Senators see gaps in Coast Guard's budget plan

Democratic and Republican senators raised concerns on Tuesday that the Coast Guard faces serious gaps in personnel and equipment under President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget request.

"My instincts tell me when it comes to this budget you were dealt a bad hand by OMB, the Office of Management and Budget," Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., told Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen during a hearing.

"The president's budget request for the Coast Guard would cut discretionary funding by $71 million," Byrd said. "That's not just chicken feed."

"And [it would] reduce military strength by 1,112 billets," he added, noting that the Coast Guard would be the only military branch to experience a personnel decrease in Obama's budget request.

Byrd said the proposed budget would decommission five maritime safety and security teams, four high-endurance cutters, one medium-endurance cutter, four fixed-wing aircraft and five HH-65 Dolphin helicopters.

"Such reductions raise serious concerns to this chairman," Byrd added. "The Coast Guard budget appears to be driven by a budget top line rather than by the need to effectively address the Coast Guard's mission requirements."

Allen, who is set to retire next month, walked a fine line during the hearing. As any agency head must, he defended the budget request and said the Coast Guard will carry out its missions by managing risk while allocating resources appropriately.

But he also gave senators a list of what he would do if Congress allocated more funding to the Coast Guard. Allen said he would keep the five HH-65 helicopters in the force, restore four of the five maritime safety and security teams and keep two high-endurance cutters.

He also said the Coast Guard could use another C-130J transport aircraft if funding were available.

Senate Appropriations ranking member Thad Cochran, R-Miss., asked for Allen's assessment of using unmanned aerial vehicles to help cover mission gaps.

Allen said he anticipates that UAVs will become a critical part of the Coast Guard's force in the future. The agency's Deepwater modernization plan calls for deploying high-altitude unmanned systems and vertically launched UAVs, he added.

He noted that the Navy this month successfully used for the first time the MQ-8B Fire Scout Vertical Take-Off and Landing UAV to interdict drugs. He also said U.S. Customs and Border Protection is developing a high-altitude Predator drone, adding that the Coast Guard is also looking at the Israeli Heron UAV system, which is a long-endurance, medium-altitude drone.

Allen said the Coast Guard needs to get a dedicated funding line for UAV procurements.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, raised the issue of the Coast Guard's new missions, especially operations in the Arctic.

Allen responded by saying the agency has multimission ships and will always have a cutter to be available for Arctic operations. But other missions might have to suffer, such as counter-drug operations in the Pacific, he said.

The Coast Guard needs three icebreakers to support Arctic operations, but now only has two, said Allen, who added that a third ship will be deployed in 2013.

But Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said he does not believe the proposed cuts and decommissioned vessels would seriously impair the Coast Guard. He said Allen needs to convince skeptical lawmakers who believe otherwise.

"If we are going to curb our growing debt and budgets that are not balanced as far as the eye can see, we cannot just pay lip service to fiscal responsibility which we have done for too many years at the expense of our country's national security," Voinovich said.