Congress took another major step in revitalizing the U.S. Coast Guard recently when the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee voted to provide funding for a ninth national security cutter (NSC).
While the official U.S. Coast Guard program of record remains at eight NSCs, a ninth hull in this fleet is merited for a number of reasons.
The addition of another NSC would be a major benefit to Coast Guard capability, according to the Heritage Foundation’s Brian Slattery.
NSCs “provide critical capabilities for the majority of the Coast Guard’s 11 core missions” and “extend the service’s operating range, amplify its surveillance capabilities, and allow it to operate in adverse conditions such as Arctic waters and high sea states.”
Moreover, “nine cutters would reduce risk and fulfill the NSC’s mission requirements.”
As “the largest and most technically sophisticated” vessel in the Coast Guard’s white-hull patrol cutter fleet, the NSC provides critical maritime security capabilities, including “robust command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment.” In essence, “the NSCs are afloat operational-level headquarters for complex law enforcement and national security missions” in the “most demanding open ocean environments.”
More specifically, adding a ninth NSC bolsters the Coast Guard’s operational range and ability to execute drug interdictions, perform search and rescue operations and provide additional maritime domain awareness in the Arctic.
According to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., “[t]he current Coast Guard production goal for only eight National Security Cutters is based on dated assessments and is insufficient to meet current or future requirements.”
He is also “pleased that the Senate bill would maintain the national security cutter production line in order to give the Coast Guard more certainty and capabilities to meet its operational requirements.” Sen. Cochran’s remark alludes to a recent Congressional Research Service publication.
Written by naval affairs specialist Ronald O’Rourke, it details four fleet mix analyses (FMAs). Tellingly, each FMA, including “the objective fleet mix,” advocates the procurement of a ninth NSC to address the Coast Guard’s mission gaps.
A bipartisan 26-4 Senate Committee on Appropriations vote in June approved the bill, putting it up for consideration by the entire Senate. The Senate variation of the bill places “an emphasis on border security and hazard mitigation” by investing in “the role of the USCG to protect the nation’s maritime borders.”
Not including Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding, the bill would provide $10.3 billion for the Coast Guard, a bump of $496 million compared to FY2015 and $570 million more than was requested by the Coast Guard.
The $640 million appropriated for the construction of a ninth NSC represents the largest portion of the funding hike.
One of America’s Founding Fathers lauded the benefits of a capable Coast Guard fleet. In the earliest recorded reference to the Coast Guard, Alexander Hamilton wrote that “a few armed vessels, judiciously stationed at the entrances of our ports, might at a small expense be made useful sentinels of the laws.”
Hamilton would have likely found the utility of a ninth NSC obvious. Hopefully Congress will recognize its value as well.
