Brian Smicklas News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Congress has authorized money for a new Great Lakes icebreaker, a priority the shipping industry and Sen. Gary Peters have sought to fight ice dams.

Midshipmen & Cadets Essay Contest—Third Prize. Sponsored by the U. S. Naval Institute. The Coast Guard Academy must refocus its priorities to properly weigh maritime performance versus academic success and create well-rounded junior officers.

This issue features two American Sea Power Project articles and another feature addressing the mismatch between the supply of ready U.S. naval forces and the demand for those forces.

1 Viewed by many at the time as a doom-and-gloom prediction, a hypothetical situation in extremis, Smicklas’s projected reckoning is coming to pass. The Coast Guard does not have enough cuttermen volunteering for assignment to send its fleet to sea. Without dramatic, immediate action, it will have to select-and-direct cuttermen to serve afloat in six months’ time. The current lessening of standards signals a death spiral of underqualified officers afloat compared with today’s force; swift action in the spirit of Smicklas’ clarion call is critical to make sea duty attractive. In the ...