Republicans on the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee on Monday released their proposed fiscal year 2025 spending bill that would provide the Coast Guard with four fast response cutters (FRCs) for the Coast Guard and additional funds to keep in service an aging medium-endurance cutter for operations in the Indo-Pacific region.
The Coast Guard is requesting $216 million for two FRCs that would support the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. The subcommittee is recommending $385 million for four FRCs, which if ultimately agreed to, would bring the program to 71 vessels.
The subcommittee says that the four additional FRCs would be to “counter China in the Indo-Pacific.”
The Coast Guard already operates three FRCs from Guam in the western Pacific Ocean.
The 154-foot FRCs are built by Bollinger Shipyards, which has been contracted for 67 of the short-endurance vessels.
The subcommittee is scheduled to mark up the FY ’25 Department of Homeland Security’s appropriations bill Tuesday morning and the full committee is slated to take up the bill next Wednesday.
The panel also included $60 million that the Coast Guard is seeking in its unfunded priorities list to conduct a service life extension program for a 270-foot medium-endurance cutter that would be deployed to the Indo-Pacific region. The Coast Guard this year began operating its 270-foot Harriet Lane medium-endurance cutter as an Indo-Pacific support ship, part of the service’s growing presence in the region.
The Coast Guard has been in discussions with the Biden administration and Congress about expanding the service’s presence in the Indo-Pacific region, where its assets and personnel conduct freedom of navigation operations, patrol against illegal fishing, and partner with other nations to improve their ability to protect their fisheries, conduct search and rescue operations, and other missions.
Overall, the bill provides $64.8 billion in discretionary spending for DHS. The committee’s Democratic leadership blasted the proposal, signaling that it will proceed along party lines.
The bill also provides:
- The requested $530 million to fund construction of the seventh Coast Guard offshore patrol cutter and acquire long-lead time and materials for the eighth new medium-endurance cutter;
- $138.5 million for an additional Coast Guard HC-130J long-range surveillance aircraft;
- $175.2 million for the Transportation Security Administration to acquire computed tomography systems to screen carry-on bags at passenger checkpoints, $85.6 million above the request but still well below the $300 million or more annually the agency has said is needed to achieve full operational capability by the end of the decade;
- $305 million for Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) non-intrusive inspection (NII) system program. The agency did not request any funds to acquire new NII systems, although the administration had sought significantly more funding for the program in the Ukraine supplemental but the homeland security monies were stripped in the final bill;
- $600 million for additional wall construction on the southern U.S. border;
- $300 million for new border security technology for CBP;
- And funds the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at $2.9 billion, $78.2 million below the request.