Coast Guard Mulls Major Changes To Deepwater Program Requirements

By HUNTER C. KEETER
Associate Editor

Nearly three years later, reverberations from Sept.11, 2001, continue to influence those executing U.S. defense and security policy. In light of heightened activity and changing technical demands, the Coast Guard is reassessing requirements for its Deepwater modernization program, which was originally conceived in 1996.

“We are working a series of requirements changes,” Capt. Richard R. Kelly, of the Deepwater program office and the Coast Guard’s operations directorate, told Sea Power. “We have been asking: ‘What has changed that should affect the capabilities of the Deepwater system?’”

Under the 1990s-vintage plan, Deepwater — an acquisition that includes three new classes of cutters, new fixed-wing patrol aircraft, new helicopters, unmanned air vehicles, and a state-of-the-art command-and-control network — is a 20-year, $17 billion effort. In 2002, Congress requested from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) a report on accelerating Deepwater to a 10-year effort, with a total acquisition cost approaching $12 billion. In the 10-year plan, however, annual funding would almost double over the near term, increasing acquisition costs by $4.7 billion in then-year dollars from fiscal year 2005 to 2011. For the following 10 years, annual spending would be substantially less compared to the 20-year plan.

The proposal to accelerate Deepwater remains on the table in Congress, even as demands on the fleet have stretched exiting capabilities and resources and introduced new threat considerations — such as preparing responses to attacks by weapons of mass destruction. There is support on Capitol Hill for accelerating Deepwater. According to a senate staff member, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, will work this year with senators from both parties in a “broad-based effort,” including support from Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Joseph Kennedy, D-Mass., and John Kerry, D-Mass., to pursue additional funding support for Deepwater.

Snowe would renew the effort to shorten Deepwater’s acquisition to 10 years. In a Feb. 27 letter to the Senate Budget Committee, Sens. Collins and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., argued for a fiscal year 2005 Deepwater budget of $1.86 billion.

At the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the Coast Guard contributed 1,250 personnel, two large cutters, a buoy tender, eight patrol boats, four port security units, law enforcement detachments and support staff on defense missions. At the same time, the DHS stepped up security operations around the nation’s ports and coastlines, extending, as President George W. Bush ordered in 2002, the maritime borders of the United States, “giving us more time to identify threats and more time to respond.”

Kelly and colleagues at Coast Guard headquarters on the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., have worked for months on the Deepwater implementation plan designed for 20 years, recasting it in light of new threats and challenges. Last summer, the Coast Guard underwent a performance gap analysis looking at the capabilities that are not provided by the Deepwater program as now envisioned, and projecting the effects into the future. That has led to revisions to the Deepwater mission needs statement, a document that is the foundation for the program’s requirements.

Changes to that document could affect the program’s platform quantities and pace of acquisition.

Kelly described the ongoing process as an “intensive effort” that has included a series of exercises in post-9/11 Coast Guard roles and missions. The effort also includes input from industry consortium Integrated Coast Guard Systems — a Northrop Grumman- and Lockheed Martin-led team under contact for Deepwater.

“We will take the result of this work and turn that into an update to the mission needs statement,” Kelly said. “We plan to get that in front of the DHS’s joint requirements council in the near future.”

The DHS, emulating the Department of Defense, has created its own council for reviewing and approving requirements of programs such as Deepwater. That council, working in concert with DHS’s investment review board, contributes to the development of budget plans for the department’s major acquisitions. Kelly would not speculate on the duration of the DHS requirements council review or whether the product of that review would be applied to the upcoming 2006 budget request.

Long before 9/11, the Coast Guard’s plans for Deepwater were being developed with emphasis on command-and-control capabilities, transforming the service operationally from isolated units to a networked force, not unlike what the U.S. Navy is developing, and rebuilding the Coast Guard’s fleet with more capable platforms.

After 9/11, the Coast Guard considered pausing Deepwater to assess whether new requirements should then be drawn up.

“The Coast Guard leadership, in the days after 9/11, discussed whether we should stop and regenerate requirements and give industry more time, or proceed,” Kelly said. “We agreed that it would be best to proceed and adapt.”

Sources in industry and the Coast Guard say the foundation for Deepwater was adequate to allow for mission growth and the capacity to meet new threats. But a senior congressional analyst noted that an important question remains: “Whether the total mission load for the Deepwater program was achievable with the assets anticipated from the outset.”

According to a RAND Corp. study launched in 2002, Deepwater’s quantity and mix of assets was inadequate to meet the mission load before 9/11. With added stresses of the war on terrorism and security operations such as Noble Eagle with the U.S. Navy, Deepwater may require significant revision.

According to RAND, in lieu of eight national security cutters, the Coast Guard may need 44 of these high-endurance vessels. Additionally, the think tank reported that 46 offshore patrol cutters may be more adequate to meet mission demands than the 25 planned under Deepwater.

“These numbers represent a huge bump,” the congressional analyst told Sea Power. “The recalculated procurement quantities may present significant issues for lawmakers.” RAND noted that the service’s goals for recruiting, training and retention would have to be raised.

Congress may also consider the impact of higher procurement rates on the U.S. industrial base. For decades, the U.S. shipbuilding industry has depended upon orders from the Navy to remain viable. Now that the Coast Guard is back in the market for 90 or more cutters, Deepwater represents a light ship displacement tonnage equal to about 21 of the Navy’s planned DD(X) next-generation destroyers.

Lawmakers may find they have another way of supporting the shipbuilding industrial base, recognizing that the Navy is no longer the only game in town, the congressional analyst said.

Among the Deepwater platforms is a “national security cutter,” a 29-plus knot vessel of 421 feet in length, displacing 3,886 light tons. The national security cutter will have two helicopter hangars and a stern ramp for launching and recovering small boats. Additional “mission modules,” tailored to meet requirements for a specific security or defense operation, could be brought aboard as needed.

Kelly explained that the national security cutter would replace current 378-foot high-endurance cutters.

The Integrated Coast Guard Systems industry consortium is developing a national security cutter design under two contracts totaling $129 million. Construction of the first cutter begins this year with delivery to the fleet scheduled for late 2006.

“These will be [Navy frigate] FFG 7-sized vessels designed for a higher degree of habitability, higher degree of communications and a sensor suite with equipment that is interoperable with the U.S. Navy,” Kelly said.

Since 2000, the Navy and Coast Guard have been strengthening ties and plan to operate even more closely in what Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark and Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thomas H. Collins refer to as the “national fleet.”

Each service has a distinct approach to the national fleet concept. The Navy is concerned with coordinated attacks to destroy enemies. The Coast Guard’s day-to-day mission involves putting boarding parties on vessels to perform regulatory inspections and counter-narcotics operations. Boarding teams require forces to anticipate and intercept threats in near real time. Developing the doctrine of how Deepwater applies in that context is a work in progress, Kelly said.

But even now, the Coast Guard is working out how post-9/11 requirements changes to Deepwater may affect the national fleet relationship. The change may bring more capable Coast Guard platforms to the table. For example, the design for the national security cutters’ on-board chemical, biological and radiological defensive systems have been enhanced, giving them likely roles overseas in coastal warfare and port and harbor defense.

Another example of change is the national security cutter’s lengthened flight deck, to accommodate the tail wheel-aft variant of the Sikorsky H60 helicopter, as flown by the Navy, the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Special Operations Command.