Onboard the guided-missile frigate USS Kauffman earlier this month, the embedded Coast Guard team made waves.
After spotting “suspicious packages in the water,” the U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment seized and identified “approximately 775 kilograms of cocaine worth an estimated wholesale value of $15.5 million.”
The USS Kauffman is currently supporting Operation Martillo, “a joint, international law enforcement and military operation involving the U.S., European and Western Hemisphere partner nations” which “targets illicit trafficking routes in the waters off Central America.”
This operation also seized “274 bales of cocaine weighing more than eight tons” on July 22, after a Coast Guard cutter team boarded a semi-submersible vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean. “The estimated street value of the drugs,” according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, “is hundreds of millions of dollars.” The operation has led to numerous other drug busts, including the capture of $59 million of cocaine in May and $35 million of cocaine last November.
The Navy’s frigates have been instrumental in helping the Coast Guard throughout Operation Martillo. Lance Bacon of NavyTimes called these ships “the heavy hitter in the Navy’s fight against drug traffickers.”
Over the past five years, frigates “were involved in ‘the vast majority’” of drug interdictions totaling “164 metric tons of cocaine valued at $3.2 billion.”
Frigates also helped seize “76 percent of 26,000 pounds of marijuana” over the same timeframe.
Yet all of the Navy’s remaining frigates will retire by year’s end. The Kauffman’s upcoming decommissioning “will mark the first time in more than 70 years that the Navy will be without the traditional frigate.”
Indeed, “the only remaining frigate in the U.S. Navy will be USS Constitution, Navy’s ambassador that was launched in 1797 and remains the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.”
These multiple frigate decommissionings will hinder Operation Martillo’s effectiveness by reducing the Coast Guard’s presence in trafficking hot spots like the Caribbean.
Bacon suggests that their removal from the fleet “could cripple drug interdiction efforts in the coming year” and that “planners are scrambling … until the littoral combat ships arrive in sufficient numbers.”
U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Paul Zukunft agreed when he said that “intelligence teams have eyes on 80 percent of the drugs coming into the country by sea … but only enough platforms to stop 20 percent.”
Despite the continued threat posed by drug trafficking and illicit activities off American shores, the Coast Guard lacks sufficient resources to respond.
The Heritage Foundation’s Brian Slattery has argued for a more robust cutter recapitalization program to address the Coast Guard’s capability gaps.
He specifically recommends the following:
Congress should increase Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) funding to at least the FY 2015 projected level; revisit the fleet mix analysis, which called for a ninth National Security Cutter and significant increases to the OPC and Fast Response Cutter fleets; and continue to push back against national security cuts such as those mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011.
This is particularly important in light of the current budget environment. Admiral Zukunft said budget pressures “stymie our ability to recapitalize at a rate that’s more cost effective,” meaning “the acquisition side of our appropriation and our budgets going forward is an area of concern.”
The Coast Guard is perpetually defending the U.S. from illegal activity while also providing other critical services like search and rescue and maintaining aids to navigation in American waters. Congress can support these activities by equipping our Coastguardsmen with the resources they need to prevent harmful drug shipments from reaching American communities.
