Coast Guard unveils ‘Maritime Darwinism’ policy after getting $2.28 billion budget cut
Ashamed I missed the CG birthday this week, I feel even worse now that their budget was cut.
WASHINGTON — The Coast Guard is turning 228 years old today, and Congress is surprising them with a $2.28 billion budget cut in fiscal year 2019. As a result, the Coast Guard will be unveiling a new ‘maritime Darwinism’ policy to reduce its operational workload.
“I really was hoping for a new heavy icebreaker in 2019,” said Adm. Karl Schultz, who assumed his role as Commandant in June 2018. “But a 25% cut to our operations and mission support budget is more than I could have ever hoped for.”
Schultz went on to comment that one of his main goals as Commandant is to deploy his strategic priority of reducing search and rescue cases by allowing stupid people to perish at sea.
“This budget cut is just the thing I’ve been hoping for,” said Schultz. “It will allow us to make some true vertical cuts and actively degrade our offshore detection and response capabilities.”
Schultz alluded to a notional policy of “tactical ignorance” that the Coast Guard has been working to roll out over the past several years.
Under this policy, search and rescue assets will only respond to what can be seen from shore. The use of advanced radar, communication relays, and other sophisticated sensors will be significantly curtailed, officials said.
“We really want the public to start thinking of us as glorified lifeguards,” said Schultz, nodding to a framed picture of David Hasselhoff on his desk.
“If you’re a few miles off and need some fuel, no worries, we got your back. But we plan to let natural selection run its course if Joe Boater decides it’s a good idea to go 20 miles offshore in his 15 foot center console during a tropical storm. Good luck, buddy!”
You can read the story HERE
Category: Media, Military issues
He may be onto something with letting the stupid people perish at sea.
You realize that the quotes are from an article in the DuffelBlog? Sarcastic satire is their forte.
Yeah, I’m well versed in duffel blog. One of my favorite sites. This is one of my favorites.
https://www.duffelblog.com/2015/02/marine-corps-spiritual-reawakening-inadvertently-causes-zombie-apocalypse/
If only we could….
If it seems even a little weird, always check the linked article.
You had me going right up to the icebreaker, Hardin.
*grin*
The budget cut amount and service age was a tad to coincidental for me.
The Coast Guard can do with some belt tightening. It is essentially a good ole boys club for retired coasties holding fat cat civil service jobs. When I was in the Auxiliary I worked with Boating Safety, many of whom earned their pay but after serving on active duty (20) and civil service (20) was overwhelmed by the availability of TDY/TAD funds in the name of promoting boating safety. The money wasted on Auxiliary patrols and conferences in itself was astounding. We never had such available funding in either the Army or Air Force in recent years. Then again, the Coast Guard is not DoD.
That’s kind of a rotten thing to say Club Manager. Its no that they “need to tighten their belts” its more like they need people who have a clue on how to budget and use that money wisely. Well for that matter, ALL the branches could use a course on how to not waste precious resources and people who actually know how to budget said resources.
Happy Birthday to my fellow Coasties 🙂
The problem is, that it is just easier to cut personnel, personnel services, and even training budgets.
Bureaucrats will always go with what’s easiest for them.
Sorry to disagree Toasty. During my time in the Aux, I had the privilege of serving with many fine individuals in Coast Guard operational positions that I ever served with – all ranks. Dedicated, sharp, motivated troops. Even some HQCG RBS weenies and for sure the District 7 (Miami)civilian RBS specialist). But I did see a lot of unnecessary waste because I served on the national staff and traveled around the country doing RBS in addition to being a coxswain here in Arkansas. Regardless of how you phrase it, there was lots of waste.
I saw the Army regularly flush real money straight down the crapper on TDY conferences that were essentially holiday get togethers. It happens in all the services.
yes. Then when real work has to be done and you need the stakeholders together to do the work the answer is always something about no money available.
Weird how there is always have money for the big events like the annual Commander’s Conference or “site visits” to Hawaii in Jan though…
The REAL story:
https://www.stripes.com/news/coast-guard-icebreaker-funding-reallocated-to-us-mexico-border-wall-1.540857
Happy Birthday to the Coast Guard and all Coasties.
Thank you, Toastie Coastie for serving…and a big thank you to my Coast Guard friend, Vince Patton..👍
The Coast Guard now falls under the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and in wartime, under the US Navy.
You win the internet today !
Dave,
Whatever you do, please don’t EVER stop with your great sense of humor.
It gives us balance.
(That was a sincere comment).
😎
“The Coast Guard now falls under the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and in wartime, under the US Navy”
Which one are we in now?
So this means no more escorting pregnant gray whales from Little Creek, VA, to the Panama Canal before they calve?
That will be SO inhumane! It’s not the female whales’ fault that they took a wrong turn at Adak and ended up somewhere off the tourist traps at Cape May.
Someone is going to have to explain this to them, since the gray whales are not suppose to be in the Atlantic any more, anyway.
NTANS, for flight test, every time my crew deploys an active sonobuoy (a sonar ‘pinger’ any one of a couple different types) the crew has to implement Marine Mammal Mitigation procedures to ensure no mammals are harmed by the active emissions in the water. ‘Triple M’ is a visual and aural monitoring of the sonobuoy pattern, and pinging must cease when/if a whale, dolphin, whatever, is detected within a certain range. This is required due to possible mammal strandings, which may have been caused by Navy ship-born active sonars. I have to send an After Action Report with the lat/long and ping times of every active sonobuoy deployed, and the presence or absence of marine mammals.
An aside, know how the Right Whale got its name? It was the ‘right’ whale to take for it’s oil and blubber, back in the Whaling days.
Ironically, with the comments posted here about Military funding and spending, this tongue in cheek, funny piece is on the Duffelblog:
https://www.duffelblog.com/2018/07/pentagon-spends-50-million-on-fraud-and-waste-prevention-summit/
😉
In the late 70’s the CG Commandant told us that he had the choice of A new batch of medium endurance cutters or more family housing units. Guess what? The Bear class WMEC cutters were ordered. I bailed out and went home to Tacoma to help build the first four. Ships will always take priority over people when your business is Ships.
Make Man vs. Nature great again!
Dave it’s understandable that the CG Birthday post was a few hours late. After all, you have been (a) mourning a passed Friend & Brother, (b) keeping this Gathering Place going(c) standing in for Lance Armstrong (d) keeping up with your bath robe modeling contract terms (e) chowing down on the Soviet’s cooking. You are forgiven and appreciated. Have a niece that was a Coastie (Alaska/Washington State) and a God Daughter Coastie still serving. Both the Girls kept up with and surpassed all/some of the Boys. Took me a minute to see the sarc light on, but I do agree that some expense trimming could be done by the Darwin Process. The Coasties have a tough job with limited resources, just like the rest of the Services.
2.28 Billion budget cut? No sweat, the CG should be able to have that money laterally transferred over from the Air Force.
I don’t know if anybody else saw the article posted up at Military.com where the AF now thinks it’s a good idea to allow their enlisted force to tap out at the pay grade of E-5 and still get locked in to make it to 20 years for retirement. This is No Shit, check it out.
Anyway, just think of the money that will be saved by no longer having to contract for the production of E-6 through E-9 chevrons, but the AF will want a little of that money back to fund their newest medal/ribbon which will be awarded for having at least 14 years time-in-grade on E-5 upon retirement./smile