[Webstral]

Leg, take a deep breath. When you think your posts through carefully, you contribute as well as anyone here. When you snap off a half-baked hip shot, you leave your posts open to critique, which leads all too often to bruised pride and more half-baked hip shots. For my part, I prefer to interact with the Legbreaker who doesn't feel like he has to defend an observation that came out of the oven too soon.

The deployment strategy of the US Coast Guard in the event of a NATO-Soviet conflict was given lots of thought by people with lots of expertise and careers to devote to that sort of thing. I'm not claiming that said deployment strategy was perfect or anything like it. I am claiming that during the Cold War some thought was given to balancing the demands on the USCG with the means.

As for desperate situations, it's nuclear war. The Soviets have lost their Northern Fleet by 1998, with the exception of fast attack ships like the missile-armed corvettes. Fuel is short in any event. The Soviet fast attack ships are notorious for not having reloads available onboard. The Red Banner Fleet HQ got hit during the nuke exchange, so we should expect some shortages. Missiles, which aren't carried aboard the corvettes in great quantities, is a reasonable place to expect shortages.

Now, one has to draw distinctions between a high endurance cutter like Gallatin and much smaller cutters like Bainbridge Island. At 110' and with a single 25mm autocannon, Bainbridge Island is poorly equipped to mix it up with a genuine naval combatant. Gallatin, at 378' and armed with a 76mm gun, a CIWS (useful for knocking down SSM and rogue hang gliders), smaller autocannon, and possibly a helo, is a reasonable candidate for trans-Atlantic escort duty as part of a much larger force in 1997 or as a primary combatant after the nuclear exchange. Upgrades to the weapons package only make Gallatin more likely to draw escort duty. Bainbridge Island probably never would venture off the continental shelf.