Admiral Thad Allen’s final State of the Coast Guard Address

Adm. Thad Allen

Editor’s note: The following speech was delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on February 12, 2010 by Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Admiral Thad W. Allen, who is completing his four-year term as the Coast Guard’s 23^rd Commandant.

As I deliver my final State of the Coast Guard Address, I would like to narrow my focus a bit, and I'd be glad to expand on topics and questions as you desire, address three major forces that are shaping our current and future environment. They are, of course, our budget requests for fiscal year 2011, the significant progress that has been made in modernizing the Coast Guard over the last three years; and the condition of our aging cutter fleet, are of concern to me.

These forces in combination create challenges and opportunities. To insure we optimize the resources available to us, and at the same time create the conditions for future success, we need a very clear understanding of our priorities, and we’ll talk about that here today.

So what is the state of the Coast Guard? In two words: ready and resilient. We are ready and resilient. We demonstrated that in the view of the entire world in the first hours and days following the Haitian earthquake. We were there first because our operational forces and command and control structure are agile and flexible. Authority to move forces is delegated outside our headquarters, so our field commanders can act immediately. Our forces are working hard to sustain current operations, maintaining cutters until our new ones are delivered.

So let me turn to the first force shaping our current and future operating environment of fiscal 2011 budget request. I have communicated openly to our personnel regarding the details and intent of our 2011 budget. As President Obama remarked in the State of the Union speech, it is important to understand we are in a constrained budget environment. He said, “Families across the country are tightening their belts. The federal government should do the same.” As the Commandant, I have rogered for this message.

The request currently before Congress does reduce personnel in the Coast Guard by 773; but most importantly, allows us to remove cutters and aircraft from service that are aging and in need of replacement.

Some of these are being replaced, and some are being laid up to allow us to maintain our existing fleet. The good news is the budget contains nearly $1.4 billion to allow us to continue replacing aging assets; assets like our high endurance cutters. The budget contains $538 million to buy the fifth national security cutter to continue our replacement of our aging high endurance cutters.

It includes $254 million for fast response cutters to replace our 110 foot control boat class. $40 million so there for maritime patrol aircraft, and we are especially appreciative for the President and First Lady’s support for our families, and for the $13.9 million for improvement or acquisition of housing to support our families. And we thank them again.

As Commandant, I supported this budget as it has provided me the flexibility, and the Coast Guard the flexibility, to continue our recapitalization needs. Collectively, the personnel reduction decommission unit and recapitalizing funding reflect hard choices, choices that best position the Coast Guard to optimize our performance and protect the nation within the funding provided and still replace aging cutters and aircraft. Our intent is to manage current operations as funded in order to sustain our recapitalization program.

The President’s budget does this. This represents the best way forward in a constrained funding level.

And let me add here as the Commandant, and the Coast Guard’s responsibility, to manage current operations with the force size and structure provided in the budget. We can, and we will, do this. But we could use some help as well, and two things come to mind as the outgoing Commandant, on my wish list.

First, we would appreciate an acknowledgement by all of our partners of the following attributes of our service, and you've heard me say this before. We are multi-mission, whole of government, service agency that has the capability to respond along our coast and offshore for any non-defense related incident related to our national interests. We support nearly every department and specialized agency of our government.

As was noted in the introduction, we are federal first responders for the nation. And we are prepared to do our job with the resources provided in the budget under operating principles that has served us well for two centuries. And we must seek to balance our operations across all of our missions.

We should resist the urge to parse our mission set. And as an example some of that, for instance, what do our age to navigation and marine safety missions have to do with homeland security? Frankly, the answer is provided in the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, which is available online, and you can read it. Protection of critical infrastructure; security and resiliency of global movement systems; effective emergency response, and continuity of a central services and functions. All of those relate to Coast Guard missions, all those relate to the Department of Homeland Security.