The Coast Guard’s fleet is aged and ailing, with most of its ships nearing or past the 50-year mark. But that’s about to change, with the service’s largest acquisition budget in history.

“We are running one of the oldest fleets of any of the navies in the world, and we’re one of the larger navies in the world at that,” said Adm. Paul Zukunft, Coast Guard Commandant.

He said that the Coast Guard is bigger than “Her Majesty’s Navy,” the United Kingdom’s fleet.

Zukunft told Federal Drive with Tom Temin about how the Coast Guard is planning to upgrade its ships, including a new Arctic icebreaker, a ninth national security cutter, 25 offshore patrol cutters and 58 fast response cutters. Some of these plans will take as long as 2034 to accomplish.

New capabilities for Coast Guard ships

The new ships will be able to extract intelligence while deployed, making it easier to go after known threats, Zukunft said, which he stressed has been integral in successfully accomplishing interdiction missions. The Coast Guard has commissioned five national security cutters, three more are currently in production according to the website, and funding for a ninth was included in the fiscal 2016 budget.

“It’s really changed the paradigm of how we deploy these days,” Zukunft said. “Our older ships really go out blind. That has since changed. Now we know where they’re at.”

He said that due to this intelligence, efficiency has increased on drug interdiction patrols. Two national security cutters last year removed so much cocaine that, at wholesale value, the total was greater than the initial acquisition cost of the cutters, which comes to about $695 million per ship, according to a Congressional Research Service report on Jan. 27, 2016.

The Coast Guard works with Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement directorates in the Homeland Security Department. The agencies share intelligence and support a whole-of-government approach to securing the country’s borders and territorial waters.

Zukunft said that contraband that originates in South America usually stops in Central America on its way north. These areas become a major concentration of drug cartels. Hence, a reduction in drug trafficking brings a decrease in cartel activity, resulting in a lessening number of migrants fleeing from the cartel violence, easing the burden on CBP.

One of the reasons that the newer ships are so much more advanced is because many of the systems the Coast Guard uses come directly from the Navy. This serves two purposes: first, it saves the Coast Guard money on design; second, the Coast Guard is required to maintain interoperability with the Navy’s fleet in the event of any contingency.

New Arctic icebreaker

Zukunft is particularly enthusiastic about the new arctic icebreaker in the budget. The budget includes $147 million to begin the acquisition. The Coast Guard currently only has one heavy icebreaker, The Polar Star, which is nearly at the end of its life cycle.

Zukunft is concerned about the heightened level of activity on the part of numerous nations in the Arctic Circle, including China and Russia. Chief among his worries are sovereignty, possible conflicts over natural resource exploitation and cruise ships touring the Northwest Passage.

“Our capacity to respond to a mass rescue in that area: very limited,” Zukunft said.

He said he’s already begun hiring acquisition staff for this particular ship. He’s also shopped it around to industry, and had a number of shipyards express interest in the contract. He’s also exploring existing design options, both domestic and international, to try to save time, since developing plans for a new ship can take 2 years or longer.

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