WASHINGTON - At its first oversight
hearing of the new Congress, leadership of the House Coast Guard subcommittee
has focused on how well the service is handling its heavy load of assigned
missions.
Vice Adm. Peter Neffenger,
deputy commandant for operations, told the Coast Guard and Maritime
Transportation Subcommittee that despite tight budgets, aging and failing
equipment and multiple assignments, the service has balanced its missions by
giving more responsibilities to regional sectors, relocating assets and
personnel in response to emergencies and partnering with non-government
entities.
He said the Coast Guard
uses a “prevent-respond strategic concept” that is implemented through Coast
Guard geographic sectors. Coast Guard Sector commanders, for example, have
broad authority over many domains, such as enforcing port safety, security and
marine environmental protection regulations, inspecting commercial ships and
mariners and overseeing hazardous spill response, search and rescue and
maritime security.
“The framework of
prevention, response, partnership and integrated, layered operations helps to
effectively govern the U.S. maritime domain and reduce risk,” he said.
Just the same, certain
Coast Guard missions suffer when the agency must move its equipment and people
to respond to manmade or natural disasters, such as hurricanes and oil spills.
In 2005, the Coast Guard positioned hundreds of assets, including 40 percent of
its helicopter fleet and over 5,000 personnel, to the Gulf to respond to
Hurricane Katrina. In 2010, the Coast Guard led response and humanitarian
efforts after the earthquake in Haiti, and in April 2010, moved over 150 assets
and 7,500 personnel to the Gulf for the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill cleanup.
“Each time the Coast Guard
surges assets and personnel to respond to an emergency, it take those resources
away from a programmed mission,” according to a brief prepared by the House
Coast Guard subcommittee in advance of the hearing. “As a result, funding and
resource hours are reduced and performance suffers for certain missions,” the
committee said. “For instance, surging assets and personnel to respond to the
Haitian earthquake and the Deepwater
Horizon spill results in a reduction to resource hours (number of light
hours for aircraft and underway hours for vessels) and funding for
aids-to-navigation, drug interdiction and ports, waterways and coastal security
in 2010.”
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard
appears to be doing a better job of more evenly distributing its funds and
resource hours between its security and non-security duties. In fiscal year
2011, an Inspector General report found that the agency was spending 50.4
percent of its budget on homeland security and 49.6 percent on non-security
work. The use of resource hours was similar — 52 percent was used on security and
48 percent non-security in fiscal 2011. This compares to the years after 9/11
when there was a large funding and resource shift to homeland security.
But by far the biggest
challenge to maintaining a mission balance is keeping an aging fleet in
constant operation. Vessels broke down on their way to Haiti, for example, and
the IG report indicates that the total number of resource hours had fallen by
12 percent over the past five years, due to cutters and aircraft being out of
service for maintenance or breakdowns.
Neffenger said this is
improving now that assets are being replaced under the Coast Guard’s recapitalization
program, formally known as Deepwater, including a new National Security Cutter,
fast response cutters, and the Rescue 21 communications system. “These are
improving the Coast Guard’s ability to operate in the offshore, coastal and
inland domain with improved speed, coverage, reliability and safety,” he said.
In response to questions
from committee members, Neffenger said that the Coast Guard is expected to take
a 25 percent cut in its budget if automatic sequester cuts go into effect on
Friday.
“There will be an impact on
our ability to operate,” but he added that security and emergency response would not suffer. He predicted that maintenance on assets would
likely be deferred to save money, and that the Coast Guard will be relying more
on its outside partnerships to get things done.