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dense areas, as well. So I think that in it- skyrocketed over the last couple of years. same time it allows me to bring 5,000 self is a good news story for the Coast more Coast Guardsmen on to active duty

Guard because we’re also operating a and another 1,100 into our reserve com-You’ve been generous with your time. what else would you like people to know?

very old feet, as well. ponent. So pretty straightforward for

Okay, I’ll just close with one. So a military service that’s budgeted only

Back to the feet itself – we talked about what I’ve asked Congress to do is, you about 10.5 billion dollars a year. When the old ships, we talked about the old know, what do we need to make the I speak at Capstone and other programs equipment, and we talked about the

Coast Guard whole? And without going at the various war colleges, the frst thing operating budget. And a key thing in through a whole litany, and we will pro- I ask is, “What do you think is in my terms of operating ships is that if you’re vide a 20-year capital investment plan, budget?” We’re a military service, and operating an older feet, you’re going here are all the things. And it might make they’re all thinking, okay, 60, 70 billion. need more maintenance on a daily ba- someone’s head spin, but I said, “It’s as And when I tell them less than 11 billion sis. How do you think you’re going to easy as this: I need 5 percent annualized dollars, their jaw drops. For a service get there with this Congress?

growth in my operating budget.” And that has four consecutive clean fnancial

Well, if we face challenges, then eventually that would get me out of the audit opinions, so not only are we bud- what you end up doing is you have to hole that we’re in right now which does geted, we can account for what we do. take those ships offine. You can make keep, roughly keep pace with infation, Our acquisition programs – less than 2 a business case of, you know, for ev- and some vestment in readiness, as well. percent growth.

ery operating hour you’re putting three Five percent. And then the other is I need maintenance hours. And at that point it’s about a 2 billion dollar foor for major And you are a smaller organization than the New York City Police Department.

no longer sustainable. It’s like that old acquisitions that would allow me to build

Ford Falcon sitting in your garage. May- ice breakers, allow me to build out the Ah, we’re a little bit bigger. Not by be not even a Falcon, maybe one step feet, address a 1.6 billion dollar back- much. But we don’t get overtime. Over- down. So, you make those decisions and log in our shore infrastructure, and at the worked, but not overtime.

there’s going to be a gap in areas that we can patrol. Right now we’ve had con- secutive years with record removals of cocaine – most of well south of the bor- der, off the coast of Panama, Guatemala, and the Eastern Pacifc off the coast of

Columbia, out by the Galapagos Islands.

Nearly every day we’re seizing a ton of cocaine destined for the United States.

Are you getting better at it or do you think there’s just more volume coming?

It’s both, Joe. The intelligence that we have on these, this last year, we extra- dited over 700 smugglers for prosecution here in the United States. They can plea bargain with a U.S. attorney by providing us valuable information that allows us to target the next shipment. So the intelli- gence is quite good. The other challenge is there is more cocaine coming out of

Columbia than there has in any time in over a decade. Part of that is a result of the peace accords with the FARC. One of those provisions was when eradication was halted, cultivation took off and it has www.maritimelogisticsprofessional.com 29

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