In recent years the United States Coast Guard has received much more attention than at nearly any other time in its long and storied history. One of the six armed services, the Coast Guard has historically received much less attention than the Army or the Navy. In the modern day, it is just as important, if not more so, to America’s security than many of the other branches due largely to its additional role as an international law enforcement agency. In addition to disaster response, as geopolitical tensions rise, the Coast Guard patrols the Arctic, the South China Sea, as well as performing drug and border enforcement.

In recent decades the Coast Guard’s mission has transformed from a traditional role of search and rescue, to one that is more focused on international policing and maritime security. Its effectiveness and capabilities were displayed recently when in just six months of operations, stretching from August of 2025 to February of 2026, in just the Pacific Ocean, 200,000 pounds of cocaine were seized.

The Coast Guard, in peacetime a part of the Department of Homeland Security, is currently undergoing a massive expansion and reformation called Force Design 2028. In 2025, as part of President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill the Coast Guard was allocated 25 billion dollars, its largest ever single allocation. This money will be spent on dozens of new cutters, letting existing ones dating back to the 1960s to be phased out. The money will also be spent on increasing recruitment, a crucial goal to the expansion of the force. This last year, after opening seven new recruiting offices, the Coast Guard achieved its highest recruiting numbers since 1991. With a record 5,204 enlistments in 2025, 121% of its goal, the Coast Guard has more recruits than it can process in its existing facilities. As a result, they have acquired a former college campus in Birmingham, Alabama to serve as a new training facility.

Another important part of the Coast Guard’s expansion is the acquisition of new Polar Icebreakers. The United States currently has just 2, compared to the several dozen possessed by Russia. One of these, the Polar Star, is over 50 years old, having been built in 1976. The Coast Guard has put on order 4 more heavy ice breaking ships, with plans to order more in the future. Ice breakers are important for their role in supporting American and NATO forces in the Arctic, a region where tensions have risen in recent years.