Coast Guard, Too, Has Role to Fulfill in ‘Great Power Competition,’ Vice Commandant Says

ARLINGTON, Va. – The U.S. Coast Guard has a unique role in
the growing global rivalry with Russia and China, the service’s second-ranking
leader says.

In addition to Department of Homeland Security, law
enforcement and maritime rescue missions, Coast Guard assets are deployed with
the Navy in the Middle East, seizing illegal narcotics shipments in South
American and Caribbean waters and traveling the increasingly tense Indo-Pacific
region, said Adm. Charles W. Ray, the Coast Guard’s vice commandant.

In addition to interoperability with the Navy overseas, the
Coast Guard forms “a unique element of the joint force with the smaller
countries and navies of the world” because it is both a military and law
enforcement organization, Ray told the annual Surface Navy Association convention
here Jan. 15. “There’s something unique about a white ship with a racing
stripe,” he said, adding the Coast Guard operates at “the level below lethal
level.”

That role has become more significant because the “Great
Power Competition” has reached the High North, where “the Coast Guard is
the nation’s presence,” he said.

The Arctic region makes demands not seen in a long time.
When the medium icebreaker U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy sailed above the
Arctic Circle last summer, “she was literally off the grid for almost a month,”
Ray said.

“There’s not a lot of there, there, when it comes to comms
and navigation,” the deputy commandant added, noting the issue isn’t just
communications but domain awareness. As Arctic sea ice melts, previously
impassable sea lanes are opening during the summer to commercial maritime
traffic and naval vessels. “We’ve got to be aware of who else is up there,” Ray
said.

Designed to break 4.5 feet of ice continuously and operate
in temperatures as low as 50 degrees below zero, the Healy is out of service
for maintenance work until June. The nation’s only operational heavy
icebreaker, the much larger but aging Polar Star, can break ice 21 feet thick. Commissioned
in 1976, Polar Star is on its seventh tour of icebreaking duties in Antarctica.
Both vessels are homeported in Seattle, far from Arctic waters.

The Coast Guard wants to increase its icebreaking fleet with
six new polar security cutters. Congress appropriated $655 million in fiscal
2019 to begin construction of the first, with another $20 million appropriated
for long-lead-time materials to build a second icebreaker. 

While the Coast Guard has gotten funding to build five
classes of new cutters including icebreakers, Ray expressed concern about where
they all will be homeported and maintained in the future. “We’ve got about $2
billion in shore infrastructure backlog,” the admiral said.