After launching overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Department of Defense increased the Army and the Marine Corps by 100,000 service members, to ease the strain on U.S. ground forces. In the decade after 9/11, the Coast Guard’s active-duty and full-time civilian service component grew by about 19 percent – from 42,600 to 52,000 – but its Auxiliary and Reserve components remained relatively stagnant. Both inside and outside the Coast Guard, observers – including the GAO – have pointed out that these modest increases haven’t kept pace with the threats, hazards, and challenges confronting the service.
CGC Healy crewmembers practice cutter boat drills Aug. 25, 2016, in the Chukchi Sea. Underway for its second Arctic summer mission, Healy embarked a team of researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC-San Diego, and the Office of Naval Research that was deploying an array of acoustic bottom moorings to collect data on how climate change and decreased ice coverage is affecting the Arctic Ocean. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Christopher M. Yaw
Zukunft, in his 2016 State of the Coast Guard Address, reinforced this point by paraphrasing a line from Chief Brody in the movie Jaws: “Looking at the challenges we’re facing in the world today,” he said, “ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to need a bigger Coast Guard.”
If the service merely needed more people, of course, it would be a relatively simple matter – but the 21st century has proved anything but simple for the Coast Guard. It’s replacing its entire surface fleet over the next decade, a next generation of cutters and aircraft outfitted with cutting-edge technologies.
Historically, one of the most impressive qualities of Coast Guard personnel has been the fact that a job title doesn’t begin to encompass everything a “Coastie” can do. But this jack-of-all-trades approach will probably have to be tempered as the service’s needs require increasingly specialized skill sets. “Our agility and our adaptability of our people is a very strong suit for us,” said Richard Kramer, of the Coast Guard’s Office of Work Force Management, “but on the other hand, today’s systems and equipment and requirements are much more complex than they were in the days of the sailing ship.”
As its missions have expanded, Coast Guard operations have adapted to an admirable extent: It’s an expeditionary force, of extraordinary flexibility and effectiveness. But, as Kramer pointed out: “Our system and our infrastructure for recruiting, developing, keeping, and moving our personnel is very rigid … and we need to be more dynamic to meet the changing environment.”
Also driving this need are outside forces, changes beyond the service’s control: Demographically, the 17- to 24-year-old slice of the American labor force – the people the Coast Guard most needs to build its future – is shrinking, as competition for their skills heats up from both the private and public sectors. “We have to figure out how to adapt ourselves on the inside,” Kramer said, “so we can attract these people to us – and once we’ve got them, we have to live up to the promises that brought them into the service.”
The strategy for attracting and keeping the best of America’s young people – the Coast Guard’s “Human Capital Strategy” – was released in early 2016, and it outlines the service’s plans to bring the best Americans it can into the service, and keep them there. The strategy’s priorities are broken down into three categories:
- meeting mission needs by maintaining personnel and unit readiness, and adapting to the elasticity of demand for its services with the help of a data-driven human resource system;
- meeting service needs by creating a force that’s diverse, inclusive, and fair, with abundant opportunities for professional growth; and
- meeting people needs with an environment that’s safe, stable, and predictable – but also challenging and supportive of career goals.
The key to making this strategy work may lie in Zukunft’s choice of words when naming, in his “Mid-Term Report,” his objective for Coast Guard personnel: “Duty to People.” It’s a phrase that emphasizes what the service has to offer, rather than what it needs. The commandant has made the point time and again that his greatest pride in the service is its people, the ultimate platform on which every one of its capabilities rests. No matter how sophisticated or up to date, the physical assets of the Coast Guard – its cutters, boats, planes, and helicopters – are worthless without the right people to get the job done.
A Coast Guard Cutter Midgett small boat crew returns to the cutter with 1,628 pounds of cocaine jettisoned by fleeing smugglers during a nighttime pursuit in the Eastern Pacific Ocean near Central America, May 26, 2015. U.S. Coast Guard photo courtesy of Cmdr. Benjamin Berg
It’s been an astounding set of changes so far for the 21st century Coast Guard: operational demands more varied and geographically dispersed than ever before, demanding an unprecedented combination of knowledge and skills. It would be a big challenge for any organization. But it seems a good bet that the Coast Guard, which has been adapting to change since 1790 – and whose motto is Semper Paratus (Always Ready) – will figure out a way to handle whatever the 21st century brings.
This article was first published in Coast Guard Outlook 2016-2017 Edition magazine.