US Coast Guard infrastructure is quietly crumbling. It needs at least $7 billion to fix it.

• The US Coast Guard faces a $7 billion backlog in infrastructure improvements.
• Deferred maintenance and insufficient budgets have worsened the Coast Guard's infrastructure issues.
• Piers, airfields, housing, and maintenance facilities are among the areas needing overhaul.

There's been a lot of talk about rusty US Navy warships and shipyard struggles lately, but the Navy's not the only maritime service with troubles.

The US Coast Guard desperately needs shore infrastructure improvements, according to a new government watchdog report. The problems aren't just piers and lighthouses either. It's also airfields that need repaving, rundown family housing in remote locations, and shoddy centers that can oversee search and rescue operations.

Part of the problem can be chalked up to years of deferred infrastructure maintenance, the Government Accountability Office report said, resulting in a painful backlog for the service that secures over 100,000 miles of US coastline and inland waters.

The work backlog is at least $7 billion, more than twice what it was five years ago, signaling the problem is worsening.

The Coast Guard did not immediately respond to request for comment from Bussiness Insider.

Budget requests for the Coast Guard have been insufficient since at least fiscal year 2019, the GAO said, adding that such gaps have plagued the service for years. It doesn't help that the service has not analyzed the trade-offs of foregoing infrastructure maintenance, the report noted.

The Coast Guard, which normally falls under the Department of Homeland Security but can become a branch of the Defense Department during wartime, is sometimes regarded as a lesser priority by presidential administrations and the lawmakers holding the congressional purse strings despite the Coast Guard being the first line of maritime defense for American shorelines and a lead agent for interdicting drug smuggling at sea.

Coast Guard operations are focused largely on maritime law enforcement, including protecting commercial shipping interests and maritime safety, US port security, and conducting thousands of search and rescue operations for which it never charges.

The service spends much of its time working drug interdiction missions, regularly snagging tens of millions of dollars worth of illegal narcotics, often in or near US waters.

Trump and his top officials have repeatedly said that their top priorities are stopping migrants and drug smuggling, especially the synthetic opioid fentanyl. Operations at sea that rely on the Coast Guard play an important role in that. A day after Trump took office, an acting DHS official fired the Coast Guard's top admiral.

It also conducts important operations abroad.

As DoD has pivoted to focus on the Pacific, so too has the Coast Guard, stretching its resources and personnel further to units in Asia, while also maintaining its presence elsewhere, including operations in global hot-spot regions and in challenging waters to the north.

Much of the service's infrastructure — including ammunition storage facilities, piers, and communications towers — is well past its life expectancy, according to the GAO report, and overdue for replacement.

The service receives an annual budget of roughly $13.8 billion, making backlogs difficult to address, especially given that the problem may be even worse.

The $7 billion price tag for the much-needed infrastructure improvements is likely too low an estimate, the report said, since the service has either not created cost estimates for some projects or has not updated cost estimates to account for inflation.