By Ledyard King, USA Today from Navy Times

WASHINGTON — The Coast Guard has a drug problem: It’s having more and more trouble capturing narcotics smuggled into the U.S. because of an aging fleet that needs constant maintenance and repairs.

The agency is asking Congress to help finance modern ships to replace cutters that are approaching 60 years old.

The Obama administration’s fiscal 2016 budget request of nearly $10 billion includes several hundred million dollars to overhaul the fleet. The money would buy six smaller “fast response” cutters and provide seed money for replacing the “medium endurance” cutters that catch drug smugglers (chiefly cocaine) and immigrants on the high seas and coastal approaches.

“Much of the Coast Guard’s infrastructure and many of our platforms are well beyond their service life,” Adm. Paul F. Zukunft told a Senate Commerce, Science and Technology subcommittee Tuesday.

Over the past two years, emergency repairs forced four medium-endurance cutters into dry dock for weeks, significantly curtailing the Coast Guard’s ability to patrol a major drug-trafficking region known as the “transit zone,” a six-million-square-mile area, including the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Pacific, Zukunft said.

“Some of those cutters are 50 years old — we’ve got to replace ’em,” said Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, a popular destination for smugglers.

The military’s Southern Command outside Miami “doesn’t have enough Coast Guard there to stop the drugs,” Nelson said. “They can only interdict 20 percent of the drugs that the intelligence apparatus knows is coming out of South America into Central America and increasingly into the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.”

The Coast Guard’s deployment of cutters to combat smuggling operations has fallen steadily since 2009, shortly before Congress approved across-the-board sequestration budget cuts.

In 2009, the Coast Guard fell short of its target for ship-days spent combating smuggling operations, providing 2,036 days — or 80 percent — of the anticipated 2,555, according to the Government Accountability Office. That’s the equivalent of seven major cutters operating throughout the year.

In 2013, the agency lowered its target to 2,008 days but was able only to provide coverage for only 1,346 days, or 68 percent.

Administration officials called for the new cutters after a 2013 anti-trafficking operation found that drug smuggling on non-commercial vessels in the Caribbean was much higher than previously estimated.

An estimated 6.4 metric tons flowed directly and indirectly into Puerto Rico and the U.S Virgin Islands in 2009. By 2013, that had grown to an estimated 17.3 metric tons.

“Combating these networks requires a forward-based presence that draws upon the Coast Guard’s unique global authorities to attack illicit trafficking where it is most vulnerable,” Zukunft told senators. “And that’s at sea.”

IMAGES: Cocaine Seizures (Photo: Petty Officer 2nd Class Connie Terrell via AP)

For more on this story go to: http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/coast-guard/2015/04/28/coast-guard-wants-new-ships-for-age-old-drug-scourge/26537225/