Coast Guard Fights New Pirates
- Thread starter gcolton
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The crews actually doing the work? They can absolutely handle the job, no doubt. The office people who wouldn’t know saltwater from dog piss that get the cases and are responsible for forwarding them for prosecution or actually prosecuting? Slim chance.
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Speaking of Coast Guard workload - I just read this. I’ve heard mentions of it, but this is the first time I saw any source material - and I had no idea it was this drastic.
chuckhillscgblog.net
“Coast Guard adjusts operations plan to mitigate 2024 workforce shortage” –MyCG
USCGC Steadfast is the next WMEC to be decommissioned. The 55 year old cutter is homported in Astoria, Ore. The Coast Guard is acting decisively to deal with the current personnel shortage. I have …
chuckhillscgblog.net
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I’ve heard about it and read about it, but this makes me think the impact is worse than I thought. Used to be they’d just take it out on the stations, underman and overwork them, to keep cutters fully staffed. I’ve never heard of them laying up cutters due to personnel shortages. Makes me wonder how bad it really is!
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Gee, I wonder why?
Vaccine mandates?
Lack of taking care of our active duty guys while we send all the money, ordnance, and supplies overseas?
Military leadership more focused on woke bull**** than helping our men and women in uniform do their jobs?
It's a mystery...
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bigblocksarefun
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Big part of it right there. I retired from the USCG 2 yrs ago (literally a month before the vaccine was mandated; 25 yrs was long enough).
Across all the services, diversity appeasing seems to be vastly more important than readiness.
USCG has NEVER had a budget comparable to any DoD service. More money going elsewhere means even less coming that way; I'm actually surprised this administration hasn't tried to steal some out of the CG's new cutter construction budget. Can't believe I'm about to say this, but we can probably thank Congress for that lol.
The CG kicked out a bunch of people for refusing to take the forced vaccine.....they now have an entire team reaching out to all those people to try to get them to come back in and expedite their returns. That's chutzpah right there. Additionally they are so hard up for people that recruiting efforts have gone so far as to reach out to vets & retirees offering $1000 plus an award (which at this point is meaningless lol) for referring anyone who makes to Cape May.
WMEC's (210's & 270's) are the workhorses of the east coast cutter fleet. The 210's go back to the 60's (last one I was on turns 60 next year); the 270's are from the 80's but were such an abortion construction wise that I won't go into those details here....Speaking of Coast Guard workload - I just read this. I’ve heard mentions of it, but this is the first time I saw any source material - and I had no idea it was this drastic.
“Coast Guard adjusts operations plan to mitigate 2024 workforce shortage” –MyCG
USCGC Steadfast is the next WMEC to be decommissioned. The 55 year old cutter is homported in Astoria, Ore. The Coast Guard is acting decisively to deal with the current personnel shortage. I have …
Plans to nix the 210's started before even 9/11. Two were decommed, then the towers fell. That stopped that. Once the worst condition cutters (WHEC's and patrol boats) were replaced, work began on the mid size replacement; you've probably heard of it, the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC), first of class named ARGUS. They already in plans in place to start decomming these boats when ARGUS was supposed to be delivered back in 2021 (now 2024). Hurricane Michael screwed that up. It looks like a cart before the horse situation but it worked out in their favor since there is starting to not be enough people to go around. Several 87' patrol boats have been decommed and sold off to foreign countries.
In addition to less boats to man, they are laxing transfer requirements to keep qualified personnel where they are in paygrade mismatch positions in an attempt to maintain readiness.
It's a big sh!t show all around.
bigblocksarefun
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You're absolutely right, it isn't new.....for tested proven vaccines. The flu shot has been LONG established and fairly well proven. Not for "we just whipped this up in the blender, take it because I said so politically". Also, within reason, religious requests have to be at least considered if not outright accommodated (look up US Army siekh). While a good portion of the religious exemption requests may have been fraudulent, they were all flat out denied; it was planned that way and the CG got outed for it. Why do you think all of a sudden that the COVID vaccine is no longer a requirement? Military requirements or no, that doesn't make you wonder?
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They also SLEP’d the 47’s instead of replacing them - since in true Coast Guard fashion, they never actually had a plan to replace them at end of planned service life. I retired right before they started coming back from SLEP. Or right as the first couple hulls did, more precisely. Would have liked to see how they run in the surf.
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You can't be serious? You cannot equate the clot shot with the long proven and safe vaccines you got in the old days.
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Fair point, this one definitely veered into NBR territory.
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Whether under DOT or HSA, USCG has always seems to be the forgotten stepchild. Unfortunately, as much as DOD spends on DARPA and other new tech, it seems the rank and file are taking it in the shorts.
bigblocksarefun
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You almost sound surprised by this lol. I did the maintenance analysis for that SLEP. I was happy to see more powerful engines, the 6V-92's were never powerful enough. Ain't supposed to run at 90%+ load all the time. One thing that bothered me was the need for a brake caliper to completely stop the prop shaft to effect gear changes; apparently it would stall out otherwise.
Had the.......'joy' of being under both, I will say the budget went up significantly after the transition to DHS but will never even come close to anything DoD. You could run the entire CG on the Navy's annual fuel budget.