Deepwater looks for new partners as a means to restrain costs
By DAVID W. MUNNS, Assistant Editor
The Coast Guard is marketing versions of its future ships and aircraft to other governments as a means to attract foreign sales and thereby restrain the costs of its huge Integrated Deepwater System program.
The Coast Guard’s foreign military sales (FMS) program has been restructured as a unit of its Deepwater office, which is responsible for the $25 billion, 24-year Deepwater initiative to purchase dozens of vessels and aircraft along with the requisite intelligence, communications and weapon systems. Deepwater encompasses 25 350-foot Offshore Patrol Cutters, for example, and up to 36 medium-range search aircraft. The five classes of vessels and six types of aircraft to be purchased help make Deepwater the largest procurement program in Coast Guard history.
The principal task of the FMS unit is to create teaming efforts with foreign allies that will lead to the sale of versions of the ships and aircraft being designed and built for the Coast Guard.
Franchesca Kammerer, deputy chief of the Coast Guard’s International Programs Office, told Seapower that an underlying goal is to drive up the number of vessels and aircraft to be built and spread the program’s fixed costs over a larger number of production units. Some costs for design, tooling and administration are essentially static regardless of the number of units to be built, making larger production volumes a benefit to the Coast Guard.
In addition, the marketing effort should improve interoperability between the United States and its allies, which would operate the same ships and planes, Kammerer said.
Foreign sales also would bring an element of stability to Deepwater, which relies on incremental funding approved by Congress. For example, the Coast Guard, had issued a contract to purchase the 25-foot Small Response Boat but had to pause the production process while awaiting funding.
“Foreign orders keep the production line running,” Kammerer said.
Created in 1999, the Deepwater program has undergone a lengthy gestation accompanied by a complete restructuring in the aftermath of 9/11 and the cost increases typical of new weapon projects. The original estimate for the program was $17 billion.
To date, few new “platforms” have been fielded relative to the need and the cost of maintaining and operating the service’s fleet is rising rapidly. Top Coast Guard officials are focused on restraining costs and putting more new hulls in the water.
Adm. Thad Allen, Coast Guard commandant, told Seapower, “We need to be in what I would call ruthless execution right now, producing these ships and aircraft to be put into the hands of our people as fast as we can, at the best cost.”
To attract the interests of foreign governments, the Coast Guard sponsored regional partnership days in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate upcoming Deepwater technologies and foster international cooperation and interoperability between the United States and its allies.
The Deepwater FMS team conducted the meetings on four separate days in June to demonstrate how its future vessels and aircraft might benefit foreign naval fleets. Comprising a day of briefings and vessel demonstrations, the partnership days attracted representatives from 20 nations, including Canada, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Australia and Singapore.
The demonstrations involved two boats: the 25-foot Small Response Boat and a 33-foot Special Patrol Craft both built by SAFE Boats International of Port Orchard, Wash., and purchased separately from the Deepwater program.
Through Deepwater, the Coast Guard has installed command, control, communication, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) upgrades to 39 of its legacy cutters, including upgrades to the boats’ classified network access, use of an Automatic Identification System and increased bandwidth access. In addition, two communications stations have been built, one on each coast. But only eight Short Range Prosecutor boats are new to the fleet since Deepwater began.
Deepwater has converted eight of its old 110-foot cutters to 123-foot patrol boats and installed new engines in 42 HH-65C aircraft, some of which participated in Hurricane Katrina response operations, benefiting from their increased power, lift capability and time in flight.
However, the declining condition of the existing fleet continues to worry top Coast Guard officials. Some, such as Vice Adm. Vivian Crea, the former Atlantic commander who was recently named the service’s vice commandant, have said that engine failures aboard the fleet’s vessels and aircraft hampered the service’s ability to respond to some emergencies.
Rear Adm. Wayne Justice, director of the Enforcement and Incident Management Directorate, and Rear Adm. Joseph Nimmich, director of Maritime Domain Awareness, cautioned the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation in May that, “In the end, Coast Guard assets must be capable of mounting a dependable response to identified threats lest we have information but not the capability to act.”
Rear Adm. Gary T. Blore, Deepwater program executive officer, told Seapower that some current platforms soon will reach the end of their service lives and be taken offline, which potentially could reduce the service’s capabilities unless Deepwater assets are produced with sufficient speed and numbers to replace them.
Congress recently bolstered the service’s ability to increase the pace of Deepwater production by authorizing $1.6 billion for the program in 2006, a substantial increase over the 2005 level of $933 million. As of early July, Congress had not made a final decision on 2007 funding but appeared headed for approval of about $1.1 billion. Meanwhile, Blore pointed to several “critical areas” that the Coast Guard has “no ability to resolve” without near-term delivery of Deepwater assets.
Chiefly, the future National Security Cutter is vital to maintaining the service’s homeland security missions, he said. It will be the largest and most advanced cutter in the Coast Guard fleet, capable of meeting almost all of the service’s maritime needs, such as emergency disaster response and providing homeland security.
Currently, the Coast Guard uses aging high-endurance cutters for such broad missions, Blore said, with “worn subsystems” and a limited life expectancy.
“They’re starting to come offline,” he said, “and if we don’t have a National Security Cutter there is nothing out there to replace them.”
Speedy delivery of new maritime patrol aircraft and patrol boats is also seen as critical to the Coast Guard’s immediate needs. With the Navy’s impending reclaim of five coastal patrol ships at the end of 2008, Blore was emphatic that the Coast Guard have vessels to replace them to continue patrolling coastal waters to interdict drugs and illegal aliens. [See story on Page 28.]
In addition, the C4ISR systems to be deployed as part of Deepwater will vastly improve the service’s ability to gather and assess intelligence and communicate with its units and other federal agencies. The inability of “equipment to talk to other equipment” can be solved only under Deepwater, he said.
As Deepwater evolves, the Coast Guard will eventually have fewer, though more capable, capital assets, such as boats and aircraft, and “the only way you can make that system work is if they’re all connected,” Blore said.
