Admiral Linda Fagan, Coast Guard Commandant, recently addressed Congress, federal stakeholders, and industry partners on the State of the Coast Guard in 2023.
“For nearly 233 years our service has provided safety and security for the American people,” Fagan said. “Today we uphold that tradition and the Coast Guard’s future is bright. I am proud of the dedication, professionalism, and passion of every individual who serves in the United States Coast Guard. These sentinels are my highest priority.”
“Your dedication and devotion to duty are the reason the Coast Guard is called upon and relied on to Protect, Defend, and Save. Our blue uniforms and iconic red racing stripe are symbols of professionalism and good maritime governance.”
She delivered the annual update in Washington, D.C. at the Reserve Organization of America this year. You can watch the full video on the Commandant's Home Page and on Youtube. (www.uscg.mil/alwaysready/).
In the coming weeks and months, the Commandant will be visiting Coast Guard members at units across the country, speaking with them directly about our current state and her vision for achieving the Coast Guard of the future.
She introduced the team that will move our workforce into the future, the Talent Management Transformation Task Force, dubbed TMX-TF. “We recently stood up a team of Coast Guard professionals who will build the agile and integrated human resources structure we need to manage our workforce more creatively and advance us from the rigid systems put in place generations ago,” Fagan said. Some of those changes have already been announced, such as:
Admiral Fagan emphasized the Coast Guard’s investment in recruiting initiatives, such as the seven new recruiting offices around the country, and the continued expansion of the Scout Talent and Refer (STAR) recruiting program.
“An exciting addition to this marketing campaign is the Coast Guard’s new Recruiting Logo, which was unveiled on the Recruiting website,” she said.
The Commandant emphasized the service’s commitment to providing members world-class housing, healthcare, and childcare. “You deserve safe, affordable housing and we continue to invest in infrastructure, especially in some of the Coast Guard’s more remote communities. To provide critical behavioral and mental health services, we are training corpsmen as behavioral health technicians, bolstering our growing roster of mental health professionals. We have also built a medical school pipeline for our own Coast Guard doctors to better support your medical needs.”
In addition to the recently expanded 12-week parental leave for all servicemembers, she noted that we are building out more Coast Guard Child Development Centers, improving current centers, and expanding child care subsidies to help members find childcare that works for their own particular needs.
The Commandant celebrated the Coast Guard’s strides in cyberspace, our newest operational domain. The service will stand up its third cyber protection team on the West Coast, to help protect our ports from cyber threats. And this year we are also assigning the first members of the new cyber mission specialist rating in our enlisted workforce.
“We may be small, but we are incredibly capable,” Fagan said. “Every day, our crews do difficult work. We will apply that same determination to confront the challenges we face as a service and we will emerge even stronger sentinels of our maritime safety, maritime security, and economic prosperity.”
To learn more about Adm. Fagan’s remarks, including updates on the new assets, resilient infrastructure and more, visit https://www.uscg.mil/AlwaysReady, where you can find the speech transcript and watch the full video.