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Augment Naval Force Structure By Upgunning The Coast Guard

The Navy has been talking a lot about distributed lethality lately, and “if it floats, it fights.” There is even talk of mounting cruise missiles on Military Sealift Command (MSC) ships, even though it might compromise their primary mission. But so far there has been little or no discussion of extending this initiative to include the…

The Navy has been talking a lot about distributed lethality lately, and “if it floats, it fights.” There is even talk of mounting cruise missiles on Military Sealift Command (MSC) ships, even though it might compromise their primary mission. But so far there has been little or no discussion of extending this initiative to include the Coast Guard. The Navy should consider investing high-end warfighting capability in the Coast Guard to augment existing force structure and provide a force multiplier in times of conflict. A more capable Coast Guard will also be better able to defend the nation from asymmetrical threats.  

Why Include the Coast Guard?

A future conflict may not be limited to a single adversary. We may be fighting another world war, against a coalition, perhaps both China and Russia, with possible side shows in Africa, the Near East, South Asia, and/or Latin America. If so, we are going to need numbers. The Navy has quality, but it does not have numbers. Count all the Navy CGs, DDGs, LCSs, PCs and PBs and other patrol boats and it totals a little over a hundred. The Coast Guard currently has over 40 patrol ships over 1,000 tons and over 110 patrol craft. The current modernization program of record will provide at least 33 large cutters, and 58 patrol craft of 353 tons, in addition to 73 patrol boats of 91 tons currently in the fleet, a total of 164 units. Very few of our allies have a fleet of similar size.

via cimsec.org

Chuck Hill knows patrol craft. He's my go-to expert on the matter.

And for what it's worth, I'd love to see a much expanded Coast Guard. They do an awful lot with an awfully small budget.

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Responses to “Augment Naval Force Structure By Upgunning The Coast Guard”

  1. KenH

    It would be a damn fine idea. Especially when you consider what happened in the Red Sea earlier this week. One thing though; you will need to KILL the LCS-fellatio Team. With Fire. And an Axe.

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  2. C-90

    Up until the transfer of the USCG to DHS (and possibly still is in effect). The USCG is supposed to be forlded into the US Navy, in case of a serious war. Like they were done in WW2. Coasties ran smal patrol boats, landing craft, and transports, and Destroyers and Destroyer Escorts.

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  3. Quartermaster

    I think the USCG still becomes part of the Navy in time of war. neglecting the Coasties when upgrading equipment and ships is penny wise and pound foolish. Coast Guard cutters played a large part in the battle for the Atlantic in WW2, but I don’t think the Coasties have ASW equipment equal to that of the Navy as yet.
    At the same time, however, I can understand it if the Coasties are reluctant to take on certain types of equipment as it simply increases maintenance costs for something rarely used, and that might simply get in the way of their normal mission. If that’s the case, then, the Naval Reserve should augmented, including buys new ships specifically to be manned by Reserve Crews. They would then know where their annual training will take place, and they take the ships to sea for two weeks and possibly some long weekends for drills and exercises.
    The Navy used to maintain a number of Destroyers (we called them Reserve cans) specifically for the Naval Reserve. They had skeleton crews and they were filled out by reservists on drills or annual training. they could have that type again, as well as some ships maintained in port to be manned almost entirely by reservists as the Riverine Unit at Little Creek was back in the 70s.

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