Coast Guard's budget request reflects homeland security role

The budget seeks to continue replacing an obsolete fleet of cutters and aircraft with new models, such as the Bertholf, pictured, the service’s first National Security Cutter. (Courtesy of Northrop Grumman)

By JACK DORSEY
The Virginian-Pilot

The Coast Guard’s dramatic evolution from a quiet maritime police force to a mainstay of homeland security is reflected in its budget request to Congress.

The proposed $8.4 billion spending plan for fiscal year 2007 would broaden the role of the Coast Guard and update its aging fleet.

The budget – the largest ever sought by the service – seeks $934.4 million to continue replacing an obsolete fleet of cutters and aircraft, and would include an unmanned aerial vehicle.

The budget asks for $62.4 million to create the National Capital Region air defense operation in Washington. Its mission would include the interception of potential threats in Washington air space and would be run by the 5th District, headquartered in Portsmouth.

Moving further into counterterrorism, the Coast Guard wants $4.7 million to provide a third 60-member Maritime Security Response Team in Chesapeake, allowing it to operate around-the-clock.

The budget is also different because of what it proposes to give up in savngs:

n$48.1 million by ending the Long Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) program for mariners, decommissioning the 64-year-old cutter Gentian, and converting some military positions to civilian jobs and making certain funding adjustments.

n$2.4 million by retiring the aged cutter Storis, based in Alaska, and replacing it with the cutter Munro.

Coast Guard officials said the budget request reflects the missions required by the Department of Homeland Security and the need to respond to natural disasters, such as hurricanes.

The Homeland Security Department’s overall budget, which includes those of the Coast Guard and seven other agencies, is $42.7 billion.

The Coast Guard budget is up from the $8.1 billion it received in the 2006 fiscal year. Personnel would grow by 477 , for a total of 47,598, according to the request.

Pay raises would be 2.2 percent – the same as other federal and military workers .

The Coast Guard’s Deepwater Project is designed to replace or modernize its 93 cutters and 190 aircraft over an undetermined number of years.

Capt. Jim Watson, chief budget officer for the Coast Guard, said Tuesday the Deepwater Project also seeks funding to place sensors for a national automated identification system for ships entering U.S. waters. Transponders would track their every move.

Deepwater money also would buy the fourth National Security Cutter, a 418-foot, 4,300-ton ship that can carry small boats and two manned aircraft, or four unmanned aircraft.

The first of the Fast Response Cutters also would be funded in the proposal. It is a 140-foot, 325-ton, 30-knot ship, armed with a 30 mm gun and .50-caliber machine gun mounts. It is more heavily armed and faster than current cutters of the same size.

Coast Guard activities in Hampton Roads, home to the Navy’s largest base, continue to grow.

More than 3,500 active duty personnel and 750 civilians work in the region. Portsmouth is headquarters not only for the 5th District, but also the Atlantic Area Command, the service’s largest command, stretching from the Rockies to the Atlantic shores.

The Chesapeake-based Maritime Security Response Team, which originated more than a year ago, is an addition to a similar Maritime Safety and Security Team, Watson said.

“This gives them a third team, allowing them to be in direct action sections, so that at any given time an entire section could respond on a 24/7 basis,” he said. They are available to respond to any terrorist activity in a port, ship or maritime location.

About 60 people make up each section.

The air defense mission for the nation’s capital would be based at the Coast Guard’s air station in Atlantic City, N.J., said Lt. Buddy Dye, a spokesman in Portsmouth. It would use five helicopters to provide air defense.

The mission previously was conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection .

Getting rid of the LORAN system over the next three years would save the Coast Guard approximately $34 million, Watson said.

“The system is no longer needed for navigation,” he said. Satellite-controlled global positioning systems have taken over and there are backup systems that can handle all maritime traffic needs.

“We are proposing to turn the system off, but apply some of the operating costs to the exit costs,” he said. That would include taking down antennae and disposing of some buildings and property, a project that would take about three years.

Adm. Thomas H. Collins, the Coast Guard’s commandant, said in a cover letter accompanying the budget proposal that rescuing 33,000 people in a two-week period after Hurricane Katrina may have been “the most visible Coast Guard achievement in 2005.”

“More important than the number of rescues, drugs seized or migrants interdicted, is what instances like Hurricane Katrina teach us.

“No one can predict the timing of the next catastrophic event,” he said. “Nonetheless, history tells us it will come.”

Reach Jack Dorsey at (757) 446-2284 or jack.dorsey@pilotonline.com.