“Icebreaker Acquisition and the Need for a National Maritime Strategy”

There has been some discussion recently of how certain Coast Guard procurement priorities, including icebreakers, would not be affordable if the Coast Guard’s Procurement, Construction, and Improvements (PC&I) account in coming years were limited to an average of about $1.1 billion per year. An average PC&I funding level of about $1.1 billion per year would have that effect. In 2013, then-Coast Guard Commandant Robert Papp testified that an annual PC&I funding level of about $1 billion per year “almost creates a death spiral for the Coast Guard.” The notion that the PC&I funding level will be limited to an average of about $1.1 billion per year, however, is no longer strongly supported by recent data on Coast Guard annual funding requests, annual enacted funding levels, or projected future annual funding requests as shown in Coast Guard five-year Capital Investment Plans (CIPs).