Coast Guard seeks to restructure major commands
Changes would redefine senior leadership positions.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said Friday the service is seeking congressional approval to merge its Pacific and Atlantic Area commands into a single Coast Guard operations command. In addition, the service would establish a force readiness command to better support the fleet by ensuring standardization of doctrine development, Allen said in a speech at the National Press Club.
The operations and force readiness commands would be based in Portsmouth, Va., and Alameda, Calif., where the Atlantic and Pacific Area Commands are located.
Allen also intends to create two deputy commandant positions, one focused on operations and one dedicated to mission support, which would integrate acquisition, logistics and maintenance functions and introduce a standard logistics system for the entire service.
Additionally, he would elevate the vice commandant to the rank of admiral to achieve parity with the other armed forces. The vice commandant position currently is set for the rank of vice admiral, which is three stars.
"We must have command-and-control and mission support structures that optimize mission execution," Allen said. "To create a Coast Guard that can effectively meet the demands of the 21st century we need hardware and [personnel] that are flexible, agile and adaptable."
"Whether you call it modernization, transformation, realignment or all of the above, we're about to set on a course to change the Coast Guard," he said.
Allen's proposals follow other organizational changes he has instituted since becoming commandant in 2006. Last year, he created a centralized acquisition directorate to be responsible for major acquisition programs, including the $25 billion Deepwater recapitalization program.
The Coast Guard also established the Deployable Operations Group, which aligned specialized forces into a single, unified command structure that could provide one-stop shopping for rapid response to threats worldwide. The group includes 3,000 personnel from 12 maritime safety and security teams, one maritime security response team, two tactical law enforcement teams, eight port security teams, and the national strike force.