The Coast Guard will do its best to bring in assets that were formerly part of the Deepwater acquisition program on budget, according to commandant Adm. Robert Papp, but the four-star conceded that factors beyond the service's control may inflate costs.

The Commandant of the Coast Guard says that he may have short-term solutions to the shortage of ice breakers in the service's fleet, but has yet to discuss with the White House whether to extend the lives of the existing icebreakers or build new ones from scratch.

A new RAND study proposes changes in the preparation of reserve component units to ensure these formations can undergo important training together and absorb high levels of personnel turnover in the months leading up to their deployment.

Air National Guard officials project that they could lose the equivalent of four squadrons of F-16s before 2017 as those aircraft reach the end of their service lives, according to a recently released Government Accountability Office report.

Cost baselines for four of the assets in the Coast Guard's ill-fated acquisition program -- including its largest planned buy, the Offshore Patrol Cutter -- have not been re-examined since the service took over the project from Integrated Coast Guard Systems three years ago, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Two New York lawmakers have aligned $2 million that would allow the Air National Guard to begin installing eight-bladed propellers on its ski-equipped LC-130 cargo haulers that are used to ferry scientists to snow-covered Antarctica.

The Coast Guard has announced its schedule moving forward with the Offshore Patrol Cutter, which is expected to make up the largest portion of its acquisition budget.

As the Coast Guard scrambles to deal with the loss of its only functional heavy polar icebreaker to engine damage, the service has begun to look for ways to bridge the seemingly inevitable capabilities gap that will occur between the end of the Polar Sea (WAGB-11) and Polar Star's (WAGB-10) scheduled service lives and the fielding of their replacements, officials say.

The Coast Guard came under fire last week from lawmakers who said it was being too slow to respond to small businesses with ideas that could help with the Gulf Coast oil spill response, even as the service sorts through hundreds of responses to a broad agency announcement it published earlier this month asking for new technologies to deal with the crisis.

A Washington think tank is recommending drastic changes in the structure of the Coast Guard to counter decades of expanding missions and declining budgets, the consequences of which Coast Guard advocates and ex-officers say have again been demonstrated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the southern coast, and the service's limited resources for handling the crisis.

Amidst several national crises, including the Gulf oil spill and escalating security measures at the U.S.-Mexican border, the Army National Guard remains without a director after then-New York Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Joseph Taluto withdrew from the nomination process earlier this year.

The National Guard is preparing to roll out a new capability to rapidly dispatch tens of thousands of troops with key skills to states hit by catastrophic attacks or disasters, according to military officials.

Two staunch supporters of the Air National Guard have tacked numerous amendments onto the fiscal year 2011 House defense authorization bill, including one that prevents the Air Force from implementing a number of force structure adjustments until a number of benchmarks are met.

The Air National Guard has a shortage of ground vehicles and other types of critical equipment, according to an Air Force official.

Sen. Christopher Bond (R-MO) this week accused Air Force leaders of attempting to conduct a "backdoor" Base Realignment and Closure process against the Air National Guard.

The Pentagon is using funds from a $950 million pot appropriated by Congress for this fiscal year to begin closing what Guard and Reserve leaders contend is a shortfall of new trucks that is expected to remain in the thousands over the next few years.

Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen told lawmakers last week that he would reverse many of the severe cuts made to the service in the proposed fiscal year 2011 budget if Congress made more funds available.

Anticipating a more constrained Defense Department budget in the future, the Army's reserve component will face obstacles in equipping and training its forces, according to top Army Reserve and Army National Guard officials.

Three units in the Air National Guard may not have planes by the end of fiscal year 2012, according to the top general in overseeing the National Guard Bureau.

Lawmakers from both the House and Senate are calling on Congress to direct more than $200 million in additional funding to modernize the Army National Guard's UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter fleet.