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94–182 PDF 2015

AN OVERVIEW OF THE U.S. COAST GUARD’S 

MISSIONS 

(114–13) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

COAST GUARD AND MARITIME TRANSPORTATION 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

APRIL 15, 2015 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

Available online at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/ 

committee.action?chamber=house&committee=transportation 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee, 

Vice Chair 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

ERIC A. ‘‘RICK’’ CRAWFORD, Arkansas 

LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

RICHARD L. HANNA, New York 

DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida 

JEFF DENHAM, California 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

TOM RICE, South Carolina 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois 

MARK SANFORD, South Carolina 

ROB WOODALL, Georgia 

TODD ROKITA, Indiana 

JOHN KATKO, New York 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

CRESENT HARDY, Nevada 

RYAN A. COSTELLO, Pennsylvania 

GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana 

MIMI WALTERS, California 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

CARLOS CURBELO, Florida 

DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

JANICE HAHN, California 

RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota 

ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois 

JARED HUFFMAN, California 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COAST GUARD AND MARITIME TRANSPORTATION

DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

MARK SANFORD, South Carolina 

GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana 

CARLOS CURBELO, Florida 

DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania (Ex Officio) 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

JANICE HAHN, California 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon (Ex Officio) 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... iv 

WITNESSES 

Vice Admiral Charles D. Michel, Deputy Commandant for Operations, U.S. 

Coast Guard: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 26 

Responses to questions for the record from Hon. Don Young of Alaska ...... 32 

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(1) 

AN OVERVIEW OF THE U.S. COAST GUARD’S 

MISSIONS 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COAST GUARD AND MARITIME

TRANSPORTATION, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:06 p.m. in room 

2253, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter (Chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. HUNTER. Good afternoon. The subcommittee will come to 

order. The subcommittee is meeting this afternoon to review how 

the Coast Guard allocates its assets and personnel to carry out 

each of its 11 statutory missions, as well as the challenges the 

Service faces in performing its missions and measuring performance. 

Under section 2 of title 14, the Coast Guard is responsible for a 

wide range of missions, from search and rescue, ice breaking, and 

marine environmental protection, to port security and drug interdiction. In fiscal year 2014, the Service responded to over 17,500 

search and rescue cases, saving over 3,400 lives; conducted over 

21,000 safety, security, and environmental inspections of U.S.- and 

foreign-flagged vessels; and interdicted over 3,587 undocumented 

migrants and 140 metric tons of illegal drugs. Try to understand 

even a small part of that is more than we get in the entire country 

with every single law enforcement agency combined. 

These are impressive numbers, but they don’t tell us exactly how 

well the Coast Guard is performing. One of the best ways to gauge 

the Coast Guard’s capability to carry out its missions is to review 

mission performance data. In 2014 the Service used 23 different 

performance measures to track its success in meeting its mission 

goals. The Service stated that it met or exceeded 15 of 23, or 65 

percent, of its performance measures. 

In December 2014, the DHS inspector general released its annual review of Coast Guard mission performance objectives for fiscal year 2013. The report indicated that the Coast Guard’s total 

number of mission resource hours, the number of flight hours for 

aircraft and underway hours for boats and cutters, had fallen 17 

percent since 2011. 

The Coast Guard has attributed this reduction in patrol hours 

and other issues affecting readiness to the fact that its fleets of aircraft and vessels are no longer reliable, having surpassed their 

2 

service lives and become increasingly prone to failures. You got a 

bunch of old ships. 

Representing southern California, I am particularly concerned 

about the Service’s capability and ability to secure our borders 

against illegal drugs and migrants, and maintain its defense readiness. I look forward to working closely with the Coast Guard and 

my colleagues to get new assets operating as quickly as possible 

and to find other ways to improve readiness and enhance mission 

performance in a cost-effective manner. 

I thank the witnesses for coming—the witness, Admiral. And I 

look forward to your testimony. With that, I yield to Ranking Member Garamendi. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, thank you for putting this hearing together. I enjoy working with you, and working with the Coast 

Guard on the maritime issues. 

Admiral Michel, thank you very much for being here. Appreciate 

the conversation we had in my office a couple of days ago. And we 

will probably cover some of those issues yet again. I see that our 

ranking member of the full committee is here, and he gets rather 

excited about some of these things, too. 

As I have mentioned at prior hearings, the Coast Guard is indispensable to commerce, to this Nation’s security, and environmental 

protection of this Nation. A maritime, multimission military service, the Coast Guard is responsible for the safety and security of 

our Marine Transportation System, a diverse, intermodal network 

that moves more waterborne cargo and $649 billion worth of cargo 

annually, and about 13 million jobs. 

Unfortunately, the Coast Guard, apparently, is a victim of its 

own success, often overlooked by policymakers who are looking at 

all the other things that we need to do, and forget about the Coast 

Guard. You are always there, you are always ready to call, and we 

always—whenever you are called upon, you do the job. Maybe if 

you didn’t one day, somebody would be paying more attention. 

Paradoxically, it can be said the Coast Guard is a victim of your 

own success. And if you take a look at 9/11, Superstorm Sandy, and 

other tragedies that hit this Nation, the Coast Guard is there, providing service that nobody thought you did—could do, but you did. 

And, to its credit, the Coast Guard has responded professionally 

and competently and effectively on the many challenges for homeland security, most of which were enunciated by our chairman just 

a moment ago, and I will simply echo what he said. 

And so, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for putting together this 

hearing. I look forward to the information that we receive, and get 

on with making sure the Coast Guard has all the assets it needs, 

including icebreakers. We like icebreakers. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. GARAMENDI. And a few other things. And, as this hearing 

commences, there are a few things I will toss in with some questions and some comments along the way. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank the ranking member. And I would like to 

recognize Mr. DeFazio here, because it is not very often we get 

such important people at our little subcommittee. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman is recognized. 

3 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I was wondering why we got delegated to this 

small room here, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thanks for holding this hearing. 

You know, I can’t think of another Federal agency that has as 

challenging a portfolio—you know, national defense, armed force, 

regulatory agency, humanitarian service, you know, Federal maritime law enforcement, border enforcement, and part of the intelligence network of the United States. So that is extraordinary. And 

I think John said it well. It is like sometimes I think the fact that 

you can do and you have done with diminished resources, it is not 

properly recognized by some of our colleagues here. 

You know, I was just at Station Newport, and they—I mean just 

looking around, this is so beautiful, I mean, this old building and 

this—‘‘Yes, you know, we did it ourselves.’’ Well, I can’t remember 

the last time I was on an Army base or an Air Force base and, you 

know, went into the headquarters or a barracks and they said, ‘‘Oh, 

yes, we did the work here ourselves, you know.’’ No, that is not the 

way the other services work. So that is extraordinary. And I hope 

and I think Chairman Hunter and John and I all share the desire 

to do a little bit better by your needs. 

You got a lot of new challenges. And John referenced the icebreaker. I did have the privilege of visiting the icebreaker just last 

month, and was taken by the unique construct of it, the fact that 

it is essentially a design that can’t be replicated by any shipyard 

in America, or maybe in the world today, that the alloy used in the 

ice band is absolutely unique, and I am really going to look forward 

to, when you haul it, to see what the integrity of that hull is. 

And if it is that great, I think we need definitely to look at the 

option of what John calls repurposing. I call gut-and-stuff, which 

is, you know, turn it into a modern icebreaker, using that unique 

configuration, if that would be a more cost-effective way to go, and 

a more expedient way to go. Plus, some of the spares you get off 

there, like the transistors from the sixties, and some of the critical 

functions could be used on the other icebreaker, until we can upgrade that one. So that is one particular concern, and I hope the 

committee will look favorably on that. 

And the other is, you know, when I look at the performance 

measure summary, I am distressed to see—I mean I am a boater, 

I live on a boat here, actually, in DC. And, you know, one of the 

things that—and I represent half the Oregon coast in a very coldwater environment and a difficult ocean. And to see that the percentage of people in imminent danger saved in the maritime environment was not met, and the percentage of people—and then the 

next one, the percent of time rescue assets are on-scene within 2 

hours, and again, it wasn’t met, I know you are trying, but I don’t 

think we have given you the adequate resources. 

But I am going to say, given the fact that there were proposed 

cuts in two lifesaving stations, and one of them being Newport, in 

the center of the Oregon coast, that does half the rescues, and we 

would have had to divert assets either from Astoria or North Bend, 

which means, you know, a much longer flying time and, you know, 

is not going to help me with—on the scene within 2 hours, and I 

think that we would have—we would end up having casualties that 

could have been prevented. 

4 

So, I partnered with some of my delegation and we said it 

couldn’t be closed, and I am going to look for ways to help you deal 

with your budget problems, but I just can’t support a closure of 

critical lifesaving stations. And I want to see those two Xs on the 

other side of the ledger when we get the next performance measure 

summary. And I want to do anything and everything I can to help 

you get there. So, thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate the opportunity. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you. And if you want to address his questions, comments, or concerns right now, feel free. We will say that 

was the first recognized question. 

Admiral MICHEL. Sure. We can talk about a number of things. 

I know we are going to talk about the icebreakers in detail. 

But I am glad you really were able to see that, sir. And I would 

offer to any of the Members, I would be happy to accompany you 

up there, if you really want to take the flashlight tour of the Polar 

Sea. It truly is a unique ship, and designed for a very specific purpose in a very specific environment. And we haven’t built a ship 

like that in this country for over 40 years. 

We are going to have to figure out what we are going to do with 

Polar Sea. I am desperately trying to avoid an icebreaker gap. If 

we are going to build towards a new one, or use a refurbished one, 

or something like that, because there are—the Nation has current 

needs for heavy icebreaking capability, and right now we have one 

ship that is available to do that, and that causes me great concern. 

But I do appreciate you looking at that. Part of the survey work 

we are going to look at is going to look at, you know, how much 

it would take to get 7 to 10 years’ life, or even a longer period, if 

we can get out of there. 

My gut reaction on this, sir, is that ship is still 40 years old, and 

we are going to have to take a hard look at that, as to whether we 

want to take that one back, or whether we want to try for something new. And, as a sailor, and as a naval engineer, you are going 

to have to take a very hard look at that, just because it is a very 

unique capability, and it operates under tremendous conditions. I 

mean this ship can crash through 21-foot-thick ice, and only us and 

the Russians operate these very unique ships. So I appreciate you 

taking a look at that. 

On AIRFAC Newport, roger that, sir. We got the message loud 

and clear, and we are working very hard to ensure that all our citizens throughout the United States are protected. We try very hard 

to meet our 2-hour standard. Last year we fell a few percentage 

points short. We would, obviously, always like to be 100 percent. 

Sometimes we are not able to do that because of weather or different capabilities that we don’t have. For example, some of the 

helicopter replacements we wanted to make along the way, we 

haven’t been able to do that, because we don’t have any flexibility 

in our helicopter system. 

But, believe me, when you talk search and rescue, sir, my goal 

100 percent of the time is 100 percent of the people rescued, 100 

percent meeting our standard. So eyes on search and rescue, sir. 

And I greatly appreciate the fact that you share that exact same 

concern for citizens. So thank you. 

5 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you. And just, you know, in—you know, 

when I went to the icebreaker, I also went down to the school at, 

you know, Cape Disappointment, where I understand the chairman 

went, but the chairman had what I am told was nice weather but 

big waves. I had unseasonably nice weather, and it was, as I was 

told by one officer, FAC, which is—which was not a fun ride. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So I now have to go back again and with a—I want 

to be like the video they show there, where you are crashing 

through those 18-foot waves, and everybody is like, ‘‘Woo,’’ and you 

are all getting wet. And I want John to come with me. He is going 

to love the ride. It was so calm, they let me drive the boat. 

Admiral MICHEL. We will try to order up a storm for you. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK, thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you. And I will now—belatedly, you are recognized for your statement, if you want to give one. Otherwise, we 

can go to questions, or whatever you like. 

TESTIMONY OF VICE ADMIRAL CHARLES D. MICHEL, DEPUTY 

COMMANDANT FOR OPERATIONS, U.S. COAST GUARD 

Admiral MICHEL. If I could make a brief statement, Chairman 

Hunter, Ranking Member Garamendi, Ranking Member DeFazio, 

members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on Coast Guard missions. My complete statement has 

been provided to the subcommittee, and I ask that it be entered 

into the record, and I be allowed to summarize my remarks. 

The Coast Guard is a global maritime service recognized for its 

ability to perform a broad and complementary set of maritime missions across vast geographic areas. Each of our diverse missions 

plays an essential and interrelated role in the Coast Guard’s overall ability to perform its primary mission, which is ensuring the 

safety, security, and stewardship of the Nation’s waters. 

The Coast Guard’s missions, coupled with our broad array of authorities and culture of adaptability allow us the ability to rapidly 

shift from one mission to another as national priorities demand. 

The true value of the Coast Guard to the Nation is not in its ability 

to perform any single mission, but it is in its highly adaptive, 

multimission character, which can be applied across broad national 

maritime interests. 

The Coast Guard performs its missions by employing an expansive array of capabilities, competencies, authorities, and partnerships. At all times an armed service, a Federal law enforcement 

agency, a regulatory agency, a humanitarian service, and a member of the U.S. intelligence community, the Coast Guard is uniquely positioned to confront the complex and evolving maritime risks 

of the 21st century. As such, the Coast Guard remains a unique 

and indispensable instrument of national and homeland security. 

The challenges the Coast Guard is confronting today transcend 

any single mission. Increasing risks are rapidly changing the maritime domain, creating new efficiencies in some areas, and additional mission demands in others. Transnational criminal organizations, technological advancements in maritime industries, increasVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:53 Aug 06, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\114\CG&JOI~1\4-15-1~1\94182.TXT JEAN
6 

ing maritime activity, and reliance on the maritime transportation 

system, rapidly changing energy markets, cyber risks, diminishing 

ice coverage in the Arctic, shifting human migration patterns, and 

weakening sovereign nation states all pose significant challenges. 

These trends are driving increased and unprecedented demands 

across all our Coast Guard missions, and require strategic approaches that ensure safety of lives at sea; the Nation’s maritime 

transportation system remains safe, secure, and effective; our sovereign maritime territories and resources are safeguarded; and our 

marine environment is adequately protected. These challenges coincide with fiscal pressures that demand ever-increasing effectiveness 

and efficiency in performance of all Coast Guard missions at a time 

when the Coast Guard must recapitalize critical operational assets 

in our aging fleet. 

As history has repeatedly shown, the fleet the Coast Guard is 

able to recapitalize today will constitute tools it must rely on to 

perform its missions many decades into the future. The Coast 

Guard disrupts smuggling organizations in the transit zone, where 

transnational criminal organizations are most vulnerable. These 

criminal networks are fueling epidemic regional violence, destabilizing governments, undermining rule of law, terrorizing citizens, 

and contributing to illegal migration from Central America to the 

United States. Protecting U.S. maritime borders, which encompasses the Nation’s territorial seas, contiguous zone, and exclusive 

economic zone requires adaptable and coordinated approaches that 

utilize capable platforms. 

Hence, ongoing acquisition projects such as the C127–J Maritime 

Patrol Aircraft and the Offshore Patrol Cutter, which will replace 

our aging fleet of Medium Endurance Cutters, are essential to ensure the security of our homeland. As an armed force, the Coast 

Guard is fully engaged with the Department of Defense across the 

globe at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, as part of our 

defense operations mission. 

The Coast Guard is also party to the cooperative maritime strategy with the Navy and Marine Corps, a strategy that has been revised to reflect emerging opportunities and challenges. 

In conclusion, while the Coast Guard’s missions remain unchanged, the maritime challenges and opportunities of the Nation 

continually evolve. The Coast Guard’s ability to perform a broad 

and complementary set of missions ensures the Service is always 

ready to meet the Nation’s maritime security interests. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today, and for 

all you do for the men and women in the United States Coast 

Guard. I look forward to hearing your concerns and questions. 

Thank you. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thanks, Admiral. And I would like to recognize Mr. 

Curbelo over here for the first question, if you don’t mind. No one 

ever shows up, we are just so happy when people do, it is fun. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CURBELO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I come for 

you, to be honest with you. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CURBELO. And for the ranking member, as well. 

7 

Admiral, thank you very much for being here today. I represent 

Florida’s southernmost district. And, as my colleague, Ms. Frankel, 

can attest, we are big fans of the Coast Guard in the State of Florida, especially in my case, representing the Florida Keys. And we 

depend so much on the Coast Guard for our safety and for our security. 

Just to give some of my colleagues an idea of how significant the 

Coast Guard’s mission is in south Florida, 1 year ago this week the 

Coast Guard intercepted a shipment of 3,300 kilos of cocaine on 

Miami Beach. Rough street value of that, $330 million. And this 

interdiction was part of the Coast Guard’s Operation Martillo. In 

south Florida we use Spanish words for Coast Guard operations. 

That means ‘‘hammer’’ in English. That operation targets international shipments of cocaine coming into America, usually 

through south Florida. 

Admiral, last year General John Kelly, commander of the U.S. 

Southern Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services 

Committee that they’re only able to intercept about 26 percent of 

the drugs smuggled into the country from Latin America through 

Florida. This was his quote, ‘‘Because of asset shortfalls, we are unable to get after 74 percent of suspected maritime drug smuggling. 

Without assets, certain things will happen. Much larger amounts 

of drugs will flow up from Latin America, we will do less and less 

engagement with our friends and partners in the region.’’ 

Can you comment a little on whether there has been any improvement in General Kelly’s assessment of last year? 

Also, as much as you can, here in open session, what are the 

smuggling routes that have seen the greatest increase in traffic 

over the past few years, and the measures the Coast Guard has 

taken to address those threats? 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. Well, the figures have gotten a little 

bit better because our Commandant has increased the amount of 

ships that are available to JIATF South and the Coast Guard on 

those Western Hemisphere transit zones, smuggling routes. 

And I greatly appreciate you raising that, because this is one of 

the aspects of the Coast Guard that is absolutely critical. The maritime movement of cocaine—and virtually all the cocaine either 

moves by maritime or air, and the vast majority by maritime at 

some point of its voyage—is the tactical advantage that the United 

States has. And it is the United States Coast Guard with the international partners, with the Navy, who provide the tactical advantage. 

And you mentioned about 3.3 metric tons that were seized on 

that one particular piece. Last year, the United States Coast Guard 

seized—just the United States Coast Guard—91 metric tons of cocaine. All the law enforcement agencies within our borders—Federal, State, local, tribal, plus all the seizures at our air, land, and 

sea borders—and that includes the Southwest border—put together, multiply that by almost two times, and that is what the 

United States Coast Guard got. 

I used to be director of JIATF South there, in Key West, Florida. 

And when I was there, there was one Coast Guard boarding team 

that seized a semisubmersible that had 9.3 metric tons of cocaine. 

The typical take at the Southwest border on any given year is 6 

8 

or 8 metric tons. So one Coast Guard boarding team took down, for 

cocaine, what was taken down at the entire Southwest border in 

a year. And that is not to mean the people at the Southwest border 

are not great Americans doing a great job, but they are tactically 

disadvantaged because the Coast Guard boarding team is tactically 

exposed, out on the water, because it is necessary for shipment, 

concentrated loads of pure cocaine. And that single boarding team 

can take that down. 

And, oh, by the way, if you take it down on the water before it 

gets into Central America, it doesn’t create the corruption and 

crime and death and destruction that we see with beheaded bodies 

and all these other things. Plus you get the witnesses and the evidence much closer to the head of the snake of the guys who are 

starting the chain in Colombia, and trying to work a kilo down 

from the Southwest border, or an eighth-of-an-ounce buy on some 

street corner in New York City. 

So, the Nation—the reason the Coast Guard was created was— 

by Alexander Hamilton—was to take advantage of—that tactical 

advantage of intercepting things at sea. That is why the cutter 

service was created. But you need ships to do the business. So we 

are the Nation’s forward defense for cocaine. We defend the streets 

of America. We defend our neighbors. And we use that tactical 

maritime advantage in order to get at it. 

And General Kelly is exactly right. We have way more intelligence than we do ships to actually action that intelligence. We are 

trying to buy some of that down. The Commandant has put additional ships down into the transit zone. But that is the Nation’s defense, and it requires investments from the Nation in ships in 

order to get the business—— 

Mr. CURBELO. So you would say that, despite your successes, you 

are still sorely lacking in resources in the area covered by JIATF 

South? 

Admiral MICHEL. Absolutely. And I will give you the latest figures on that. But my guess is, just based on operational—probably 

50 percent of the high-confidence intelligence cases cannot be acted 

on because there is no ship available. 

Mr. CURBELO. Thank you, Admiral. Thank you very much, Mr. 

Chairman. I appreciate it. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank the gentleman. The gentlelady from Florida 

is recognized. 

Ms. FRANKEL. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I wanted 

to thank you from south Florida. 

I don’t know if you followed this down in Florida. There is a— 

this is a great issue for the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, because we have a new rail line coming on board 

called All Aboard, which will be a direct route from Miami, Fort 

Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Orlando. And it will go up and 

down 32 times. And it has to go over a couple of bridges that the 

boats need to go under. Are you familiar with that? Yes, yes. It is 

something. 

Well, you have taken on a great responsibility, because I know 

that you are—the Coast Guard is trying to figure out the schedule. 

And I just would like if you could just state for the record, from 

the Coast Guard’s perspective, how do you—what is your policy, 

9 

relative to the boating industry, in terms of the movement of those 

bridges? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, I appreciate you bringing that up, because that is a part of the Coast Guard that many people don’t 

know that the Coast Guard actually does, which is we administer 

all bridges over navigable waters of the United States. And we 

are—stand as the arbiter for these competing rights. I mean this 

is a classic public policy. I don’t want to call it slicing the baby, but 

you can understand that the trains need to operate on their schedule at the same time. Because of the low clearances of the bridges, 

certain sailboats—— 

Ms. FRANKEL. No clearance in Fort Lauderdale. 

Admiral MICHEL. Right, right. And if there is no clearance, then, 

obviously, no boats get by. Some of them are low enough maybe a 

motorboat can get under it. But bigger commercial traffic or sailboats can. It depends on the actual bridges. 

But we have got a whole process that we work through with all 

the stakeholders on this. And we try to, to the extent possible, 

meet people’s needs. So we try to keep the openings predictable 

and responsive to the traffic that operates in that water, whether 

it is recreational traffic or commercial traffic or otherwise. At the 

same time, we work with the bridge owner, so that it doesn’t become overly burdensome for them, because they may have to employ a bridge tender or other types of things. And they have also 

got to operate the trains. 

But we do an entire regulatory process, including public outreach, to make sure that we have heard all stakeholders. We have 

criteria that we judge against on, you know, when are adequate 

opening times, depending on the type of maritime traffic that 

comes through, depending on the needs of the train or surface operator, if it is a surface bridge. But we have a whole program that 

takes that. 

And this one, I can tell you, is at the upper levels of the Coast 

Guard, just because it is very important. It is an important project 

for the train operators, to be able to prove that they can do all this 

stuff. And we don’t want the bridges to become an unreasonable obstruction to their business. At the same time, there are maritime 

operators who use those waterways for commercial purposes or recreational purposes or otherwise. 

Ms. FRANKEL. Well, especially in Fort Lauderdale, to the west of 

the bridge are most of the repair yards for the boats and the 

yachts. It is about a $39 billion industry there. So when the boats 

can’t get under that bridge, it is a huge economic impact. 

On the other hand, we do want the railroad—the train to succeed. 

[Laughter.] 

Ms. FRANKEL. This is really a hard one. You know, so I guess you 

are very brave. You have no choice but to take it on. But I am glad 

it has trickled up to you, because this is a very serious issue for— 

especially for Fort Lauderdale. And up in Jupiter they have a similar issue there. So I will be following it closely. 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, I appreciate it, ma’am. And we have—the 

beauty of it is we have great contacts down at the local level, and 

10 

we have great experience with working through these processes. So 

we have actually got processes that encourage that public input. 

Ms. FRANKEL. Right. 

Admiral MICHEL. And we have a great track record. Not perfect, 

but a great track record of being able to find deals that people can 

live with, and folks can get their business done, and not get in each 

other’s way too much. 

Ms. FRANKEL. All right. Well, thank you for your cooperation. We 

will stay in touch. 

I yield back. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank the gentlelady. 

OK. Admiral, thank you very much for being here. It was good 

to talk to you yesterday. Basically, the crux of this hearing is to 

ask a couple of things, and to find out what we can do for you, the 

Coast Guard, that the Coast Guard is either not doing for itself, or 

not communicating to your leadership or the administration. 

You guys took a massive cut, massive acquisition funding cut. 

You are the only department in Homeland Security that got cut the 

way that you did. Every other department in Homeland Security 

got more money. So I guess I would start—just the opening question for the whole hearing is, why do you think that is? I mean why 

would you get cut, and—when it—especially when you have ships 

that are 30, 40, 50 years old, where it is actually cutting down on 

your ability, even by your own metrics, to accomplish the missions 

that you have been given? Why would they cut you? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, I can’t make any comparison versus other 

parts of the Department of Homeland Security, and how they may 

or may not—— 

Mr. HUNTER. We already did it for you. And you were the only 

ones to get cut. So trust me. 

Admiral MICHEL. Right. So I can’t do that comparison work, because I just don’t sit in a chair high enough for that. And here is 

what I will say, sir—— 

Mr. HUNTER. No, but I do. But I am telling you that is what happened. So you don’t have to do it, we have already done it. Right? 

You were the only ones who got cut that way, out of the entire department. 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, I mean, yes. You have analyzed the budget, yes, sir. So I will tell you that the biggest cut that we took was 

in our acquisitions account, and our acquisitions account which is, 

in my opinion, was one of the most critical accounts—because, as 

you and I have talked about before, that is what recapitalizes our 

aging assets—what I can say is that account is always at risk, because those are very expensive items that work through those accounts. 

Now, as I have described before, those items are 30-, 40-, 50- 

year-old items. But getting them in a particular budget yet has always been challenging. So, the entire time I have been working 

with the AC&I account for the recapitalization of our fleet, that always is a very difficult object to move forward. And we are at about 

$1 billion right now. Our prior Commandants have testified that 

$1.5 billion to $2 billion is what we need for a responsible and efficient recapitalization. We obviously aren’t at those numbers. We 

11 

will work at the billion-dollar level, but those are always very 

tough sells, because they are very expensive assets. 

Mr. HUNTER. So let me ask you this. If we just passed the President’s budget request for you as-is, what would you stop building 

next year, or this year? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, the budget, as it currently stands in fiscal 

year 2016, will allow us to continue with the Fast Response Cutter, 

including the recompetition of the Fast Response Cutter, which is 

supposed to occur in 2016. So we would be on track for that. It finishes out the work on the National Security Cutter, and we would 

be on track for that. 

The Offshore Patrol Cutter, there is $18 million in the fiscal year 

2016 budget. We need another $70 million to do the detailed design 

work. Now, we have been told that there will be an internal reprogramming within DHS to give us that $70 million. If we don’t 

get that $70 million, then we are going to fall behind on the OPC, 

and it is going to get pushed further to the right. We have been 

told we are going to get that internal reprogram. 

If we get that, we can keep the OPC on track, understanding 

that, even if the OPC remains on track, as we have currently set 

it out on what our projected budgets are—and I know you have got 

our latest capital investment plan—the ships it replaces, the 270- 

foot class, will be over 35 years old when they come off the line, 

and the 210s will be over 55. And that is if everything stays on 

track. 

Mr. HUNTER. And so you are saying—let me get this straight— 

with the President’s request, if we don’t add any money to the 

President’s request, you can still finish out the FRC line, finish the 

last NSC, and even start with the OPCs. That is what you think? 

Admiral MICHEL. No, sir. Keep on track the FRCs. Remember, 

there are going to be 58 of these—— 

Mr. HUNTER. Keep on track the FRCs. 

Admiral MICHEL. We are up to 32—— 

Mr. HUNTER. Twenty-something left. 

Admiral MICHEL. Right. And the recompete will be for hulls 33 

through 58. But that will keep that line on track, and it has got 

six FRCs. So it doesn’t complete the program, but it keeps it on 

track. It does complete the NSC program, and that would be at 

eight, and—which is the program of record. 

The OPC, as I said before, there is an identified $70 million gap 

for the detailed design work. But we have been told that that will 

be taken care of through an internal reprogram. 

Mr. HUNTER. Through DHS? 

Admiral MICHEL. Correct. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. All right. Thank you, Admiral. 

Mr. Garamendi? 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let’s just run through what Mr. DeFazio started. This is page 9, I think, of it, a 2013 performance measure summary. All of the ones on the left-hand side have been met, and we 

appreciate that. Thank you for doing that. The handful on the 

right-hand side, not met. Let’s just run down through those quickly, and a quick why-not-met. What do you need to move from the 

right to the left? I don’t know if you have—do you have this? 

12 

Admiral MICHEL. I have a different document. Maybe you and I 

can talk about—I think we are talking about the same thing, but— 

well, you can just go down the list. I think I have got them covered 

here, sir. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. OK. 

Admiral MICHEL. I will have staff here look for the paper. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Average number of commercial passengers 

deaths and injuries. 

I think it would be easier—you will be able to find them quicker 

on our list. 

Admiral MICHEL. So this was the 5-year average number of—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Right. 

Admiral MICHEL. Which, commercial mariner deaths or—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Commercial passenger. 

Admiral MICHEL. The commercial passenger deaths, OK. So, 

our—let’s see. Our fiscal year 2014 target was less than 254, and 

our fiscal year 2014 results were at 306. And our fiscal year 2015 

target is 304. So we were supposed to have had less than an average of 254, and we were up at 306 for commercial passenger 

deaths. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. And injuries. So I—— 

Admiral MICHEL. And injuries. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Maybe we got a cruise ship out there that had 

an epidemic of flu or bad food or whatever. 

Admiral MICHEL. It could be a number of different things, because commercial passengers exist in different things. So they are 

small passenger vessels that operate on the Nation’s waterways, 

ferries, and those type of things, and then there are also larger 

cruise ships—typically, is what you are talking about for passenger—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I think the issue here is are you able to do the 

inspections? 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. No, we are not behind on any 

issuance of certificate of inspections, particularly for passenger vessels, which are always on the Coast Guard’s radar, because the 

public has an expectation that a common carrier is going to meet 

their standards. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. OK. Let’s move on down the line. We are getting into Mr. DeFazio’s Oregon coast here, and that has the percentage of people in imminent danger saved in maritime environment. You didn’t meet your metric. Was this the shortage of the 

equipment that we just talked about? 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. There is two captured in there, the 

percentage of the people in imminent danger saved in the maritime 

environment, our goal is 100 percent, and won’t ever be anything 

less than 100 percent, not from the Coast Guard. And we were able 

to—79.4 percent. I can tell you, having looked behind that, it is an 

inability to meet the 2-hour standards, particularly in certain offshore environments, and also in weather conditions. 

I will give you an example. Up on the Great Lakes—I was just 

up at Air Station Traverse City, up in Michigan, and they operate 

the HH–65 helicopter. And it meets the 2-hour standards, but it 

doesn’t have any deicing capability. And in certain—and it doesn’t 

have a very long range. So, in certain scenarios, it becomes harder 

13 

to actually get to people who fall in the ice. And—or otherwise endangered up on the Great Lakes. And we have been looking at trying to get more capable helicopters up there, but there is just not 

enough helicopters in the inventory right now. It is a project—it is 

one of my projects that I am working on right now to try to get 

additional capability. 

But that is an example of where an equipment shortfall or mismatch could be remedied, if we were to have the flexibility in our 

system to reassign assets that sometimes we have and sometimes—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Our chairman spoke a moment ago about us 

helping you meet your requirements. If you could match these 

shortfalls of your metrics to specific shortfalls of equipment or personnel or whatever, it then helps us with the argument. And helicopter, you talk about that earlier, but you put it in a general nature, now you are down to a specific icing situation. So if you could 

do that, it would help us make the argument. 

I am going to move on down to—— 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir, I will do that. 

Mr. GARAMENDI [continuing]. Security compliance rate for highrisk maritime facilities. We have moved way down to ports, waterways, and coastal security. High-risk maritime facilities. I assume 

these must be like—I suppose oil depots, things of that sort? 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, high-risk maritime facilities would be exactly that description. I am looking at my sheet here to find out 

where the actual number is. And I wish I could tell you the number 

there, because I don’t think that that number is anything but just 

a few percentage points off. And those are the types of facilities 

that we hold to a very high standard. And those facilities, I am telling you, we do not have a lack of assets in order to actually determine that compliance rate. So my guess is it is because of strict enforcement procedures. 

And, again, I wish I had the sheet here to tell you how many percentage points we missed that by—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I am putting you in a real bind, so—— 

Admiral MICHEL. Here it is. This is what I wanted to—my staff 

just gave it to me. So our goal was 100 percent, and we got 99.3 

percent. So we missed .7 percent of those, sir. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. All right. We will move on down to percentage 

of undocumented migrants. We talked about this earlier. Again, it 

may be—— 

Admiral MICHEL. Right. Our—again, we just missed by a couple 

percentage points. Our goal was greater than 74.1, and we were at 

72.8. And again, I can tell you, having worked on migrants for a 

while, that is primarily a resource challenge, and also a maritime 

domain awareness challenge. A lot of these migrants come through 

on very small pangas and yolas, either through the Straits of Florida, or through the Mona Pass, or those type of areas. And sometimes they just slip through. And if you had better coverage out 

there, either with the aircraft or sensor systems or additional surface vessels, you could buy down that. But again, you know, I think 

we only missed it by a percentage point or so. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thought we might come to that. Over on the 

Armed Services Committee some of our work deals with ISR, intelVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:53 Aug 06, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\114\CG&JOI~1\4-15-1~1\94182.TXT JEAN
14 

ligence, surveillance, reconnaissance. In the new NDAA—I haven’t 

shared this with the chairman yet, but I represent Beale Air Force 

Base. And we have spent a lot of time with drones and ISR assets 

there. The Navy is getting a new asset called the—it is a Global 

Hawk, naval version. 

Admiral MICHEL. I think that is Triton, is that right? 

Mr. GARAMENDI. It is—yes, it is. And they will be operating that 

out of what I call Camp Malibu, otherwise known as Point Mugu, 

in Ventura. It will be operating, I suspect, in naval exercises off 

San Diego and various kind of training exercises and the like. I 

want you to look into working with the Navy on getting the information that they don’t need, but they do have on ships and pangas 

and other things that are operating there. They are probably going 

to meet everything from night to daytime, and maybe doing it almost all the time. 

And so I am going to work this into the NDAA, so that we can 

cross-fertilize here. And you might have ISR assets available off 

the southern California coast that you don’t even know about 

today. Or maybe you do know about it. 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. Well, I think you mentioned this to me 

last time at the other hearing, so I already put feelers out to do 

that. And, just coincidentally, I am flying to San Diego this afternoon to meet with—when she comes in with about 12 metric tons 

of cocaine. And my host there will be the sector commander, who 

is actually a very close friend of mine, and he also participates in 

the regional coordinating mechanism there. And I am going to reiterate to him the importance of the opportunity you have identified, 

sir. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. We will work on the—with the chairman’s help, 

work on the NDAA side, to make sure that they are aware of the 

opportunity that they have to help you. 

OK, there was another issue, and General Kelly was mentioned. 

And his work and your work interact. And you mentioned just a 

moment ago the lack of assets in the Caribbean. 

One of the assets that was discussed at a previous hearing some 

time ago was the ability to have a ship available to you on which 

you could position your aircraft—helicopters, principally. I assume 

that remains a problem. Could you discuss that shortage of equipment, particularly the kind of equipment that would be necessary 

to further interdict drugs? And I think particularly off the Central 

America coast. 

Admiral MICHEL. Yes, sir. So, about 80 percent of the flow now 

moves by go-fast boats, which are speed boats, very high-powered, 

with engines, most of which operate at night. And the only way you 

can really interdict those is to shoot the engines out of them, and 

that is done via helicopter and a highly trained gunnery crew on 

that helicopter. 

So, in order to get to about 80 percent of the flow—and most of 

that is what we call littoral flow, where it operates relatively close 

to shore on both the eastern Pacific side and the Caribbean side, 

you need to have the ability to position those airborne use-of-force 

assets if you are really going to get at that threat stream. So that 

requires flight decks and, even better, mobile flight decks. 

15 

So, you know, you can look at ideas like barges. But if they are 

not mobile, bad guys find out where they are very quickly, and they 

just don’t go there any more. Mobile flight decks that are attached 

to things like Coast Guard cutters or Navy ships with good sensor 

capabilities, good command and control networks, that is really the 

name of the game, the ability to do day, night, airborne use of force 

from mobile flight decks, from ships with sophisticated sensors, and 

command and control capabilities. That is the Cadillac, that is the 

proven formula for operating against most of the traffickers down 

there. 

So, I have heard General Kelly mention—and there are places for 

a—for staging bases. And if someone were to offer one up, I am 

sure General Kelly could find a use for it. But the real nugget is, 

as I described, those flight deck-equipped ships. That is what we 

really need in order to get at that business, sir. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I think we ought to explore something less than 

a Cadillac, and see if some sort of a semimobile platform, which 

might be a barge with a tug, or maybe some sort of a mobile barge, 

or some ship—perhaps a naval ship that is less than a Cadillac— 

might be available. 

We understand the flight deck, we understand the fueling. But 

I would like you to look into this in a more—and particularly with 

General Kelly on South Command, as to what might be useful, but 

not a Cadillac. We are not going to find a Cadillac any time soon, 

but we might be able to find a semimobile flight deck for you in 

some way. So we will work on it. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the extra time. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Zeldin, recognized. 

Mr. ZELDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon, Admiral. I represent the First District of New York, which is on the 

East End of Long Island. Our congressional district is almost completely surrounded by water. Actually, I don’t know if Carlos 

Curbelo or I—which one is closest to having a district completely 

surrounded by water. It is home of some of the most scenic beaches 

and boating destinations, a very heavy Coast Guard presence, obviously, all around the First Congressional District. 

As the high season—we also have—we are also home of the 

106th Air Rescue Wing. As the high season rapidly approaches, it 

is inevitable that the search-and-rescue capability of the Coast 

Guard will be called upon to help save lives of stranded boaters 

and swimmers off of eastern Long Island. I just wanted you to take 

this opportunity to let me know how you feel about the current 

search-and-rescue capabilities of this critical mission in a time 

when the Coast Guard is being called upon to do so much in other 

areas, such as the migrant interdiction. 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, sir, I can tell you, as far as your district 

goes, you are actually very well situated. And I know for a fact that 

you are—completely meet our 2-hour standards, either from helicopters or stations. There are a number of surface stations that operate in that area, there are a number of air stations that overlap 

that area. And, even better, you are a full recipient of Rescue 21, 

which is our system that is designed to take the search out of 

search and rescue. It is very much an ISR-type system that actuVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:53 Aug 06, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\114\CG&JOI~1\4-15-1~1\94182.TXT JEAN
16 

ally allows us to determine where situations of distress are, pinpoint those locations, and immediately dispatch the assets. So you 

are in pretty good shape. 

You know, you have got your district, and I have got the entire 

national SAR system that I have to operate. And it has gotten so 

much better over the years, largely because of increased knowledge 

and increased ability to pinpoint those boaters, instead of just having to randomly search out there. And boaters have been a part of 

it, too. They have got—they are more connected, and have more 

communication devices than they have ever had in the past. And 

each one of those devices that they take with them provides us 

with an opportunity to determine the—that they are in distress, 

and to determine location, and then send an asset actually out to 

do the business. 

So, we are in good shape. There is more work that can—obviously, can be done over time. But I am really proud of what—the 

strides that we have made in our search-and-rescue system. 

Mr. ZELDIN. Thank you, Admiral. And thank you, Chairman, for 

holding this hearing. Very helpful, and I—please thank all of your 

men and women who are serving us very honorably, especially in 

my home congressional district. So thank you. 

Admiral MICHEL. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. Ms. Frankel, do you have anything else you would 

like to ask? OK. 

OK, let’s go through—I want to know, too, how you prioritize the 

missions that you do, based on the budget that you have. 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, we have gone through some of the performance measures, and, obviously, those are on my task—— 

Mr. HUNTER. We have a hearing, I think, next month, where the 

GAO looks at the way that you do your own metrics. Right? So we 

have a hearing on that, because you guys do—you obviously hold 

yourselves to high standards, but it is always hard in the box, 

when you are in the box, to gauge how you are doing in the box. 

Right? It is good to have somebody else. 

But not necessarily the performance standards, but how do you— 

when you move stuff around, you say, ‘‘Look, we need to spend 

more time on this right now, we don’t have enough to do this,’’ give 

me an example of what you have done in the last 6 months, for example, where you have had to move stuff and reprioritize. 

Admiral MICHEL. I will give you a specific example. And this goes 

to General Kelly’s issues. So the instability down in Central America is causing all kinds of problems. Just a symptom of this was 

50,000 or so unaccompanied children showing up at our border. 

You know, their parents thought it was better to turn their children over to coyotes for a potential life in the United States, rather 

than live in a country like Honduras, with a murder rate that is 

unbelievable. 

As a matter of fact, just as it stands right now, if you are a boy 

born in Honduras today, you have got a 1 in 9 chance of being murdered before the age of 25. And that is, in large part, created because of the transnational criminal organizations that are creating 

corruption, instability, lack of rule of law in that area. And our 

Commandant felt it was very important, and he tasked me with 

moving assets into the transit zone to have a more significant presVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:53 Aug 06, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\114\CG&JOI~1\4-15-1~1\94182.TXT JEAN
17 

ence to get at that 75 percent of the targets that the Nation may 

never get another whack at again. And he told me, ‘‘Work with our 

area commanders to figure out where we are going to take risk in 

other mission sets.’’ And we came up with a plan. 

We were able to—I am not going to talk specific numbers. I can 

talk to you afterwards about specific numbers, but I don’t want the 

narcos to know exactly the numbers we have downrange right now. 

But a significant increase in the amount of surface vessels, flight 

deck-equipped ships sent down there, and they were taken from 

other mission sets. They were taken from—for example, we were 

going to send a ship up to Arctic Shield to work up off the north 

coast of Alaska to ensure that we had a national presence up there 

for the increased human activity that is occurring in the Arctic. 

That ship is not going to go there now. We may ultimately divert, 

if Shell decides they want to drill, and we are going to have to take 

a look at that. But we took additional risks there. We took additional risk in the offshore fisheries set, and tried to replace that 

with some additional knowledge and monitoring capabilities, so 

that we could free up a ship there. Our Commandant turned down 

multiple requests from combatant commanders—I won’t—I can tell 

you which ones, if you want to ask about them—multiple demand 

signals from combatant commanders, and our Commandant said, 

‘‘No, we are going to put our emphasis here, in the Western Hemisphere transit zone.’’ 

And he tasked me with meeting those priorities, and I have got 

a finite basket of things, and I juggle those things, and I try to 

backfill to the extent possible. But those ships that are down there, 

protecting the Nation—not only that, but our neighbors, they came 

from other mission areas, and they were not sitting in port doing 

nothing. We took additional risk in those mission sets of fisheries 

enforcement, marine environmental protection, and the other 

things that Coast Guard cutters do. 

Mr. HUNTER. So let’s say that the CENTCOM combatant commander asks you for Coast Guard ships to patrol the Arabian Gulf, 

for instance, or to protect—do whatever, watch for small boats 

under the big ships. Do you take into consideration the Asia pivot? 

Is that what you are—or is it a drug-only kind of thing? 

Admiral MICHEL. No, sir. We take into—all that into account. As 

a matter of fact, I was just up testifying on the cooperative strategy. Matter of fact, you heard—at the hearing that you held jointly—and part of the sort of agreement between the Navy and the 

Coast Guard was, as the Navy pivoted to the Pacific, and was less 

able to provide Navy hulls in the Western Hemisphere, the Coast 

Guard would try, to the extent possible, backfill for those hulls 

here. But we weren’t going to be able to send those hulls over to 

the Pacific area that we had done in the past. And I will tell you 

that the Coast Guard has got a very relevant role out there in the 

Pacific. If you are taking a look at who is operating, and who is 

doing a lot of the stuff out there, it is the Coast Guard. Whether 

it is China Coast Guard, Philippine Coast Guard, Vietnam Coast 

Guard, et cetera. And there is a huge role. 

But we don’t have the ships right now to be able to send it. Same 

thing for the piracy mission that CENTCOM has. And there is also 

the Africa Partnership Station that AFRICOM wants us to do. And 

18 

there is a huge migrant problem in the Mediterranean—actually, 

much bigger than ours, from a maritime perspective—that UCOM 

would like us to assist with. But there is only so much Coast Guard 

to go around. There is way more demand out there for Coast Guard 

than there is for Coast Guard to back it up. And we have had to 

tell people no. 

Mr. HUNTER. So let’s go on that. If you guys—you are in a sea— 

I mean when is the last NSC going to be done, and the shipyard 

closed down? Eighteen? Seventeen? 

Admiral MICHEL. Seventeen or eighteen when it is actually full 

up and ready to go. We have already contracted for it, so—but I 

think 17 or 18 for—number 8 is online. 

Mr. HUNTER. And so—I mean you have a few years, then, to look 

at—if you kept the line hot, and you could punch out one more 

NSC, would that increase your capability? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, certainly, adding another NSC would increase our capability. We can’t afford it. I mean I can just tell you 

flat out, we cannot afford a ninth National Security Cutter. The 

Offshore Patrol Cutter, which is our lower end workhorse that we 

need, we have got to get that one online, and we cannot afford another ninth National Security Cutter. We just don’t have the money 

for it. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. It is operation and maintenance. 

Admiral MICHEL. It is everything, sir. It is the acquisition cost, 

it is the operation and maintenance, and it is even the facilities 

that would have to be constructed. I mean these are bigger ships 

than existed before, and they need additional pier space, power 

considerations, additional training dollars. I mean this is a very 

high-end ship. And, frankly, we don’t need a ninth NSC. We need 

to get the OPC line underway and start replacing those really old 

Medium Endurance Cutters. That is our priority, sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. But that could change, based on who the Commandant is. Remember Commandant Papp was talking about an 

extra NSC. That was 2 years ago. But it is based on whatever priorities your leadership has. Right? 

And what I am saying, you only have a small window, if you 

choose to take advantage of it. If your minds don’t change in the 

next 2 or 3 years, and you won’t have one—but if you do, you only 

have a hot line, which mitigates a lot of that cost. I mean you said 

it is almost $100 million just to design the OPC. Right? Just to put 

it on paper so that they can build it you are talking about $100 

million. Right? Or $70 million. 

Admiral MICHEL. To do the detailed design work, yes, sir. 

I talked to Admiral Zukunft. I will speak for him. He says we 

can’t afford, don’t need, don’t want a ninth NSC. We need the Offshore Patrol Cutter. And I can’t say that in any clearer terms, sir. 

And I can’t speak for Admiral Papp, but I work for Admiral 

Zukunft right now. 

Mr. HUNTER. On a second note, on—when it comes to the FRCs, 

the FRCs were supposed to be a clean recompete of the exact same 

ship that they are—that you already built. Is that correct? 

Admiral MICHEL. No, sir. We allowed some variability, and the 

RFP reflects that. We weren’t looking for a complete cookie cutter 

down to the bolt level. At the same time, we are not interested in— 

19 

really, in having two classes of ships. So we set some basic parameters. 

So the whole form has to be the same. The main propulsion systems have to be the same. The generators have to be the same, but 

we allowed for some flexibility in the auxiliary systems, because we 

wanted—we didn’t want to just give it to the shipyard, who is 

building them now, who is using all that exact same stuff. We 

wanted to provide some flexibility to allow for a decent recompetition amongst partners. So we did allow for some variability in that 

second class of ships. But the basic machinery systems, hull form, 

those type of things will have to be consistent, because we don’t 

want to have two different classes of ships to support—— 

Mr. HUNTER. How about cost? What is your cost threshold, when 

it comes to changing the design parameters of a ship, mid-build? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, I mean, the cost is going to be whatever 

the proposer says, ‘‘I can build the’’—— 

Mr. HUNTER. Well, it is not going to be less, right, than you are 

doing—I mean if you make changes to an existing ship that is already being built on a hot line, you don’t think the cost goes down 

with variations, do you? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, our desire is that the cost is going to go 

down. I mean that is why we would recompete. Not for a more expensive ship. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. But if you are building a ship, and you make 

changes to that ship, and let’s say that you recompete it and it goes 

to a different company that is not making them now, that has 

never made them, so they have got to start a brandnew line, you 

don’t think that will be more expensive than what you are paying 

now? 

Admiral MICHEL. My hope is that it isn’t. I mean we purchase 

and plan—— 

Mr. HUNTER. Well, not your hope—— 

Admiral MICHEL [continuing]. So that we can share this parent 

craft with other people. And this parent craft has been built. There 

is a practice that this parent craft has been built. The recompete 

was not designed to cost the taxpayers more money, and—— 

Mr. HUNTER. But if you make variations, it costs more. I mean 

that is always—whether it is an airplane or a ship, if you make 

changes it costs money. That is—requirement creep is a real thing, 

right? 

Admiral MICHEL. This is not designed—requirement creep. This 

is designed to recompete a class of ships for hulls number 33 to 58. 

Well, I don’t want to say it is my hope, but I think somebody is 

going to come in here and want to do this work, and they are going 

to want to do it at a profitable, yet affordable price. And that is 

how we have queued the program up, sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. I guess the committee, then, had a misunderstanding of what the recompete was for. We thought it was for the 

same ship that we agreed to fund in the first place, simply having 

a recompete so you can see if anybody else can come in cheaper and 

make it, not for a changing ship that could change on the whim 

of whoever is in charge of writing the requirements for it at that 

time. I mean that was the—the committee’s understanding was it 

was a recompete for the same ship. 

20 

Admiral MICHEL. The basic—— 

Mr. HUNTER. And you are telling me that that is not the case. 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, it is not going to be an identical ship. It 

is going to be substantially the same in the basic parameters of the 

ship. But there is some flexibility in some of the things like the 

auxiliary equipment systems. We are not looking for a photocopy 

of the other vessel, and the RFP is written that way. 

Mr. HUNTER. OK. Let’s jump over really quick to—part of your 

testimony—I mean, basically, what we are looking at is looking at 

your missions, how you perform your missions by your own standards. 

In your testimony you mentioned cybersecurity at ports. There is 

no law that says the Coast Guard is responsible for cybersecurity 

at ports. You all don’t have, as far as I know, any real core competency in doing cybersecurity. You might have some people—you 

might have a part of your organization that does it, but you are not 

like Cyber Command or anything. So you are going to—you are 

talking about taking on a whole other role as the cybersecurity port 

people. 

Admiral MICHEL. A number of comments I could make on what 

you said there, sir, and I just want to make sure that we are talking from the same set of facts here. So the Coast Guard has a number of different responsibilities for cybersafety and cybersecurity. 

And we can talk about both aspects. 

On the cybersecurity side of the house, as far as regulated port 

partners, the Maritime Transportation Security Act places the responsibility on the Secretary of Homeland Security to avoid transportation security incidents to the maximum extent practicable. 

When you read through what transportation security incidents are, 

that includes from whatever source they may come from. And my 

JAG has opined that that includes security breaches that may result in the transportation security incidents that arise from cyber. 

And with the maritime industry being incredibly automated today, 

you can think about the various ways that a transportation security incident might come along through a cyber incident. 

So, the Secretary—and then delegated to the Commandant—has 

responsibilities in this area. And not only that, but also has authorities in this area to require vulnerability assessments and security plans for security incidents that come from cyber. So that—yes, 

we have not only authority, but responsibility in cybersecurity for 

MTSA-regulated partners. 

Even beyond that, with the automation in the industry today— 

for example, engine control systems, industrial control systems, 

and things like that, are all controlled by computers, many of 

which are networked. And, even from a security perspective aside 

from a safety perspective, the Coast Guard has to be able to get 

at that. 

So, for example, we have ships right now that are being pushed 

patches for their main engine. And the master of the ship may not 

even know that his computer software is being changed on his engine. And we have had a circumstance where an offshore drilling 

rig was pushed a patch by an authorized person, but the patch had 

a bug in it, caused the offshore drilling platform to go off-station. 

And the Coast Guard has got bunches of responsibilities for reguVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:53 Aug 06, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\114\CG&JOI~1\4-15-1~1\94182.TXT JEAN
21 

lating safety of machinery systems on offshore platforms, on ships, 

on port infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera. 

All these network systems and automation that are being 

brought online, the Coast Guard has clear responsibility and authority in these areas, sir. And I mean I am happy to provide you 

background information, but I don’t even think this is sort of—at 

least, in my world—— 

Mr. HUNTER. I would say—— 

Admiral MICHEL [continuing]. Not debatable. 

Mr. HUNTER. DHS has the authority and the responsibility to 

take care of that. 

What I am trying to get at here is, though, you keep telling us 

all the different things that you are going to be doing, but none of 

them you are able to do extremely well, except save people. I mean 

that is what your—that is the number-one thing that you do, and 

do well, and you have the assets to do it well. Everything else has 

kind of fallen by the wayside a little bit. I mean it is like you said, 

the number of ships that SOUTHCOM has, you have increased 

those, but those come from somewhere else. 

So now, you are going to add cyber into there, where the Coast 

Guard is going to be responsible for making sure that the software 

patches that get pushed out to drilling platforms are bug-free? You 

guys are going to be jack of all trades, master of none, except for 

saving people, because I think you are doing too many things. 

I mean are you going to start your own Cyber Command within 

the Coast Guard? And what is it going to cost? And how many people are going to be in it? And where are you going to take the people from? And where are you going to get the money from? 

Admiral MICHEL. We already have a Cyber Command in the 

Coast Guard, actually, sir. There is an admiral who is the head of 

Coast Guard Cyber Command, who works directly for me. And we 

have—I don’t want to talk specific numbers of people—we have 

quite a large number of people, and a large investment already in 

this. We already have a Coast Guard admiral who is in U.S. Cyber 

Command as their J7, and we have a whole staff of people who 

work on U.S. Cyber Command. 

The Coast Guard is a very unique organization, sir. Remember, 

we are the only one in Government that is an armed force and has 

all the connections there, a member of the intelligence community, 

a law enforcement agency, a regulatory agency, a humanitarian 

agency, a transportation agency, an environmental agency, and all 

these other things. We operate in .mil, .gov, and .com, and there 

is nobody else out there that I am aware of that does this. The 

Coast Guard is already deeply into cyber on a whole bunch of different areas. 

As far as our cyber responsibilities for the maritime—— 

Mr. HUNTER. Is there—let me ask you this. 

Admiral MICHEL. Sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. Is there crossover from Cyber Command on the 

military side to you guys? 

Admiral MICHEL. Absolutely. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Always has been 

and always will be. The Coast Guard rides on the Defense—Department of Defense information network. I mean we are .mil players. But we also have huge responsibilities in Homeland Security 

22 

in the .gov realm, and then we have a whole regulated industry. 

We are the only one like that, that I am aware of. And we have 

got responsibilities in all those areas, including cybersafety and 

cybersecurity. 

Mr. HUNTER. And the ranking member just mentioned, too, we 

would like to have—if we could, we would do a classified hearing 

on what you guys do on Cyber Command. And I am curious, too, 

how you prioritize, and what percentage—what your breakdown is, 

when it comes to missions, where you say, ‘‘We don’t have enough 

of this, but we have enough of something else,’’ meaning you don’t 

have enough boat drivers, for instance, but you are putting people 

in Coast Guard Cyber Command. Right? 

I mean they had to come from somewhere. You are dealing with 

a finite pool, and I am just trying to understand where you are 

hurting or sacrificing to keep putting people out in these, you 

know, different organizations, because that is fairly new, I would 

guess, what, your Coast Guard Cyber Command, 5 years old, 10 

years old, 2 years old? 

Admiral MICHEL. It is relatively new. And, like anything in Coast 

Guard, kind of bits and pieces have been patched together from 

previous organizations, or from other parts of the Coast Guard. 

The thing about our Cyber Command things, now, you may just 

think it is all just about defending our networks. It is not all about 

that. And I don’t want to get too much into classified here, but we 

use cyberspace also to enhance our mission accomplishment. So 

getting at some of the target sets that we talked about before, 

whether a transnational criminal organizations or a search-andrescue case, are actually aided by our understanding of what actually goes on in cyberspace. 

I don’t want to get into too many details. Maybe we save that 

for a future classified hearing. But the Coast Guard is deeply in 

this area, because of where we sit in Government, and where our 

responsibilities are. 

Mr. HUNTER. The ranking member is recognized. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. The cyber area is really important. I raised part 

of this just in ISR, which is arguably cyber. And we really should 

have a classified hearing on it and go into it. I know we did this 

about 3 years ago. I think it was in this room, around that table, 

and we probably ought to go back and redo that. 

There are some questions that I just—I think I had better get to 

here. I had my notes, but I just pushed them off to one side. 

I have yet to go to a hearing where we haven’t talked about sequestration. And I think this is something that I am concerned 

about as we rewrite the Coast Guard reauthorization, which we are 

probably going to do, at least hopefully do this year. We would like 

to do this year? 

Mr. HUNTER. Yes. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. And I just noticed from the Committee on 

Transportation and Infrastructure that we are constantly decreasing the authorization to match the appropriation. We have done 

that almost always, it seems. And it seems to me that what we are 

doing is to continue to downsize critical organizations. In this case, 

downsizing the—we did it last time we authorized. The authorization was—I forget what the number was, but the authorization up 

23 

here, the appropriation came down here, and we brought the authorization down to match the then-appropriation. 

And I am raising this issue because it is of deep concern to me 

that, over time, we will continually diminish the role of numerous 

organizations—in this case, the Coast Guard. And so I want to 

bring this issue up. It is, in part, driven by sequestration, which, 

over time, downsizes everything. 

Could you comment on this, the role or the impact of authorizations, and then the appropriations? And the chairman appropriately raised a very significant question about your appropriation 

level in the President’s budget. So how did all this play together? 

Admiral MICHEL. Well, let me see if I can take a look at it. 

You know, obviously, the authorizing committee set—gave the 

Coast Guard authorities. They also set personnel, they set authorized—and, over time, there has been a disconnect between authorizations and appropriations. Or maybe authorizations have followed 

appropriations. 

Back—if you look kind of at the history, my understanding of the 

history is you used to have to have an authorization before you 

could have an appropriation, and then they became kind of separate things. And I guess you are saying maybe they are coming 

back in line, but the authorization is following the appropriation. 

I guess my comment on that is that authorization matters. It 

matters a lot. It sends a signal. I am concerned, with you, that if 

we are sending a signal that less is being authorized, then that is 

not a good signal to send. And I take my cues from you on that, 

sir. 

You know, the actual numbers that the administration would 

support in any sort of proposed authorization bill, we would have 

to run that through the administration process. But I think that 

authorizations do matter, and they definitely send signals, and 

they should send signals to appropriators, as well. I mean, like I 

said, my understanding of the history was you weren’t supposed to 

make an appropriation without an authorization. I am not a historian, but just—I guess just your average citizen’s knowledge—— 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I raised this issue, I think, more for us, my colleagues on this committee, in that we are being driven by the sequestration. It is downsizing most everything, and forcing the kind 

of decisions that the President made about how to deal with the 

Department of Homeland Security and who is going to get cut. And 

the chairman appropriately raised the very serious question that it 

is the Coast Guard that took the hit. 

I want to be aware that last time we authorized the Coast 

Guard, we matched the authorization to the then-appropriation, 

which was driven by sequestration. We don’t have to do that. We 

don’t have to do that. And when we do that, we downsize, in a permanent—in a more permanent way. Because, when it comes back 

to increasing to meet the needs of the Coast Guard and this Nation’s security, we then have to find the money. We have to find 

the offset, which is extremely difficult to do. 

So, my concern here—and I guess this is as much for my colleagues—it is for my colleagues. We must be aware of what we are 

setting in place for the next round. And I want us to be very, very 

cognizant that when we bring down the authorization, and we want 

24 

to build a new offshore cutter, or we want to build a billion-dollar 

icebreaker, we have got to increase the authorization. And that requires an offset. Now, it is bad enough to get the money for the 

appropriation. And if I am wrong about this, then I would love to 

have a debate. But I think I am right. And I am troubled by it. 

There is a whole series of questions. I do want to go in—I do 

want to have that cybersecurity issue, because it covers a lot of 

things, some of which I am interested in, which is the navigational 

issues, and we can talk about those later. We did talk about the 

issue of resources on many of your work, particularly patrolling off 

the California coast—or, excuse me, the west coast—on the marine 

environment, which I suspect you are shifting resources. I heard 

you shifted resources out of that to deal with other areas. 

Of particular interest to me is the integration of the military assets to assist the Coast Guard. We had a discussion a moment ago 

with the chairman about the Coast Guard assisting the military. 

They ought to go the other way, also. Military has a lot of assets 

that are used off the coast. Could those assets assist the Coast 

Guard in the ISR? They are obviously not going to go out and make 

arrests for fishing fleets that are doing the wrong thing, but they 

might be able to identify where the fishing fleets are. 

So, if we can have a discussion about that, I don’t think this is 

going to work right now, because I think we are about to shut 

down. But I want to have that discussion about how we integrate 

the military assets to assist the Coast Guard in its role. So if you 

can think that through, and maybe the next time we get together 

we can pick that up. 

And if there is something that is pending, the chairman and I 

are going to write, together with our 52 other colleagues, a National Defense Authorization Act. And we could tell them to help 

you. OK? So let us know. 

I am finished. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank the ranking member. 

Hey, let’s end it this way, Admiral, on a story. Could you tell us 

about the first drug bust you had after you left here and went out 

and captained a ship? 

Admiral MICHEL. I will tell you this is maybe not the first, but 

the first really memorable one. So in the—this was—I was first assigned to Coast Guard Cutter Decisive in 1985 and I came from the 

Coast Guard Academy. And we were scheduled to be on patrol during the whole month of December, and I had never missed Christmas with my parents ever before, and they lived in Tampa, Florida—ever before. 

And so, we were patrolling the days before Christmas, and we 

got an intelligence report about a mother ship that was off the west 

coast of Florida, and it was running small boats in, and things like 

that. And I was the boarding officer, went on board that ship. And 

at that time they just had the bales out on deck, they didn’t even 

bother hiding it in hidden compartments, or anything like that. So 

we arrested all these dopers, and things like that. We brought that 

boat in on Christmas Eve, got specific permission to bring it in to 

Tampa on Christmas Eve, and I stepped off that cutter and was 

able to spend Christmas with my parents. 

25 

And I would also like to say that was the best and my only gift 

that I ever got from a narco trafficker, was Christmas at home 

with my parents, Christmas 1985, sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. Good. Well, with that, the hearing is adjourned. 

Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 3:19 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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