Ask the Expert: Lawrence J. Korb on Modernizing the Coast Guard

How is the Coast Guard involved in confronting threats to our national security?

The Coast Guard has several different missions. One of the big threats, for example, to our national security, as talked about by the President and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is climate change. Well, with climate change that means the waters are melting in the Arctic. The Coast Guard has to be up there to protect America's interests. People are concerned that a terrorist group like Al Qaeda might try and smuggle a nuclear weapon in in a container. It's the Coast Guard that does the inspection. The Coast Guard, for example, is over training the Iraqi Navy, because most countries in the world do not have big large navies like ours. They basically have coast guards. So the Coast Guard is over there. They've had ships in the Persian Gulf all during the War in Iraq. So they have just a whole host of issues that they do, which have become much more important since 9/11 when we're really concerned about our borders. And our sea borders are quite extensive.

What challenges does the Coast Guard face in meeting these threats?

Well, the Coast Guard really faces the challenge of dealing with expanding missions. For example, guarding against terrorist threats in the United States, supporting navies all around the world, dealing with the consequences of climate change, which involve not only more hurricanes, but the melting of the arctic ice. The real challenge they face is doing that within a budget that's not increasing in real terms. This is forcing them to make tradeoffs between paying people today and buying new weapons tomorrow, and they're not doing either satisfactorily.

How can Congress and the administration help the service overcome these challenges?

What the Congress and the administration need to do is have a Unified National Security Budget, where we take the offensive component, which is the Department of Defense, the defensive component, which is the Department of Homeland Security where the Coast Guard is, and development, which is on to the State Department, look at them all together, and make the tradeoffs. For example, the average age of a Coast Guard ship is 40 years. The average age of a Navy ship is 14 years. Why should we give the Navy an extra submarine this year when we could spend that money on buying new ships for the Coast Guard? Why should we spend more on national missile defense, one program in the Department of Defense, than the entire Coast Guard? And I think when you do all those things, then the policymakers can say, "You know, I can get more security for a dollar from the Coast Guard than I can from some of these weapons systems in the Pentagon which really deal with threats from a bygone era."