The Coast Guard employs a multi-level organizational structure, as shown in figure 1. The Coast Guard provides commanders at each level the authority and discretion to conduct operations within their operational areas. Command and control begins at Coast Guard headquarters, which is responsible for developing national strategies and policies for operations. However, Coast Guard headquarters does not exercise direct operational control of assets. Rather, the Commandant apportions this control to the two Area commanders. The two Area commanders—one for the Atlantic Area Command and one for the Pacific Area Command—are responsible for translating policy into operational objectives through theater plans for Coast Guard missions. The Coast Guard has nine districts that report to the Area Commands. District commanders are responsible for regional operations and they assume tactical control of allocated resources to execute operations and missions within their areas of responsibility. The nine Coast Guard districts are supported by 37 sectors. Sector commanders are responsible for local operations within each district. Sector commanders assume tactical control of allocated resources to execute operations and missions within their areas of responsibility. Each of the Coast Guard Area commands, districts, and sectors is responsible for managing its assets and accomplishing missions within its geographic area of responsibility and for the purposes of this report are referred to as field units. The Coast Guard uses a variety of assets to conduct its mission responsibilities. The Coast Guard’s assets consist of aircraft and vessels. The Coast Guard operates two types of aircraft—fixed wing (airplanes) and rotary wing (helicopters). Fixed wing aircraft operate from Air Stations and airports, whereas rotary wing aircraft operate from Air Stations, flight- deck equipped cutters, or other locations that could support flight operations. Similarly, the Coast Guard operates two types of vessels— cutters and boats. A cutter is any vessel 65 feet in length or greater, having adequate accommodations for crew to live on board. Larger cutters (major cutters), over 179 feet in length, are generally under the control of Area Commands and cutters 175 feet or less in length come under control of District Commands. In contrast, all vessels less than 65 feet in length are classified as boats and usually operate near shore and on inland waterways. As of the end of fiscal year 2015, the Coast Guard’s assets included 61 fixed wing aircraft, 142 rotary wing aircraft, 40 major cutters, 205 cutters, and 1,750 boats. For a more detailed listing of these Coast Guard’s assets, see appendix I. To crew its aircraft and vessels and to plan, manage, and carry out its mission responsibilities, the Coast Guard relies on a staff of active duty, reserve duty, and civilian personnel. As of the end of fiscal year 2015, the Coast Guard had 54,425 employees—39,116 active duty (6,566 officers, 1,728 Chief Warrant Officers, and 30,822 enlisted) personnel; 7,109 reservists; and 8,200 civilians. Strategic commitments are annual, up-front commitments of resources made at the headquarters level and are deemed by the Coast Guard as critical to the implementation of national, Department of Homeland Security, and Commandant strategic priorities. Among other things, strategic commitments specify the amount of time certain types of Coast Guard assets are to be operating in support of these activities, and these resource allocations serve as minimum levels of activity that field unit commanders are expected to provide. An example of a strategic commitment is supporting counter drug missions in the Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific in coordination with other federal law enforcement or Department of Defense agencies. Strategic commitments represent the Coast Guard’s highest priorities, so the Coast Guard allocates resources to these activities before it allocates the remaining resources to meet other field units’ missions. The Coast Guard is responsible for 11 statutory missions, which are divided into non-homeland security and homeland security missions, as shown in table 2. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 requires that the authorities, functions, and capabilities of the Coast Guard to perform its missions be maintained intact and without significant reduction, except as specified in subsequent acts. It also prohibits the Secretary of Homeland Security from reducing “substantially or significantly…the missions of the Coast Guard or the Coast Guard’s capability to perform those missions.” Each fiscal year, the Coast Guard allocates resource hours to its field units for carrying out its 11 statutory missions based on the number and type of assets in those units at that time. During fiscal years 2010 through 2016, some missions were allocated more asset resource hours than others, as shown in figure 2. For example, for fiscal year 2016, the two missions with the highest allocation of asset resource hours were ports, waterways, and coastal security and aids to navigation. Conversely, the two missions with the lowest allocation of asset resource hours during that year were other law enforcement and marine environmental protection. In prior reports and testimonies, we have raised concerns about the Coast Guard’s difficulties in clearly and systematically allocating resources to accomplish its diverse missions. For example, in March 2004, we found that although the Coast Guard used a variety of mission performance measures, it did not have a systematic approach that would allow it to understand the linkage between resources expended and performance results achieved. We recommended, among other things, that the Coast Guard proceed with initiatives to account more completely for resources expended. In response, the Coast Guard developed the Mission Cost Model, which was to accurately capture the costs of mission-direct activities and the allocation of mission-support costs as they are incurred. We also previously reported that although the Coast Guard reports summary financial data by homeland security and non- homeland security missions to the Office of Management and Budget, as a multi-mission agency, the Coast Guard can be conducting multiple missions simultaneously. As a result, we stated that it is difficult to accurately determine the level of resources dedicated to each mission. Recognizing the difficulty of determining resource needs in a multi- mission agency, the Coast Guard developed a process to help it better allocate its assets in line with its strategic commitments and statutory mission responsibilities. Specifically, since being implemented in fiscal year 2008, the Coast Guard has used the Standard Operational Planning Process (SOPP) for annually developing and communicating strategic commitments and allocating resource hours, by asset type (i.e., types of aircraft, cutters, and boats), throughout its chain of command for meeting mission needs. The SOPP is to provide guidance and direction, while preserving some autonomy for field unit commanders to conduct operations, as events require. As shown in Figure 3, as part of the SOPP, Coast Guard headquarters issues an annual Strategic Planning Direction, which is to be the primary mechanism for allocating resources and providing strategic direction to operational commanders at the Area, District, and Sector levels. To determine and plan for how assets are to be allocated, Coast Guard headquarters are to rely on mission priorities, data on historical and current-year mission performance, and operational and intelligence assessments. As part of the planning process, field commands are allocated resource hours by asset type to be used for meeting strategic commitments and executing the 11 statutory missions. The Strategic Planning Direction is annually disseminated to the two Area Commands that are then to disseminate their own Operational Planning Directions through their command levels, with each District command developing its own plan to cover its area of responsibility. The Area commanders develop a plan known as the Area Operational Planning Direction and District commanders develop a district level Operational Planning Direction. After assets are deployed, staff at the field units are to enter the assets’ actual resource hours used, by mission, into data systems. The asset resource hour data are consolidated on a quarterly basis as part of Operational Performance Assessment Reports. The historical and current-year operational data from these reports, as well as Planning Assessments, are to be communicated back to Coast Guard headquarters as part of the information to be used to develop the Strategic Planning Direction for the following year. The Coast Guard has also developed management tools to help it align its personnel with its missions. In particular, the Coast Guard has developed the Manpower Requirements Determination (MRD) system and the Sector Staffing Model (SSM) to facilitate management decisions on personnel requirements (see table 3). The Coast Guard collects and reports the number of hours its assets— aircraft, cutters, and boats—spend conducting missions. Coast Guard field unit personnel are to record asset resource hours used to accomplish a mission(s), by mission category (such as domestic ice breaking or marine environmental protection operations), into one of two operational reporting databases. The Asset Logistics Maintenance Information System (ALMIS) and the Abstract of Operations System (AOPS) capture asset resource hour data to support mission responsibilities. According to Coast Guard instructions, field units are to record at least one type of activity, such as one of the Coast Guard’s 11 statutory missions, within 24 hours after an asset is deployed. Staff at the relevant field units are to review and certify that the data entered are accurate. After the data have been entered, the Coast Guard Business Intelligence system is used to extract and combine resource and performance data each quarter to create Operational Performance Assessment Reports. Data on resource hours used by field units’ assets are included in these reports and are part of the feedback component of the SOPP whereby field units report data on asset usage to Coast Guard headquarters on a quarterly basis. Coast Guard headquarters does not provide field units with strategic, realistic goals for allocating assets, by mission. Rather, headquarters’ allocations of assets in the Strategic Planning Directions that we reviewed for fiscal years 2010 through 2016 were based on assets’ maximum performance capacities. For example, the Strategic Planning Directions allocated each Hercules fixed wing aircraft (HC-130H) 800 hours per year, each Jayhawk helicopter (MH-60T) 700 hours per year, and each 210-foot or 270-foot medium endurance cutter (WMEC) 3,330 hours per year, irrespective of the condition, age, or availability of these assets.