Current and looming capital needs require the Coast Guard to have annual procurement budgets of at least $3 billion annually and up to $4 billion, the service’s commandant said on Thursday.
Overall, the Coast Guard needs a $20 billion budget by 2030 to meet the demands being placed on the service, Adm. Linda Fagan told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s panel that oversees the Coast Guard. The fiscal year 2025 request for the Coast Guard is $13.8 billion.
“We are at risk right now across the service and we need your support to ensure we continue to support our workforce to continue operations today and invest in the capabilities necessary for operations tomorrow,” Fagan said, going off-script from her written testimony. In her written statement, she asked Congress to support the president’s FY ’25 request because “it provides needed investment in these areas and helps position the Coast Guard for the future.”
At different times she said the service needs $3 billion-plus, at least $3 billion, and between $3 billion and $4 billion annually in the procurement, construction, and improvements (PC&I) account. Congress appropriated $1.4 billion for the PC&I account in FY ’24, the lowest in a decade, Fagan said.
The Coast Guard is seeking nearly $1.6 billion for its acquisition budget in FY ’25, an amount that Fagan told the panel prioritizes workforce and operations.
Fagan said her top acquisition priority is to start construction of the first new heavy icebreaker, the polar security cutter (PSC), which is still in detailed design. But, she said, “the top line reality of the budget does not align with this priority.”
Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), chairman of the subcommittee, said in his opening remarks that the panel “has serious concerns about the combined budget impact of simultaneous construction of the polar security cutters and the construction of two offshore patrol cutters (OPCs) per year for a decade starting in fiscal year 2026.”
The Coast Guard is hoping to begin construction of the first PSC this year, but Fagan said the service will not have clarity on schedule until prime contractor Bollinger Shipyards completes design work. The first OPC was launched last year.
On top of the procurement funding shortfalls, the Coast Guard is also lacking resources to keep up with maintenance.
“We currently project our ship maintenance budget will only cover half our planned ship maintenance projects,” she said. “We have similar shortfalls in infrastructure and aircraft accounts.”
Continuing to delay planned maintenance means more unplanned fixes, which “disrupts work and training schedules, takes cutters and aircraft off operational mission,” Fagan said. It adds up to lower readiness, more time maintaining things, and less time with families, she said.
“This isn’t a notional problem in the future, it’s the Coast Guard we’re operating today,” she said.
Fagan’s call for more funding support, particularly in the acquisition account, is the first for a commandant since Adm. Paul Zukunft and his predecessor Adm. Robert Papp said the service needed at least $2 billion annually in the PC&I funding to recapitalize aging assets. Papp and Zukunft both said that with fewer resources, the Coast Guard would have to do less.
Zukunft was followed by Adm. Karl Schultz who put more emphasis on the operations and support funding. Fagan, who has been commandant for nearly two years, has as well, until now.
“We must invest in 2025 and beyond to generate sustained readiness and resilience of building the Coast Guard of the future,” she said.
Asked by Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) how the budget process played out within the Department of Homeland Security that led to the resource constraints the Coast Guard is facing, Fagan answered that “hard offset decisions need to be made” and the service had to emphasize its people and operations given the Coast Guard is a “capital intensive front-line operating organization.”