Marine Link has an article discussing the importance of the Waterways Commerce Cutter program. Waterways Commerce Cutter: It’s Time For An Upgrade.

The author makes a case as to why these little vessels need to be better than might be assumed. That they are in fact multi-mission vessels. He sees a massive increase in the river cruise industry.

Its an inciteful look at trends on America’s rivers and well worth the read.

The US Naval Institute has an article discussing the Coast Guard’s difficulty getting qualified volunteers for sea duty, Demise of the Cutterman, Part II. This article makes reference to a 2015 post, The Demise of the Cutterman. I think both are currently accessible even to non-members, at least for a limited time.

I considered that perhaps there were other reasons for the difficulties. Was it possible the difficulties were due to the change in the manning requirements of the recapitalized fleet?

Are there more sea duty billets than there were before? I checked this and there does not appear to be great difference in the gross numbers.

I compared the previous fleet of 12 WHEC 378s, 28 WMECs, and 41 Island class WPBs (81 total) to the projected fleet of 11 NSCs, 25 OPCs, and 64 Webber class WPCs (100 total).

The requirements to man 64 Webber class (24 crewmembers each) compared to 41 Island class (16 crewmembers each) required 880 additional.

This was largely offset by the change from 12 WHECs (177 crewmember each) to 11 NSCs (122 crew members each) for a reduction of 782 billets.

There has been no change in the WMEC/OPC fleet yet but the shift from 28 WMECs (requiring a total of 2449 billets) to 25 OPCs (requiring approximately 2500 billets) should only add about 51 billets.

So it looks like the recapitalization should require only about 150 additional billets or an increase of less than 3%. But the specifics of the crews composition may have changed.

I don’t have enough information to investigate these in detail but I suspect three changes have effected our ability to crew the new ships.

Do we have fewer non-rates? I suspect the percentage of the crew who are non-rates has decreased. (It is not hard to fill non-rate billets.) This means that more of the crewmembers are married and have families at home. It also means fewer non-rates are being introduced to sea duty, so the number of prior sea service personnel advancing to petty officer will be reduced. Assuming no change in the proportion of non-rates choosing to return to sea as petty officers later in their career, this will effect the future talent pool as well. It will mean fewer salty first class, chiefs, and warrant officers.

More technical ratings? Again this is a supposition on my part, but presumably the new generation of ships require greater levels of expertise to operate. This means a higher proportion of the crew is mature with more responsibilities and more attractive job possibilities outside the Coast Guard. Increasingly, individuals in this demographic will seek shore duty or choose to leave the service, which is an option for most because they will have completed their initial enlistment.

More officers required? Also a supposition on my part, but at least in the case of replacing 41 WPBs with 64 WPC, we are going from 82 officers to 256, a 210% increase. Junior officers are probably not a problem, so I presume the problem is in getting middle grade billets filled, particularly O-3 and O-4 billets. While I doubt that there is a shortage of volunteers to command Webber class WPCs, I can understand why there would be a hesitance to volunteer for other O-3 billets afloat. If you have ambitions of command afloat, and you don’t get command of a Webber class, the feeling may be that your chances for future command afloat selection are extremely slim, because those who had Webber class command will inevitably be considered better qualified.

There is a cure for this that would provide incentive to take those O-3 billets. Make an O-3 tour, e.g. department head on “big white one” or buoy tender XO, a prerequisite for command afloat as an O-3 or O-4. The result might theoretically reduce the future pool of command afloat candidates, but the pool should still be large enough, and those selected for O-3/O-4 command afloat would be more experienced and will have passed an additional layer of vetting.

National Defense provided the first report I saw on the Presidents FY2022 budget request for the Coast Guard, reporting it as flat relative to the FY2021 budget as enacted.

The Navy League Magazine, Seapower, on line edition has a pretty good summary of what is included.

I found the budget justification document here, all 445 pages of it.

Actually I find the proposed budget encouraging. $13.1B is only 0.3% larger than the enacted budget for 2021, but that is only because the Congress loves the Coast Guard and has added on to the Administration’s budget every year I have followed the budget process. This 2022 budget request is actually 6.5% greater than the corresponding initial 2021 administration request.

The Procurement, Construction, and Improvement budget is down compared to 2021 enacted budget, but it does include everything we would expect, given the end of the FRC program and the expected pace of Polar Security Cutter and Offshore Patrol Cutter procurement. On the other hand there is a substantial increase in Operations and Support.

“Under Biden’s budget, the service would see a significant boost in operations and support funding in 2022. The $9.02 billion for O&S would be $535 million, or 6.3 percent, more than it received for 2021.”

This includes substantial increases to reduce the maintenance backlog for aircraft and cutters. If you would like to check out the “Program Changes,” follow the link to the full budget document. There are 37 program changes on 20 pages, beginning on the 72nd page of the pdf. The page is labelled USCG–O&S–34.

One of these (#17) indicates new homeports for Webber class in Saint Petersburg, Sitka, and Boston expected in FY2022.

I would not be surprised to see the Congress make some additions. I’ll venture a guess, that about $300M will be added, including a C-130J and three more Webber class to counter Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported fishing in the South Pacific. If that happens, the resulting $13.4B budget would be a three percent increase over 2021.

After the new administration has had more time to look at the Coast Guard’s programs, I hope they will see fit to accelerate the building of the Offshore Patrol Cutters and/or perhaps add a class of cutters between the OPC and the FRC.

Not directly Coast Guard related but the Army Corp of Engineers is getting a big boost for maritime related work that impacts safety of navigation and risks of flooding.

Information on MARAD’s budget request here.

The US Naval Institute News Service has a report that may be of interest because of the potential for interaction with Venezuelan forces in the Caribbean.

“The seven missile craft aboard Makran are each approximately 57 feet (17.5 meters) long and match the Peykaap family of medium-sized fast attack craft operated by Iran. There are several variations of these craft in Iranian service, although all are generally similar. The latest Peykaap-II type (also known as the Bavar class) is 57 feet long and can carry two anti-ship missiles and two 12.75 inch torpedoes. The missiles could be of the Kowsar or Nasr types, which are derived from Chinese models with a quite modest range of around 18 nautical miles.”

An 18 nautical mile range may be “quite modest” to the Navy, but it is twice that of anything the Coast Guard has.

Had a question from a reader, how many 110s are still in commission with the USCG?. Figured I could get a quick answer here. We know about the four still with PATFORSWA. Looking at District web sites, I am not sure they are up to date.

The FY20222 budget anticipates decommissioning five more. So how close are we to seeing the last of these cutters in the USCG?

Looking at the Wikipedia page for “Sentinel Class Cutters,” which seems to have been kept up to date, at this point there are 20 Webber class that have not yet been delivered to the Coast Guard. Future homeports have not been associated with 17 of these.

If you know of 110s still in commission please add a note.