Above is a US Naval Institute interview with the winner of both the first and third place winner of the Institute’s Coast Guard essay contest.
A lot of the discussion is about why the Coast Guard should establish a Coast Guard Yard, West, at Mare Island (Subject of the first place winning essay), but he goes on to advocate improving the military readiness of Coast Guard cutters and explains the Coast Guard’s relationship with the Navy.
This year’s Coast Guard issue was particularly good. We did have some discussion of it earlier. The two essays written by LCdr Blevins are linked below.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
With the endless Argus fiasco still active and the outcome of choosing ESG to build the OPC’s, I’m not so sure USCG has the chops or cred to be trying to act as a leader in the discussion of the future of shipbuilding and force application.
We should already have an example (demonstration) of a USCG Cutter militarized for mobilization with all of its additional weapon systems. An NSC and OPC should be available to development and participation in every exercise as proof of concept, and development of tactics.