The U.S. Coast Guard is laying plans to get off the mark quickly
with its Integrated Deepwater System Program, an ambitious, long-term
effort to modernize the service’s decades-old fleets of ocean-going
ships, helicopters and aircraft.
The Coast Guard was poised in June to award the first in a series
of five-year contracts worth as much as $15 billion over the next
20 to 30 years.
The contract calls for the winner, during that period of time,
to replace or rebuild the service’s forces that operate as
far as 50 miles or more offshore, patrolling for terrorists, drug
traffickers, illegal immigrants, commercial fishing violations or
mariners in distress. Included are approximately 90 cutters and
patrol boats, 70 fixed-wing aircraft, 130 helicopters, their communications
equipment, sensors and logistical infrastructure.
The service planned to begin immediately, retiring obsolete platforms,
renovating others and building entirely new generations of ships
and aircraft, officials said. “At the heart and soul of the
Deepwater program is change,” Rear Adm. Patrick M. Stillman,
the Coast Guard’s program executive officer, told a recent
NDIA-sponsored conference in Baltimore. “This is not old wine
in new bottles.”
Although the Coast Guard in early June had not announced the winner
of the competition, the clear frontrunner was Integrated Coast Guard
Systems. ICGS is a joint venture including Lockheed Martin Naval
Electronics & Surveillance Systems-Surface Systems, of Moorestown,
N.J.; Northrop Grumman Ship Systems Ingalls Operation, of Pascagoula,
Miss., and approximately 100 other U.S. and international corporations.
In March, two other teams—led by the Boeing Company, of Chicago,
and the Science Applications International Corporation, of San Diego,
were notified that they were out of the running, and ICGS was asked
to provide additional details of its proposals.
At press time, the ICGS team was proceeding cautiously. “It
looks good, but we’re not taking anything for granted,”
said Jay Dragone, vice president of Coast Guard and international
programs at Lockheed Martin.
Speaking before award of the contract, Dragone was reluctant to
be specific about the team’s plans. He did say, however, that
if ICGS does win, “we’re going to come out of the starting
blocks very aggressively.”
The Coast Guard has $320 million still available for Deepwater
projects in fiscal year 2002, which ends on September 30, Dragone
noted. After that, the contract calls for expenditures up to $500
million per year for five years. If the Coast Guard is satisfied
by the contractor’s performance, the agreement is renewable
every five years.
The key to the project is modernizing the service’s fleet
of cutters, Dragone indicated. All Coast Guard vessels greater than
65 feet in length are called cutters. They range in size from 65-foot
small harbor tugs to 399-foot polar-class icebreakers.
Relatively small, fast and lightly armed, compared to Navy ships,
Coast Guard cutters have been used to enforce U.S. maritime law
ever since the service’s founding in 1790. Often considered
the nation’s fifth military service, the Coast Guard is now
part of the U.S. Transportation Department. It frequently cooperates
with the Navy to help protect U.S. ships and personnel in foreign
waters, such as the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
In recent decades, however, the service’s fleets of ships
and aircraft have aged, the service’s commandant, Adm. James
M. Loy told a recent Senate budget hearing. The average cutter is
28 years old. Three of them were commissioned during World War II.
Many of the cutters are technologically obsolete, he said. For
example, the USCG Acushnet, which was commissioned in 1944, still
uses an engine-order telegraph for the bridge crew to signal the
engine-room crew to change speeds.
Chasing Drug Smugglers
Slow-moving by modern standards, the cutters can’t outrun
the so-called “go-fast” speedboats used by drug smugglers
in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Oceans, Loy said.
According to Coast Guard figures, approximately 80 percent of illegal
narcotics that enter the United States via maritime routes are transported
on go-fast vessels, which are typically 30 to 40 feet in length
and capable of carrying up to three tons of cocaine at speeds in
excess of 50 knots. Loy quoted the commander of one of his service’s
newest cutters:
“I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to pursue
high-speed, drug-laden vessels through a moonless night, to close
them within 3,000 yards, to be so close as to hear the wail of their
engine as they crash over the wave tops—and then to hear them
turn away, accelerate and disappear over the horizon.”
To provide ships that can catch the go-fast boats, the ICGS team
has proposed a number of hull forms. One team member—Bollinger
Shipyards Inc., of Lockport, La.—has formed a joint venture
with Incat Tasmania, of Hobart, Australia, to build high-speed,
twin-hulled catamarans for the U.S. military services, including
the Coast Guard.
One such catamaran, the 313-foot Joint Venture high-Speed Vessel,
currently is undergoing tests by the U.S. services for use in relatively
shallow coastal water.
Powered by four sets of marine diesel engines, gas turbines and
water jets capable of throwing out 18 tons of water per second,
the Joint Venture reaches speeds of 48 knots, according to Incat
Project Manager Nick Wells. The Joint Venture has been equipped
with a helicopter flight deck and a stern boat-launching system.
A similar ship, made by a second Australian firm, Austal Ships
Pty., is being used to move Okinawa-based Marines around islands
of the Western Pacific.
Another team member, Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls Operation,
is designing a “littoral combat ship,” which it hopes
to sell both the Navy and the Coast Guard. The two services have
agreed to cooperate on development of the LCS.
Because of the varying sizes and missions of Coast Guard ships,
a variety of designs is likely, officials said. In any case, the
first new ships should begin entering service within the next four
years, according to Dragone.
Meanwhile, the ICGS team plans to begin retiring the oldest vessels,
those of World War II vintage, the 378-foot high-endurance cutters,
and the 210-foot medium-endurance cutters, which are reaching the
end of their planned service lives, Dragone said. The 210 footers—which
joined the Coast Guard inventory in the 1960s—are scheduled
to begin retiring in 2007, followed a year later by the 378 footers,
which have a similar vintage.
The older ships are personnel-intensive, according to Stillman.
The 378-foot ships, for example, have 180 crewmembers apiece, and
the 210 footers have 74. The catamarans, on the other hand, have
crews of 31.
The Coast Guard doesn’t plan to retire all of its older ships,
Stillman explained. Its 270-foot medium-endurance cutters, built
between 1983 and 1991, will get a service-life extension program,
he noted.
The Coast Guard’s aircraft fleet also is getting a major
upgrade. The service’s primary long-range surveillance and
transport aircraft, the HC-130H Hercules—which dates back
as much as three decades—is receiving a renovation of its
sensor system.
Updating Aircraft
Included is a new forward-looking, infrared, electro-optical, low-light
television, turret-mounted camera system. This system provides a
360-degree field-of-view and high-resolution software magnification,
allowing use at standoff ranges.
Later this year, the Coast Guard is scheduled to receive the first
of six HC-130J aircraft from the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company,
of Marietta, Ga. The latest version of the C-130 line of transports,
the “J” can fly 21 percent faster, cruise 40 percent
higher and climb 50 percent faster, according to company spokesman
Peter Simmons.
Half of the Coast Guard’s HU-25 Guardians, U.S.-built versions
of the French-designed Dassault-Brequet Falcon 20 light-transport
jet, are being retired. Older HU-25s, which the Guard uses for medium-range
surveillance missions, entered service nearly 20 years ago, and
are becoming too expensive to maintain, Stillman said. The service
is using the money saved by retiring the oldest Guardians to outfit
the survivors with sensors similar to those going into the HC-130Hs,
he said.
As far as helicopters go, “the Coast Guard has a very robust
fleet,” Dragone said. “Some of them need to be upgraded
to keep them in service.” The French Aerospatiale HH-65 Dolphin
short-range recovery helicopter is receiving a new cockpit, control
displays and multifunctional flat-panel displays. Flight-management
software is being improved, and full-authority digital engine control
is being added to provide a greater range of operating conditions
with increased safety for the aircrew. Three Dolphins have crashed
in service-related accidents since their introduction in 1985.
Two years ago, the Coast Guard agreed to lease eight Italian-designed
Agusta A109E Power helicopters—which the service has dubbed
MH-68 Makos—to serve as an armed narcotics interdiction squadron,
based in Jacksonville, Fla.
Armed with M240G machine guns, .50 caliber sniper rifles, stun
guns and entanglement nets, the Makos already have made their marks.
In March, the Coast Guard reported that they intercepted three U.S.-bound
speedboats laden with more than 13,000 pounds of cocaine.
The Coast Guard also is evaluating the Bell Agusta 609, a civilian
version of the troubled MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft sought
by the U.S. Marines and Air Force Special Operations. Tilt rotors
take off and land like helicopters, then fly like fixed wing aircraft.
They are faster than traditional helicopters, with more range and
cargo capacity.
The Coast Guard’s interest in the 609, however, is linked
to the fate of the Osprey. Flight testing of that aircraft was halted
in 2000 after two crashes killed 23 service members. Defense officials
agreed this spring to resume testing, but Edward C. “Pete”
Aldridge Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology
and logistics, warned: “If we see some problems occurring
early in the flight-test program, we may not continue it.”
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, some legislators complained that the
Coast Guard’s entire Deepwater strategy is too risky, slow
and expensive. Said U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, of Alabama, ranking
minority member of the transportation appropriations subcommittee:
“Deepwater is already slipping, even though it hasn’t
delivered anything but studies and internal machinations. Yet, for
the fourth year in a row, we’re being asked to appropriate
a blank check—this year for $500 million—and being asked
to trust an untried, unproven and risky strategy.”
Stillman agreed that, given the amount of money and time needed
to complete it, Deepwater is hazardous. But he argued that, because
of the age and condition of Coast Guard cutters and aircraft, the
service has little choice. And, he said, it must succeed. “Failure
is not an option.”