November 1, 2022 — In a reminder that high-tech militaries are only as strong as their weakest supporting link, a long-standing cook shortage threatens to sideline the U.S. Coast Guard.
Newly recruited to the high-tech, great-power struggle in the Western Pacific, the Coast Guard is in a struggle for trained workers. But rather than focus solely on waging a bare-knuckle labor fight to keep elite operations specialists, electronics technicians, cyber operators, and other glamorous workers in the fleet, the Coast Guard is also paying big money to recruit and retain cooks, or, in Coast Guard vernacular, “culinary specialists.”
The Coast Guard’s cook shortage is a full-fledged readiness crisis.