First of all systems of systems was not the problem and going away from it is a huge mistake. All that process says is you organize your missions,technical requirements and design top down and horizontally instead of every asset figuring out their own plan bottom up. It's really just common sense. The real problem is that while the best solution is system of systems it can also be the worst. If done poorly - usually though lack of communication and expertise, then you wind up spending a lot more money than bottoms up design and get the same problems of discontinuity and mismatches the bottoms up approach has. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water and pile on the bad decisions that were made. Deepwater was a fiasco because leaders in industry and the Coast Guard made bad decisions. Best practices are only the best when done well. Otherwise they are a nightmare.

Lastly finding the money is easy. We found a $9B X3 worth of new fraud in discovery of our 123 case against the prime contractors. Instead of trying to obstruct our case to get that money for the Coast Guard they could help us.

False program wide guaranty and fraudulent inducement of the whole Deepwater contract

The Coast Guard demanded in their RFP that if the contractors were going to use a new shadow company (ICGS), especially one with no capital, they wanted some way to not be left holding the bag. So they made a full program wide guaranty of ICGS performance a mandatory part of the proposal. The contractors came back in their bid and said they would do that. Then after winning they said the “unconditional” program wide guaranty of ICGS performance was “executed”. However we have official contractor witnesses saying that was not true and they never actually did the legal work to execute that guaranty. The CG did nothing about that and even paid MORE to have some buckled 123s fixed. Now let’s say they were just incompetent and didn’t catch the original lapse since they had a contract letter saying the guaranty was “executed”. They simply believed ICGS. Shouldn’t they have tried to exercise the guaranty when the 123s buckled?  This is is fraudulent inducement of the whole program since it was a mandatory part of the proposal and contract. Given the money spent to date this would now be a $9B X3 false claim for the Coast Guard and DoJ. Instead of the CG pursuing this with the DoJ and joining our lawsuit relative to the 123s, the new false guaranty and fraudulent inducement claims against the primes the CG leadership actually did the complete opposite. They told our judge there was NO 123 FRAUD, reneged on giving us declarations they promised us and Sen Cantwell we would get, blew off our new claims and then joined the DoJ against Bollinger – but for only the 123 claims. So they went after the little guy and for much less. Now I am not suggesting Bollinger didn’t do a very bad thing and shouldn’t be held accountable. I am saying that this tactic covers up for the CG leadership, the big contractors and makes it look like they are getting tough and trying to get the money back while letting those big fish off some huge hooks. The real problem with all of this is that the big contractors and the CG leadership are not held accountable to the degree they should be and we all lose out on a huge amount of money we and the Coast Guard desperately need.

As for the expo. My comment here is that the Coast Guard isn’t far enough along leadership wise, specifically related to Deepwater, to fine tune their management.  They still have overarching macro problems that can only be fixed by political courage. Political courage to tell the whole truth, political courage to hold the contractors accountable and the political courage to hold themselves accountable.  The Commandant seems to believe that more money and time will fix things. if the root cause, political courage, were addressed he would be right. instead he needs the money and time to put the Coast Guard and nation at risk so he doesn’t have to be that politically courageous. Too many Pandora’s Boxes would open and too many legacies, cushy public sector jobs and egos of former leaders would be damaged if he did so. And a great many sitting leaders would have to go if the extent to which the problems occurred and are occurring were aired.  The program wide false guaranty and fraudulent inducement cover up being one of them.