Almost Overnight, New Ships Make U.S. Coast Guard A Big Geopolitical Player


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Earlier this month, the Coast Guard’s first Legend class national security cutter, the USCGC Bertholf (WMSL 750), stopped in San Diego for a quick visit before returning home to Alameda, California on March 15. The crew, with the end of a three-month deployment in sight, offloaded seven tons of illicit drugs, lined up for COVID vaccinations and related their latest adventures. The sense of accomplishment was palpable, reflecting the progress the Coast Guard has made in bringing the majority of their eleven capable Legend class patrol ships into service.

It hasn’t been easy, but, some thirteen years after a stormy and controversial procurement process, the national security cutter fleet has “arrived” at just the right time. The Coast Guard’s thankless work in replacing their old fleet of twelve vintage Hamilton class cutters has paid off, and rest of the American government is suddenly realizing that the new capabilities in America’s recapitalizing cutter fleet are perfectly suited to address many of today’s pressing maritime law enforcement challenges.

This abrupt alignment of materiel to mission will fundamentally change the Coast Guard, making America’s dowdy old life-saving and drug-interdicting service a far more dynamic participant in Washington’s big geopolitical debates than many of the usual players expect.

Put bluntly, the new assets make the Coast Guard the next big thing in Washington policymaking. The challenge for U.S. policymakers now is to keep America’s rush to exploit the Coast Guard’s new assets from sinking the Coast Guard that operates them.

A Long And Winding Road To Relevance:

It has been a very long road for the pricy and complex 5000-ton national security cutter. Emerging from the wreckage of the Coast Guard’s failed Deepwater recapitalization effort, cost overruns and delays slowed progress, while structural issues, naval integration challenges, balky engines and generators challenged the first ships as they entered the fleet.

USCGC Bertholf itself has come a long way since the vessel’s 2008 commissioning. When the big cutter first arrived at its homeport in Alameda, California, tired crew regularly stopped in at the local Starbucks
SBUX
to gripe about their ship. But a decade later, seasoned Bertholf mariners, preparing for what became an unprecedented tour of the Western Pacific, stalked the waterfront and good-naturedly ribbed newer National Security Cutters that were still preparing to take on high-profile taskings.

Today, the Bertholf is meeting demanding deployment targets expected by the Coast Guard, and, with the entire “Program of Record” of eleven Legend class cutters set to arrive over the next few years, the Coast Guard is now firmly in the business of dispatching multi-mission, quasi-diplomatic law enforcement vessels across the globe. The new cutters—and the rest of America’s refreshed and re-building Coast Guard, are, quite frankly, assets that America hasn’t had before.

Racing Towards Global Operational Utility:

Tactically, National Security Cutters are leading the Coast Guard charge to integrate various new platforms and capabilities. In San Diego, Bertholf officers excitedly described how their embarked Boeing Insitu ScanEagle drones, their Eurocopter MH-65 Dolphin helicopter and boarding craft worked together to simultaneously prosecute and catch three “go-fast” drug smugglers in the space of six hours. 

Outside of the anti-smuggling battle in the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean Oceans, America’s National Security Cutters are conducting other interesting missions too, ranging up into the northern latitudes to monitor various Russian activities, while different Legend class ships are teaming up with smaller Fast Response Cutters to create wide-ranging multi-mission Coast Guard task groups. 

The new cutters are extending the Coast Guard’s reach. According to Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Karl L. Schultz, “Later this month, the National Security Cutter Hamilton will head across the Atlantic to support the Department of Defense’s European Combatant Command” escorting two new Fast Response Cutters that will begin “replacing the six 110-foot patrol boats operating for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.” 

Today, the Coast Guard’s sense of urgency is palpable. In 2019, just as concerns were rising over the emergence of China’s militarized fishing fleet, the Coast Guard commissioned two Hawaii-based National Security Cutters on the same day. In 2020, USCGC Stone (WMSL 758) was delivered from Huntington Ingalls Industries
HII
in November, and, just one month later, left the shipyard for what became a far-reaching, 68-day “shakedown cruise” to the Southern Atlantic. Reflecting a tempo normally seen in wartime, ceremonial milestones were postponed, and the busy, brand-new Stone only found time for a formal commissioning last week at the Coast Guard’s evolving superbase in Charleston South Carolina.  

While the National Security Cutter’s slow evolution from a troubled program to a valued platform is great to see, it is not all fun and games. As the new cutters arrive and chalk up real steaming time, the Coast Guard is also learning serious operational lessons. The stress is showing. A stack fire aboard the USCGC Waesche last September—a major incident that has, so far, sidelined the cutter for more than six months—suggests that the Coast Guard is still getting a sense of how their big new cutters and their heroic crews may operate while in peril, absorbing battle-like damage during inevitable mishaps.

As the Coast Guard begins to better understand their new big cutter fleet, only some minor “wants and needs” are trickling back. Some Legend class stakeholders desire better electronic warfare capabilities and better naval integration. Others would prefer berths for a few additional crew members. And the space appropriated for unmanned platforms has made the management of detainees more complicated, suggesting the potential need for some sort of logistical support element or new platform. 

New Ships Give Coast Guard A Seat At The High Table:

The U.S. military and other areas of government are finally beginning to notice what a refreshed and energized Coast Guard fleet brings to the nation. But this awareness comes with risks. For years, the Coast Guard thrived in a quiet maritime backwater, doing well for itself while Washington policymakers ignored the Coast Guard and only appreciated the Service as domestic burnish during times of trouble. Going forward, the challenge is to maintain the U.S. Coast Guard’s unique strengths as it rapidly accumulates reputation, influence—and potentially, grows in size.

Changes are easy to see. The recently-released Tri-Service Naval Strategy focuses a lot of attention on Coast Guard missions. On March 17, Navy Admiral Craig S. Faller, the outgoing commander of the U.S. Southern Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Coast Guard’s new cutters are “well-manned, well-trained ships making a difference day in, day out,” and that “we couldn’t do our mission without the United States Coast Guard. They are the principal source to counter threats in the hemisphere.” As the Coast Guard operates further and further forward, a number of other U.S. geopolitical stakeholders will want the U.S. Coast Guard’s unique international standing and operational assets available for their own particular purposes.

Congress is taking note, too. With the procurement focus shifting from the soon-to-close Legend class cutter production line at Huntington Ingalls Industries and towards the shipyards building the Fast Response Cutter, Offshore Patrol Cutter and Coast Guard Icebreaker, debate over the Coast Guard’s meagre budget will be vigorous. Elaine Luria (VA-2), an influential leader in the House Armed Services Committee and newly appointed member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, related in a recent Maritime Security Dialogue at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that she had just gotten information from the Navy “about how successful the U.S. Coast Guard National Security Cutter deployment was to the Western Pacific.”

This sort of attention is good. The Coast Guard is still in the early stages of refreshing the rest of their aged large-ship law enforcement fleet, and it still needs all the funding help it can get. The first mid-sized Offshore Patrol Cutters and big ice breakers will only start start entering the fleet over the next few years. But with the National Security Cutters and the still-growing fleet of Fast Response Cutters demonstrating far greater capability than expected, the Coast Guard is now challenged to support wider basing and more ambitious deployment patterns.

The Coast Guard also still needs help to build out the support infrastructure for their new cutters as well as to understand what these larger, more effective and more complex ships will cost to operate over time. But it’s not just ships. The Coast Guard requires more help to better exploit and understand its emergent global role—as a Service, it needs attaches and other resources to engage globally, as well as sufficient backing to continue supporting the diverse partners it developed back when it was considered a maritime sideshow.

The bottom line is that the U.S. Coast Guard’s new ships make America’s all-too-small and all-too-often-underfunded Coast Guard a whole new asset for the U.S. Government. America’s sleepy little life-guard and and illegal drug interdiction outfit is now moving towards the center of many important geopolitical debates and emergent challenges. In Washington, it’s the hot new thing. And with the demand signal for Coast Guard set to grow, Congress, the Biden Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and a range of other Agencies must work together to ensure the Coast Guard stays afloat, capable of providing the long-term strategic acumen and wide-ranging, all-of-government utility that made the U.S. Coast Guard so successful in the first place.

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