Coast Guard

Edward Gibbons was announced today as the Coast Guard’s Director of Contracting and Procurement Transformation serving within the office of the Deputy Commandant for Mission Support (DCMS).

Gibbons’ role is to provide executive level leadership and management of the USCG Contracting and Procurement (C&P) Transformation efforts to identify and implement improvements across the C&P enterprise.

This limited term Senior Executive Service position serves as an agency expert in change management, program management, acquisition, and resource management, as well as policy oversight designed to increase effectiveness and uniformity in the management and administration of contracting and procurement. In this capacity, Gibbons provides executive leadership, management, and direct oversight of all change initiatives associated with the Coast Guard C&P Transformation effort.

Gibbons possesses over 30 years of Coast Guard leadership, strategic, and tactical experience including military aviation and incident response experience in aeronautical engineering, maritime operations, and logistics. Over the course of his career, Gibbons has led Coast Guard organizations through significant transformation demonstrating exceptional change management expertise, including his efforts during Coast Guard Modernization. Gibbons led the metamorphosis of Coast Guard Aircraft Repair and Supply Center into the modernized Coast Guard Aviation Logistics Center (ALC). He created a Business Operations Division designed to infuse industry best practices and strategies. This division became a fusion point for the application of innovative ideas in maintenance, repair, operations, and supply change management, in turn propelling ALC as the design template for other Coast Guard service and logistics centers.

Prior to his appointment, Gibbons served as the USCG Executive Director of ALC which provides depot level maintenance, engineering, supply, procurement, information services, and acquisition project management while adhering to the pillars of aeronautical engineering of assuring airworthiness and reliability, optimizing logistics, and ensuring stewardship of excellence. As the ALC Executive Director, Gibbons had oversight of ALC’s cutover to the new financial system and actively led the creation of the Financial Management and Procurement Data Repository (FMPDR). The FMPDR will contain all legacy Coast Guard financial, contracting and procurement information, and will be the key program to support future contracting and procurement data analytics resulting in the ability to better inform C&P transformation efforts. Due to his vast experience, Gibbons will enable the Coast Guard to successfully identify and execute improvements to the Coast Guard’s contracting and procurement enterprise.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – The top Coast Guard officer remains optimistic at the pace of expanding the fleet of cutters despite delays in design and construction that have pushed back the expected delivery date of the first new polar icebreaker.

“We pushed the delivery date into the spring of 2025. We were hoping for a ’24 date,” Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz told USNI News on Friday.

Pascagoula, Miss.-based Halter Marine Inc. has contracts to design and build the first two of three planned Polar Security Cutters (PSC). A $745.9 million contract was issued in April 2019 for the lead cutter, and officials, at the time, planned for delivery in 2024 and hoped incentives might push the work to finish earlier with a 2023 delivery. A $552.7 million contract for the second cutter was issued in December 2021.

“We’re working with VT Halter – that’s the shipbuilder in Pascagoula. We’re hoping at some point later this year to start cutting steel components. It’s a complicated ship,” said Schultz, adding the COVID-19 pandemic had thrown a wrench into the timeline and initial plans for the design and construction of the cutter.

“It was ambitious, arguably. You could say to build a ship like [that is] probably a 10-year work,” said Schultz, following the service chiefs’ town hall session on the final day of WEST 2022, a three-day defense conference co-hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA.

An artist’s rendering of VT Halter Marine’s winning bid for the US Coast Guard Polar Security Cutter. VT Halter Marine Image

“We tried to squeeze it down to a six-year work, and then we overlay the pandemic on that. I’m guardedly optimistic we can take acceptance in ’25, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do. We’ve got to get that energy going,” he said. “They’re going to be great ships – 460-foot, 23,000 tons. It’s going to be conventional power, but this one will give us access in the high latitudes beyond what we’ve ever held before.”

The service had “made a couple of changes, in fairness to the whole balance of stuff that we want to work in there, as we think through the requirements more over time,” he added.

The current operational fleet of icebreakers consists of the 46-year-old USCGC Polar Star (WAGB-10) – the only heavy icebreaker in the U.S. – and the 420-foot, medium polar icebreaker, USCGC Healy (WAGB-20), which the service commissioned in 2000.

That small but critical U.S. pair of icebreakers will get a huge reprieve when the planned fleet of three new polar cutters arrive, along with three planned new medium icebreakers called the Arctic Security Cutters (ASC). Those icebreakers, along with the 360-foot Offshore Patrol Cutters that will replace the medium endurance cutter, are among the service’s highest priorities.

Modernizing and expanding the fleet is important for the Coast Guard to maintain its readiness and ability to meet its missions, which span a range from marine safety and rescue to seaport protection and law enforcement operations. All that comes from a budget of just $13 billion, a fraction of the Navy’s and for a service that can be called upon in wartime.

“We pack a lot of punch in the homeland game,” Schultz told the conference audience.

And it’s not just in U.S. waters close to home, as Coast Guard units also support geographic combatant commanders and interact with other nations’ navies and coastal patrol entities. A key mission of late is illegal, illicit and under-reported fishing in nations’ exclusive economic zones that are threatened by “three or four major nation-states that are fishing, depleting the waters along coastal region. It’s an ecological and environmental issue. It destabilizes the economies of coastal states,” Schultz said.

“We are positioning our force to be ready to support the numbered fleets and the COCOMS,” he added, “and really focus on the domestic game.”

More Coasties to Sea

USCGC Thetis (WMEC-910) and a Royal Moroccan Navy vessel are seen during the joint rescue of migrants in the Atlantic Ocean on Jan. 5, 2021. US Coast Guard Photo

The Coast Guard is shifting some 2,000 billets in the coming years to sailing billets, largely to support the additional cutters. It might push the active force population somewhat beyond the 42,000 personnel currently, Schultz told USNI. “They’ll be some end-strength increase beyond that,” but it’s not clear yet how that will bear out.

Schultz, who took the helm of the Coast Guard on June 1, 2018, is in his final four months’ as commandant, typically a four-year tenure. Whether the end-strength should land above 42,000 “is probably a conversation the 27th commandant’s team probably needs to think about,” he said.

Leaner budgets in recent years resulted in less buying power, Schultz said, “and now we’re starting to turn the corner in the last three or four years. It’s a different conversation when you get enough resources to start talking about growing people again. When you’re sort of not getting funded well to run the Coast Guard that you have, additional growth on top of that can sometimes almost even exacerbate the challenge.

“So I think right now we’re at that point to start saying, hey is the Coast Guard at the right size? What would be the right size if you’re thinking about a number?”

“We’re going to field 25 Offshore Patrol Cutters. There’s going to be some growth with that,” he added. “We’re going to create a cyber rating, so there will be some growth with that.”

The Coast Guard’s recent creation of a cyber rating will draw some existing information systems technicians (IT) and intelligence specialists (IS) as well as electronics technicians (ET) into new roles and assignments as cyber specialists. They may include boatswain’s mates and machinist’s mates.

“The model we’re probably going to embrace is you come into the force, and you probably rise up to… notionally maybe an E-5 and you move into the cyber rating. Sort of like what we do with divers,” Schultz told USNI News.

Budget and Investments

Coast Guard Cutter Midgett (WMSL 757), right, meets Coast Guard Cutter Kimball (WMSL 756) off Diamond Head Aug. 16, 2019. Kimball, the seventh National Security Cutter built for the Coast Guard, is scheduled for a unique dual-commissioning ceremony with Midgett, the eighth NSC, at both cutters’ new homeport in Honolulu Aug. 24, 2019. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chief Petty Officer John Masson.

The Coast Guard has received nine of 11 National Security Cutters (NSC), which are replacing the aging high endurance cutters, and the 10th will be christened on June 4, Schultz told the audience. It’s part of a changing fleet that will include 25 Offshore Patrol Cutters and 64 Fast Response Cutters, up from the current 48 boats. Phase two of the OPC contract will be awarded “in the coming months,” Schultz said.

The growing fleet requires some investment to sustain.

“What’s the sustainability going to look like, and can we sustain our ships?” Schultz said. “We tend to be a commercial off-the-shelf type of organization, not a lot of leading-edge type of technology as we’re looking for proven technology in the sustainment piece.”

In addition, “we are going to be awarding a contract for the Waterways Commerce Cutter, that’s a fleet of 30 vessels, three different derivatives, to work the coastal and inland waterways of the nation. So we’re excited where we’re at.”

The Coast Guard’s capital programs, Schultz added, “have been on a pretty good trajectory for a good part of a decade, and we’ve got to maintain momentum. We need a predictable and stable funding. That’s not always the case in Washington. But we’ve been more stable there than we have been on the operating and support side of then Coast Guard budget.”

The service falls within the Department of Homeland Security.

Officials have been “having conversations” with the past and current administrations “that we really need to start funding the Coast Guard that the nation needs,” he said.

Ship repairs are critical to sustaining the fleet but remain one area of concern.

“We’re competing for some of those shipyard availabilities with the Navy, which is coming in with bigger ships, deeper pockets, bigger contracts,” Schultz said.

That can lead to delays in contracted work.

”We’re finding it very competitive. I will tell you I am concerned about the capacity” of the shipyards, he said, and “we also compete with the commercial sector.”

“We’re meeting our needs – but it’s barely – and it’s a lot of juggling of schedules,” he added.

Maintaining decades-old vessels has other challenges. Schultz offered, as an example, the Polar Star.

“On our 45-year-old heavy icebreaker, we’ve got to figure out sometimes how we find a part on eBay… can we legally buy that part?” he told the audience, noting that at times, “it takes really creative contracting work to buy the parts we need.”

Infrastructure Needs

Chief Petty Officer Shane Witko, the engineering petty officer assigned to Coast Guard Cutter Pamlico, leads a deck evolution with the Pamlico crew on U.S. Coast Guard Base New Orleans in New Orleans, Louisiana on Nov. 10, 2021. US Coast Guard Photo

The Coast Guard got $434 million in last year’s Infrastructure bill for some new construction and facilities improvements. But funding still falls short in what is needed to support its shore infrastructure.

“We’ve got to get after the lagging infrastructure challenge,” Schultz said.

Older facilities, piers and docks, all subjected to the wear from climate and environmental impacts, need replacement or refurbishment that aren’t always funded in the federal budget. A 2019 GAO report estimated construction and maintenance backlogs totaled $2.6 billion, and some 45 percent of shore infrastructure is beyond its service life.

“We’ve got to keep our foot on the gas. If there’s a trade-off between modernizing and readiness, I’d say in our service, I’m not offering that maneuver space yet,” Schultz said. “I’m saying we need to continue the momentum on our capitalization programs, recap programs, and we need to keep pressing in on the readiness piece – that’s the human part of that. We’ve talked a lot about ships and capabilities. We really need to focus on the recruit, train and retain of our Coast Guardsmen, and then we really need to press in on our infrastructure.”

Work is underway to build a new Coast Guard air station in California’s central coast, with Coast Guard Air Station Ventura that’s slated to open in August 2023 on land at Naval Base Ventura County.

“We’ve got a shovel in the ground, It’s the first new air station we’ve commissioned in decades, so we’re excited about that,” he said.

The $53 million facility will include a 48,000-square-foot hangar and a 12,200-square-foot administration and berthing facility to support four MH-65 Dolphin helicopters and 82 personnel.

Coast Guard crews had operated Dolphin helicopters from an air facility at Los Angeles International Airport to support missions along the Southern California coast before they got bumped by airport expansion, so in September 2016, air station operations relocated to temporary facilities at Point Mugu Naval Air Station, Calif. The new air station will be the third major air facility in California, which includes air stations in San Diego and San Francisco.

Retention and Recruiting

Capt. Kathy Felger, commanding officer of Training Center Cape May, and members of the recruit ceremonial honor guard participate in a Veterans Day ceremony in the City of Cape May, N.J., Nov. 11, 2021. US Coast Guard Photo

The force remains a deployable one, with major assets programmed to be at sea 185 days a year, “so you’re gone about half a year,” Schultz said, noting “it’s a lot. What we’re losing is in-port” time, and Coasties, after days on patrol, often remain as busy going to school rather than being on downtime.

The Sea Duty Readiness Council, led by several vice admirals, “is looking at what does it take to bring some balance to that. We’re putting some mission assurance, more maintainers, wrench-turners, some more folks there,” he added. Among the council’s focus is “identify longer-term opportunities to further enhance life at sea, including examining in-port workload requirements, enhancing education opportunities for cuttermen, and advocating for other new initiatives,” according to the Coast Guard.

The Reserve force was deployed about 50 percent in 2021, “a pretty unsustainable rate every year,” Schultz said. They responded to some of the 20-plus hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, a record, as well as assisted with COVID-19 vaccination programs and helped Afghan refugees that arrived in the states.

“Writ large, we’ve got to focus on the Coast Guardsmen standing the watch and his or her family,” Schultz said, noting the service has added 13 psychiatrists and other medical mental health professionals to boost mental health capacity. “We’ve got to do more of that. We’ve got to support the force we have and we’ve got to recognize the demands on them.”

That includes finding ways to bridge the gaps in housing (BAH) rates and living expenses in high-priced regions, as well as work with those officials who determine BAH rates.

Like its military counterparts, the Coast Guard has to compete to recruit young people and fill the 4,200 spots – 3,600 active, 600 reservists – each year to maintain the force.

“We have not hit that mark in recent years,” Schultz said.

The services are drawing from a population that is less interested in joining and less qualified to serve, Schultz said.

“We don’t have the deepest pockets, so I don’t throw a lot of bonuses,” he said.

He wants recruiters to be more mobile and reach out to different communities, with goals of enlisting 35 percent women and 35 percent of “under-represented Americans” into the service.

“We’re trying to broaden the Coast Guard to look more like the nation,” he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard Academy welcomes two hundred and ninety-one young women and men to the Class of 2025 for Day One, June 28, 2021. US Coast Guard Photo

The U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., is one of the “bright spots,” with women representing 40 percent of cadets “and marching toward 50,” he added. These are among some of the demographic gaps closed in recent years through efforts, including a women’s retention study done with Rand Corp. and completed in 2019.

Overall, Schultz said, “we’ve got the highest retention in any of the armed services. We’re trying to even get that higher. But it’s a tricky environment. I think all of the uniformed services don’t know the impacts of this blended retirement system that hit the four-year anniversary on 1 January” on retention in the near- and long-term. That includes the retirement system’s impacts on families, including those with working spouses, he said.

“We’ve aligned tour lengths with dual-member Coast Guard folks and we’ve guaranteed people co-location at the O-4 and below level and E-6 and below level,” he said. “I think those things are starting to mine some positive results for us.”

Schultz said he soon will sign the “Ready Workforce 2030,” a strategic vision with initiatives about how the Coast Guard will train, support and retain the total workforce. The workforce includes 9,000 civilians.

Among the ideas are retaining Coasties in sought-out billets, such as cyber professionals, that might be hard to fill and sustain.

“We invest a lot of money in them. They might see opportunities outside the fenceline for more money in Silicon Valley,” he said. “Maybe I can figure out a way where they don’t have to come back for one weekend a month and drill in the reserves. Maybe they come back one time a year.”

“We’ve just got to take a different approach here,” he added. “We’re leaning hard. Ready Workforce 2030 is going to capture some of that different agility, different flexibility.”

Related

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) recently announced that it plans to develop and propose regulations to implement the provisions of MARPOL Annex VI, Chapter 4, including various shipboard energy efficiency measures aimed at reducing carbon emissions linked to climate change.¹ The USCG states it is doing so in support of the Biden administration’s goals outlined in Executive Order 14008, entitled “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.” According to this filing, the regulations will apply to U.S.-flagged ships and foreign-flagged ships operating either in U.S. navigable waters or in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone.

BACKGROUND

In June 2021, the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Marine Environmental Protection Committee adopted new regulations in MARPOL Annex VI aimed at significantly reducing carbon intensity and greenhouse gas emissions from shipping over the next decade, and beyond.² These measures include the Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI), the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) rating scheme, and provisions for an enhanced Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan, all of which will apply to existing vessels covered under the IMO regulations. Some IMO Member States, including the United States, as well as various maritime industry groups, are now advocating for a significant acceleration of these efforts.³

As is typical, these changes were undertaken at IMO under the MARPOL Convention’s tacit amendment process. Under this procedure, absent some objection or reservation to the new regulations by the United States government, changes to MARPOL’s annexes generally become binding U.S. law without the need for additional legislation or regulation. At this point, most of the new MARPOL efficiency and carbon intensity regulations will therefore become binding when those regulations enter into force globally in 2023.

USCG ANNOUNCEMENT – REGULATIONS TO ADDRESS “GAPS” AND “DISCRETIONARY ASPECTS” OF MARPOL ANNEX VI

In its announcement, the USCG stated it intends to propose regulations to implement these new provisions of MARPOL Annex VI and to “fill gaps in the existing framework,” and to “explain how the United States has chosen to carry out certain discretionary aspects of Annex VI.” After considering several options, the USCG stated that it found it “necessary” to develop such regulations. The underlying legal text of the recently adopted MARPOL regulations will not be changed through this rulemaking. However, this announcement is an indication that the agency feels that there is sufficient ambiguity and discretion in these new MARPOL regulations that requires further elaboration and clarification through a rulemaking.

It is unclear at this point exactly which “gaps” and “discretionary aspects” of the new IMO regulations the rulemaking will address. There are many possibilities. It might address potential ambiguities about which vessels are covered by the regulations and which are not, how various IMO guidelines will be interpreted and implemented for U.S.-flagged vessels, how EEXI and CII surveys and enforcement will be carried out, and potentially many other aspects of implementation and interpretation of MARPOL Annex VI that could impact U.S.-flagged vessels, as well as foreign flagged vessels calling on U.S. ports.

CONCLUSION

In its timetable, the USCG’s announcement indicates the proposed regulations may be released in May 2022. While the extent and scope of this particular rulemaking is unclear, IMO decarbonization regulations are likely to be transformative for the maritime industry in the years ahead. This rulemaking will provide a window of opportunity for the maritime industry and others in the regulated community to provide input into how the United States will exercise its discretion under MARPOL, and how it will implement and interpret these important provisions of the Convention.

FOOTNOTES

¹ The USCG’s announcement, filed with the Office of Management and Budget, may be accessed here.

² These regulations were developed in furtherance of the IMO’s Initial Strategy on the Reduction of GHG Emissions from Ships, which was published in 2018.

³ Further details of these regulations were discussed in our prior alerts and our webinars on this subject, which may be accessed here, here and here. 

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — (AP) — A U.S. Coast Guard vessel offloaded more than 30 metric tons of cocaine and marijuana reportedly worth over $1 billion that was seized at sea during a months-long deployment off the coast of South America.

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The haul of illegal narcotics brought home by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter James was one of the biggest in recent memory, a reflection of an increasingly sophisticated U.S. arsenal that includes powerful drones and special infrared cameras that can detect heat from small cocaine-laden vessels.

But it also highlights a recent surge in narcotics coming from Colombia, a close U.S. ally and the world’s top producer of cocaine.

The Biden administration’s top anti-narcotics officials traveled to South Florida to welcome back the vessel’s crew and tout the Coast Guard’s role in interdicting drugs before they reach American streets.

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“We are hitting the drug traffickers where it hits them most: their pocketbooks,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, head of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Gupta said the Biden administration is seeking to increase the U.S. government’s budget to build up the nation’s addiction treatment infrastructure and reduce the supply of synthetic opioids like fentanyl and other drugs.

But the record busts of late by the Coast Guard, federal law enforcement and partner nations also underscore how little the flow of cocaine coming from Latin America has eased since President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs a half century ago.

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Coca cultivation in Colombia in 2020 soared to 245000 hectares (945 square miles), enough to produce 1,010 metric tons of cocaine, according to the White House’s latest report on harvesting trends in the Andean region. As recently as 2014, potential production was less than half that amount. Production in Peru and Bolivia has also steadily risen.

Admiral Karl Schultz, the U.S. Coast Guard commander, said those numbers would be even higher, and the destabilizing impact on the region from transnational criminal organizations even worse, if not for the U.S. interdiction efforts.

“Does it matter? It absolutely matters because it kind of keeps a lid on things,” he said.

He was echoed by Ambassador Todd Robinson, who leads the State Department’s bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

“It’s not just always about seizures,” said Robinson, who previously served as the top U.S. diplomat in Guatemala and Venezuela, two major transit zones for Colombian cocaine. “It’s also about building our partners’ capacity.”

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida — A U.S. Coast Guard vessel on Thursday offloaded more than 30 metric tons of cocaine and marijuana reportedly worth over $1 billion that was seized at sea during a months-long deployment off the coast of South America.

The haul of illegal narcotics brought home by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter James was one of the biggest in recent memory, a reflection of increasingly sophisticated U.S. arsenal that includes powerful drones and special infrared cameras that can detect heat from small cocaine-laden vessels.

But it also highlights a recent surge in narcotics coming from Colombia, a close U.S. ally and the world’s top producer of cocaine.

The Biden administration’s top anti-narcotics officials traveled to South Florida to welcome back the vessel’s crew and tout the Coast Guard’s role interdicting drugs before they reach American streets.

“We are hitting the drug traffickers where it hits them most: their pocketbooks,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, head of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Gupta said the Biden administration is seeking to increase the U.S. government’s budget to build up the nation’s addiction treatment infrastructure and reduce the supply of synthetic opioids like fentanyl and other drugs.

But the record busts of late by the Coast Guard, federal law enforcement and partner nations also underscores how little the flow of cocaine coming from Latin America has eased since President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs a half century ago.

Coca cultivation in Colombia in 2020 soared to 245000 hectares (945 square miles), enough to produce 1,010 metric tons of cocaine, according to the White House’s latest report on harvesting trends in the Andean region. As recently as 2014, potential production was less than half that amount. Production in Peru and Bolivia has also steadily risen.

Admiral Karl Schultz, the U.S. Coast Guard commander, said those numbers would be even higher, and the destabilizing impact on the region from transnational criminal organizations even worse, if not for the U.S. interdiction efforts.

“Does it matter? It absolutely matters because it kind of keeps a lid on things,” he said.

He was echoed by Ambassador Todd Robinson, who leads the State Department’s bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

“It’s not just always about seizures,” said Robinson, who previously served as the U.S.’ top diplomat in Guatemala and Venezuela, two major transit zones for Colombian cocaine. “It’s also about building our partners’ capacity.”

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