The U.S. Coast Guard Commandant on Aug. 5 laid out Coast Guard acquisition priorities, including the Offshore Patrol Cutter and new heavy icebreakers, while also confirming another cyberattack on the executive.
In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, Admiral Paul Zukunft noted the service’s next major acquisition will be the Offshore Patrol Cutter.
He explained that the Coast Guard’s older ships continue to operate after 50 years of service, but they need to recapitalize and modernize the fleet. “The Offshore Patrol Cutter, as many may have heard me say, is our number one priority going forward,” Zukunft said in a speech at the National Press Club.
Zukunft also explained the importance of new heavy icebreakers.
“When you look at an icebreaker, it’s a national asset, it’s not just a Coast Guard asset and it serves multiple stakeholders’ interests. Not just Coast Guard, National Science Foundation,Arctic Research Council, the Department of Defense, Department of Interior, the list goes on and on,” Zukunft said. “There’s vital agreement that this is a national requirement and we just need to come up with a way, how do we fund this?”
Despite a large increase in human activity in the Arctic, where the icebreakers largely operate, Zukunft said “the United States has one heavy icebreaker. We have a medium icebreaker in the Coast Guard Cutter Healey, it can break ice up to eight feet thick, which is operating up there right now. But the Polar Star, our only heavy icebreaker, is nearly 40 years old.”
Zukunft explained that the Polar Star is the only ship with its kind of capacity in the Western Hemisphere. If it were to encounter a severe program mid-rescue in very thick ice, there is not a rescuer for the rescue ship. “So we really do need to build out our capacity in the Arctic.”
Zukunft said he has been working closely with the national security staff in both the House and Senate as well as authorizations and appropriation committees to fund new icebreakers.
“How you fund it, that is really the billion dollar question right now. But this is really generating a lot of interest and I am optimistic on my watch we will see, no fooling, forward progress as we look at building a national fleet of icebreakers,” Zukunft said.
Zukunft highlighted how the Coast Guard had seven icebreakers when he first joined. “We’re down to two right now so we’ve moved in the wrong direction, over the last nearly 40 years.”
He also explained the swings in the service’s acquisition profile. Although the Coast Guard has had a clean financial audit for two years and less than two percent growth in its acquisition portfolio, it has not had a reliable acquisition budget for several years. “But if you didn’t cut me four percent, this is a very sustainable program of record,” Zukunft said.
The commandant also defended the Coast Guard’s acquisition process by noting “we mind our checkbook,” drive a hard bargain, and take care of ships they purchase.
However, the funding stream appears to be moving back in the Coast Guard’s favor again and the commandant is optimistic as both houses of Congress talk about investing in the Coast Guard. Although he cannot share the markups he has seen, they “may very well bring the largest acquisition budget to the Coast Guard in Coast Guard history, so I’m pretty excited by that,” Zukunft said.
Amidst the various budget constraints, the Coast Guard cannot cut its force structure, the commandant said.” I can’t cut force structure and maybe you make those very difficult decisions of what operations that you would have to cut.”
Zukunft highlighted how many Coast Guard vessels operate as Swiss army knives, able to operate in multiple domains with various partners.
The commandant also confirmed that another cyber attack against the government took place in the third week of July.
“There was a very aggressive, nationally-sponsored cyber attack that took place. It was a spear phishing attack. I can’t say a whole lot more about that but it’s had a significant impact on a federal agency in US government and I’m not talking about the OPM hack.”
This confirms a July CNN report that the unclassified email network used by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and many other Defense Department personnel was taken offline after suspicious activity was detected. The attack was reportedly directed at the Joint Staff.
Zukunft said defense cyber standards were able to disrupt the spear phishing attempt. Although the Coast Guard was not directly targeted, it is on the .mil domain with all of the armed services, Zukunft said.
“There are a number of other higher level officials that…there were some pretty high targets on that and some of those attacks were successful. Which means those individuals, their files had to be taken down completely, and it takes a while to build those back up again so it does cause a disruption. Good news is we were not disrupted. But we were not the primary target.”