Coming up short 10 percent of its required enlisted force means the Coast Guard “can’t crew all our ships” and has had to “temporarily shutter some of our smaller stations,” the vice commandant said Wednesday.
Adm. Kevin Lunday, speaking at the Brookings Institution, added, “We had to lay up three of our major cutters because we don’t have enough enlisted personnel to crew them.” Since the action, the service has shifted funds from other parts of the budget to bolster recruiting and retention.
He described the “controlled parts exchanged,” borrowing from another vessel to get a cutter underway, as “the fancy term for cannibalization.” If it continues over time, “you’re eating your readiness.”
Lunday later added that USCGC Healy (WAGB-20) had an engine room fire that caused it to return to port for repair this year. The medium icebreaker “had just begun her summer patrol” in the Arctic. Repair will prove difficult because “much of the machinery aboard is antiquated” and parts may no longer be available.
“If Healy can’t continue that patrol, the U.S. will have no icebreakers in the Arctic this summer,” he said. This happened as the United States laid claim to an extended continental shelf, requiring more presence to assert sovereignty in that part of the Arctic.
When asked about how many icebreakers the United States needs now, he said that number would be either eight or nine, and three of those would need to be heavy icebreakers.
The United States has two – one heavy and one medium. The Coast Guard is in the process of buying a used, American-built icebreaker, Lunday added, as “a bridging strategy” until the new vessels are built and commissioned.
Entering the fiscal year, the Coast Guard was about 3,000 members short of end strength numbers. “That’s the backbone of the Coast Guard,” Lunday said.
Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan said, ‘“We have, as of two weeks ago [in July], the number of reservations, that means people who are planning to go through Cape May, that we need to consider a full, successful year and meet our recruiting [goals],” Federal News Network reported.
Lunday said the recruiting shortfalls over the past four years have led the Coast Guard to examine new ways to bring young people into the service. To help them meet physical fitness standards before enlisting, “we’ll help them work out.” While they are in boot camp at Cape May, N.J., “we want to make sure they are ready” mentally and physically to meet the Coast Guard’s standards.
On procurement, Lunday said, “we need a $3 billion PC & I budget [procurement, construction and improvement] to just maintain track with our current acquisition.” He added the Fiscal Year 2025 budget requested $1.8 billion in those accounts.
In some ways, the Coast Guard’s icebreaker building program and the Navy’s submarine building program face the same post-COVID challenges – having the shipyards train and retain skilled workers. This is particularly true along the Gulf Coast, where its major construction projects are contracted, Lunday said.
Two years before the pandemic struck in 2020, Eastern Shipbuilding, which had the initial contracts for the offshore patrol cutters, suffered major damage when Hurricane Michael devastated much of the Florida Panhandle.
Since the United States hasn’t built icebreakers for decades, “once it [the skills] disappear… you have to build it up” again to “move at speed and scale” in construction. Lunday was referring to the tradesmen such as welders and electricians who left shipyards in the northeast and Gulf Coast for steadier employment because of the pandemic and storms, or because they retired.
He added the recently signed Icebreaker Collaboration Agreement reached amg the U.S., Finland and Canada “may help as we go forward” in sharing expertise and technology.
Lunday said the future icebreakers will be built in the United States.
Bollinger Shipyards in Pascagoula, Miss., is building the first of three heavy icebreakers and Austal in Mobile, Ala., and Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City, Fla., have the contracts to build the offshore patrol cutter.
Lunday added the Coast Guard expects Bollinger to begin work on the polar security cutter in December.
The offshore patrol cutter will play a significant role in extending Coast Guard presence in the Pacific. Lunday said the United States is not only a Pacific nation, but “a Pacific island nation” through Hawaii and territories in those waters.
A major concern to Pacific Island nations is illegal fishing by the Chinese and other nations, which are depleting fish stocks and undercutting their economies, he added. Seafood harvests are the largest producer of protein for those nations.
The offshore patrol cutters with “ship-riders” from those nations aboard can enforce laws and regulations in their extended economic zones.
“We need that capability.”
