U.S. Coast Guard and Fiji Navy personnel stand in front of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Harriet Lane while moored in Suva, Fiji, Feb. 19, 2024. (Charly Tautfest/U.S. Coast Guard)

Stars and Stripes has a nice long article about USCGC Harriet Lane’s first Pacific deployment.

It also suggests we may have been pushing the Guam and Hawaii based Fast Response Cutters (FRS) beyond their limits for long term operation.

“But the small vessels are also limited in both how far and how long they can operate. While they can island hop, they struggle with sustained operations on the high seas, and a high operation tempo has strained the vessels. Some are in need of serious maintenance soon.” (emphasis applied–Chuck)

There is also no mention of the fact that frequently a buoy tender that is larger than Harriet Lane accompanies the FRCs on these expeditionary patrols.

While the article talks about getting new medium sized ships in the Pacific. “…Lane is a “stop gap“ until the service can send a newer, better medium-size ship to the Pacific,” the new Offshore Patrol Cutters (OPC) (more than twice as large as Harriet Lane) will not directly replace the 40 year old cutter in Hawaii. The OPCs are to be based in Long Beach and Kodiak. so rather, it will be that the OPCs relieve the two Hawaii based National Security Cutter of any need to do Alaska Patrols and frees them to do patrols in the Western Pacific.

(Forgive me for being nit picking, but the “Over the Horizon boats” are not “inflatable” even if we do call them RHIBs. For the uninitiated “inflatable” conjures up an entirely different picture.)