Recently, the Coast Guard announced its plan to continue additional deployments to the western Pacific. According to a report by USNI News, the plan for more of these deployments came after the successful deployment of a buoy tender and a fast response cutter to Samoa and American Samoa. This plan is ill-advised.
Not to sell the Coast Guard short: Those who serve in the Coast Guard have the duty of securing the country’s maritime borders — all 12,380 miles. They are doing it shorthanded, with just under 41,000 active-duty personnel augmented by roughly 7,000 reservists and thousands more members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary.
By comparison, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has over 45,000 sworn agents, mostly focused on protecting the 7,486 miles of land borders with Mexico and Canada. Of that 7,486 miles, the 1,960 the United States shares with Mexico gets most of the attention.
To put it bluntly, the Coast Guard is already stretched pretty thin. And now, they are going to be asked to deploy far from the American coast more often. Why not send the Navy?
Well, the Navy is also short on hulls. In fact, the Navy’s need for an expanded shipbuilding program, caused by its current shortage, is one of the reasons the Coast Guard is sending its ships further afield.
This is pretty risky. For instance, let’s look at the two ships the Coast Guard sent out. The first vessel, USCGC Walnut (WLB 205), is a Juniper-class seagoing buoy tender. According to the 16th Edition of the Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World, this ship and her 15 sister ships are unarmed.
Technically, they are able to take a 25mm Bushmaster chain gun, but the guns have not been installed despite a funding request. In other words, the funding to give these ships an infinitesimal chance in a fight hasn’t come yet. Pretty much, if this ship has to fight, spitballs might be their only option.
The Bernard C. Webber-class fast response cutter USCGC Joseph Gerczak (WPC 1126), on the other hand, has some weapons: one 25mm Bushmaster and four .50-caliber machine guns. This ship can actually go down fighting — its crew of as many as two dozen personnel showing they can fight valiantly in a futile engagement.
How did we get to this situation? Well, the answer is a lot of shortsighted cuts that saved money but cost us the tools needed to protect not just this country’s citizens but its vital interests with minimal danger to our troops. Those cuts had a price tag.
We’re seeing that price tag across the military, from aging bombers to the loss of personnel in accidents. But the price tag also has included increasing the risk to the personnel serving in the Coast Guard, especially as focus shifted to fighting terrorism.
Look, it goes without saying that all Americans are glad that Abu Bakr Baghdadi is dead. The problem is, focusing on that scumbag (and others like him, including Osama bin Laden), as necessary as it was, has delayed the rebuilding the Navy and Coast Guard needed. The need is now more desperate due to an increasingly aggressive China and a resurgent Russia.
The U.S. Navy has been spread thin, and somehow the gap needs to be filled. But stretching the Coast Guard even thinner is not the answer to that problem.
Harold Hutchison has 15 years of experience covering military issues for multiple outlets and is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
