce EEZ in our Pacific territories, then for petesake, buy the ships and enlist the crews to man them. This is the United States of America, you’re (don’t mean you personally obviously) telling me we can’t afford to do that? It’s ridiculous.
If it’s true, and I don’t have any reason to assume that the general and commandant aren’t telling the truth, that we don’t have adequate resources for SouthCom, then that’s absurd. The USCG says they are rebalancing to the Western Hemisphere, but what exactly are they rebalancing? There is no funding for new resources and no resources that I can ascertain are being moved back to the Western Hemisphere.
If you read the critique of the revised naval strategy, you saw that the Navy said nothing about contributing ships to counter drugs in the Western Hemisphere. Seems the CG is putting more effort into that to compensate for the loss of Navy assets, but it is squeezing an ever smaller balloon, those resources likely come out of fisheries.
And while the DHS department budget gets larger, the CG budget, particularly acquisitions, continues to shrink.
The Commandant is out and about trying to sell the CG and his priorities as stated in the State of the Coast Guard address including the Offshore Patrol Cutter. I like that he is taking his case public. http://www.marinelink.com/news/editorial-command-man388259.aspx
“Q. And so this issue of who will be grandfathered into the new retirement system — the Coast Guard would follow suit with the other services, right?
A. As we always have with military pay raises, we have always mirror imaged.”
This, of course, begs the question what always means. The Coast Guard does not have W-5s and historically the Coast Guard has had to go back and get its own raises. Always is only from the equalization pay act of 1920 – the same year and act the Coast Guard took on navy ranks and pay scales. So, always isn’t always.