Cyclone Ships May Find New Life in War on Terrorism

By PATRICIA KIME

They were built to be stealthy and quick, carrying loads of small arms to perform as corvettes for Navy SEAL teams and other special forces.

But almost as soon as the first Navy 170-foot Cyclone-class coastal patrol ship was commissioned in 1993, the class was condemned as too bulky for commando missions and too small for the regular surface Navy. So the service quietly made plans to decommission them, sending one to the cash-strapped Coast Guard, which could not afford to operate it, and deciding to unload the others while using them as training platforms for junior officers and Sailors.

That was before 11 September 2001 and the ensuing war with Iraq.

During the events of the past two years, the patrol ships have been pressed into service for homeland security patrols and maritime interdiction operations. As an asset that bridges a gap between large Navy ships and small Coast Guard cutters and patrol boats, the $23 million vessels may have found their niche, and possibly a second chance at remaining commissioned U.S. combatants.

"They've got great gear on board, and they're very fast," said Cdr. Mike Bradley, a program manager for the Coast Guard's Atlantic Area in Portsmouth, Va.

Originally built to move special forces stealthily along shores, up rivers, and into enemy territory, the ships' requirements expanded during their design phase, and they grew to be between 170 and 179 feet in length with displacement ranging from 360 to 400 tons for those equipped with a stern-launch ramp.

But they turned out to be not what Special Operations Command (SOCOM) at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., wanted. So as early as 1998, the Navy and SOCOM began exploring options to dispose of them.

USS Cyclone was commissioned in 1993; the USS Tornado, the 14th and last ship in the class, was commissioned in early 2000.

The Navy experimented with turning the ships over to the Coast Guard. In 1998, the USS Thunderbolt was temporarily transferred to the coastal service for a six-month operational evaluation. In February 2000, the Cyclone was decommissioned and presented to the Coast Guard, but it sat tied up alongside a pier at the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Md. It was one of the newest ships in the Coast Guard inventory, but no funding was available to operate it.

SOCOM had hoped to turn all the patrol ships over to the Coast Guard, but with the 37th oldest fleet of 39 similar navies worldwide, the Coast Guard couldn't afford them. A decision was made to offer them elsewhere.

"This was a budgetary consideration," Joint Special Operations Command spokesman George Grimes told Navy Times in 2001, shortly before 11 September.

The devastating terrorist attacks changed all that.

As the primary agency for maritime homeland security, the Coast Guard was short of assets to patrol the nation's shores. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark immediately offered several patrol ships to the Coast Guard, and the services signed an agreement whereby the Navy would pay for maintenance and operations and the vessels would operate under tactical control of the Coast Guard.

The deal was deemed a "win-win-win," for all involved, said Coast Guard Atlantic Area spokesman Lt. Cdr. Brendan McPherson shortly after it was signed.

"The Navy benefits because it can still use these ships; the Coast Guard benefits because it will have tactical control of additional vessels for homeland security; and the public wins because they provide protection of the homeland," McPherson said in November 2001.

Under the arrangement, five or six of the 13 active patrol ships were to operate under the Coast Guard's tactical control at any given time. Four were homeported at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Norfolk, Va., and two worked out of Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, Calif.

While conducting homeland security patrol, the ships participate in vessel escort operations, ship boardings, and security zone patrols around naval ships, military loading operations, and critical infrastructure such as oil refineries and natural gas platforms.

When the United States elevates its terrorist threat assessment level to "orange," as has happened three times since the system was instituted, the Navy-Coast Guard patrol ships respond by increasing their patrol time. "As the threat changes, their missions change," said Cdr. J.J. Fisher in the Office of Cutter Forces at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "They increase their preventive actions."

The patrol ships' success as homeland security platforms won them a brief reprieve, but the Navy continued to express interest in disposing of them. In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in August 2002, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England said he was ready to let them go "with the expectation" they be used for homeland security elsewhere, according to Inside the Navy.

Then the war with Iraq provided another way for the Cyclone-class ships to prove their utility in the U.S. fleet.

In January 2003, the class that seemed destined never to see combat sent two of its ships to a war zone. The USS Chinook and USS Firebolt left to take part in maritime interception operations in the Persian Gulf.

On the eve of the war, the ships' crews found themselves watching "a mass exodus" from Iraq and keeping an eye on suspicious vessels in the Khawr Abd Allah waterway near Umm Qasr, said Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Two Jeffrey Lusk, assistant officer in charge of Law Enforcement Detachment 205, who was on board the Chinook during the time. "It just unfolded kind of quickly, and we put this team together to stop the flow of boats," Lusk said.

The Chinook and Firebolt crews worked with Coast Guard teams and the Australian tank landing ship HMAS Kanimbla. Their combat successes included discovering a huge weapons stash hidden in the coastal caves in southern Iraq and finding a barge loaded with deadly mines, ready to drop its deadly munitions into well-traveled waterways.

Lusk described the Chinook as the "perfect platform" in the relatively calm waters of the Persian Gulf. "The most exciting part was getting off the boat and walking on Iraqi soil," he said. "Getting off and touching the soil of another country for operations isn't something we usually do; normally we try to keep our feet wet."

The Chinook and Firebolt remain in the Persian Gulf theater of operations at the request of U.S. Central Command.

"It's a great ship," said Naval Sea Systems Command project engineer Clayton Shepherd during an interview in June. "Big isn't always beautiful. Precision is beautiful."

Current plans call for the patrol ships to stay in Navy service until October 2004. But their success in the Middle East is causing Navy officials to reconsider selling eight to friendly foreign nations.

The Navy and Coast Guard are working to ensure that a minimum of five, if not all 13, remain commissioned in at least one of their services. The Coast Guard considers the five patrol ships that are configured with a stern-launch ramp--the USS Tempest, USS Monsoon, USS Zephyr, USS Shamal, and USS Tornado--to be the most desirable for the service. But if funding were available, the Coast Guard would not turn down an offer of the additional eight, say Coast Guard officials.

"They certainly give us some bench strength, allowing us to ...put more people out there," said Fisher, of the service's Office of Cutter Forces.

Under the agreement being discussed, the five patrol ships with stern-launch ramps would be commissioned as Coast Guard cutters and manned by Coast Guardsmen. The Navy would contribute $10 million--$2 million each per year--toward maintenance of the five vessels through fiscal year 2008. The remaining eight were slated for foreign military sales to the Philippines, Colombia, and Egypt (the Philippines purchased the Cyclone and took ownership of it in March 2003), but at the time of publication, this agreement seemed tenuous.

According to a source close to the negotiations, Clark and Coast Guard Commandant Thomas H. Collins met 23 June to discuss the possibility of transferring all 13 ships to the Coast Guard. "It's a subject that's constantly being reviewed," said Coast Guard Cdr. John Fitzgerald, a spokesman for Collins. "The numbers are still flexible."

The Coast Guard sees the vessels as filling a vital niche until the service's next generation of cutters is commissioned under its $17 billion, 20-year Deepwater recapitalization project. "Our future is the Integrated Deepwater System, and the patrol ships represent a bridge to get us there," Fisher said.

If the Coast Guard acquires the Cyclone ships, they would be the service's second youngest class of cutters, next to the Coast Guard's new 87-foot Marine Protector-class patrol boats for operations close to shore.

Coast Guard crews have proudly called the patrol ships "110s on steroids," and those who serve on them remain fiercely devoted to these "little ships that could."

"I only regret that I'm too senior to command one," quipped Coast Guard Cdr. Bob Wagner of the service's Office of Programs in Washington, D.C. *

Patricia Kime is a Washington correspondent.