The Coast Guard is in “high level conversations” about the investments that could be made in the service to expand its presence in the Indo-Pacific region in terms of people and assets like ships, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan said on Tuesday.
Fagan said that these conversations are occurring “across a number of different fronts” and are “in addition to” current budgets in terms of “what’s in the art of the possible.”
An expanded presence in the Indo-Pacific could be akin to the Coast Guard’s Patrol Forces Southwest (PATFORSWA) Asia that supports maritime operations in the Middle East for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. PATFORSWA includes six 154-foot fast response cutters (FRCs), a relief crew, a maritime engagement team to provide expertise for partner nation maritime forces, and a 150-member mission support detachment in Bahrain.
The Coast Guard’s unfunded priorities list, which is for various needs that are approved but did not make it into the fiscal year 2024 budget request, includes four more FRCs, Fagan said at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute. The four FRCs would cost $400 million.
With additional ships, attaches, and liaison officers having more Coast Guard in the Indo-Pacific “could” look like a Patrol Forces Indo-Pacific but this is budget dependent, she said. Fagan said she is making the case that with the right funding, “these are the types of things the U.S. Coast Guard could do with that.”
Meantime, the Coast Guard will continue to support national interests in the region with the assets it has, she said.
“We’ll continue to look for opportunity and create presence to the extent we can with the force that we’re operating right now but as a nation, I do think when you consider instruments of national power, the United States Coast Guard represents a very unique opportunity in competitive space short of conflict where we really can provide return on investment and create other partners, increase their capacity to enforce their own sovereignty,” Fagan said.
The FRC’s are built by Bollinger Shipyards, which is under contract for 65 of the vessels, 54 of which have been delivered. House appropriators have recommended funding four FRC’s in FY ’24, in line with the Coast Guard’s unfunded list, although Senate appropriators did not.
The Coast Guard did not have an unfunded priorities list six years ago, Fagan said, noting that the list gives the service a platform to outline its overall needs, which include filling backlogs in shore infrastructure, information technology, and personnel.
The Coast Guard frequently operates one of its 420-foot high-endurance national security cutters in the Indo-Pacific, including conducting freedom of navigation operations in places like the Taiwan Straits. The service also has three FRCs based in Guam in the western Pacific.
The Harriet Lane, a 270-foot Coast Guard medium-endurance cutter, will soon be based in Honolulu where it will act as a support ship for the service’s Indo-Pacific operations.
There is a limit to what the Coast Guard can do with existing budgets, Fagan said.
“I don’t have any intent to continue to spread us west without that budget and appropriation support,” she said. “Having said that, we are operating across the Pacific now. We are a Pacific nation. That is consistent with operational priorities that we’ve had as a nation for a long, long time, but there’s just a limit to how much you can do, how much capacity you can create with the budget authority that’s in place right now.”