Need for Deepwater Rises as CG Workload Expands

By PATRICK M. STILLMAN

Recent world events have generated a steady increase in the Coast Guard's homeland security workload at a time when its operational tempo remains high in all traditional mission areas. It is therefore more critical than ever that the multi-mission service revamp its aging fleet of patrol boats, cutters, aircraft, and the systems that support them, in ways that are both efficient and effective.

Since the Coast Guard chose a contractor in June 2002 for its Integrated Deepwater System (IDS), the service's performance of high-priority missions in the areas of maritime homeland security, national defense, and search and rescue have become a central element of the nation's security safeguards. Following its realignment in March under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Coast Guard and the department's 21 other federal agencies have committed to fulfilling Secretary Tom Ridge's watchword of "one team, one fight" in protecting the security of the U.S. homeland.

As part of Operation Noble Eagle to defend the U.S. homeland, the Coast Guard remains at a heightened state of alert, protecting more than 361 ports and 95,000 miles of coastline. In the global war on terrorism, Coast Guard patrol boats, cutters, port security units, and other personnel deployed overseas during 2003 to join coalition naval forces in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. On an average day during 2003, Coast Guard crews also conducted 109 search-and-rescue cases, saved 10 lives, and assisted 192 people in distress.

Multimission Demands Growing

In addition, the Coast Guard's other traditional roles--including maritime safety, marine environmental protection, and the enforcement of international fisheries agreements--remain critically important to the future well-being of the maritime domain, the nation's economy, and the quality of life for future generations of Americans.

The Coast Guard's air and surface units conduct regular patrols of areas closed to fishing. In May, for example, a Coast Guard HC-130H long-range patrol aircraft sighted a vessel fishing inside a closed area off the Washington coast. A special agent assigned to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration later seized more than 18,500 pounds of fish based on the aircraft's sighting.

The Coast Guard's workload may well expand further. During a summit in Evian, France, ending 2 June, the leaders of the Group of Eight (G-8) nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) issued an action plan calling for more active measures to improve marine conservation, sustainable fisheries, tanker safety, and pollution prevention. The G-8 action plan will assuredly have important law-enforcement implications for the Coast Guard in light of its military, maritime, and multimission responsibilities.

The greatest jeopardy to the Coast Guard's future operational excellence and ability to perform its many responsibilities is its increasingly obsolete inventory of surface and air platforms. Adm. Thomas H. Collins, commandant of the Coast Guard, testified to Congress this year that if the Coast Guard is to meet the nation's future maritime needs, its aging assets, support systems, and infrastructure must be recapitalized with a due sense of urgency.

Simply stated, the Coast Guard's legacy inventory of aircraft and cutters is no longer equal to the tasks at hand. At a time when mission requirements are growing, the Coast Guard faces block obsolescence in all its capital assets by the end of this decade. Antiquated platforms--some dating to the early years of World War II--are expensive to operate, difficult to repair, and increasingly unreliable.

Maintenance costs for legacy cutters have increased 30 percent to 110 percent since 1998. Fully 22 of 49 110-foot Island-class patrol boats have experienced significant hull degradation--including 17 hull breaches since fiscal year 2001 that required more than $11 million in emergency repairs and each hull's removal from service for three months, on average.

Fortunately, with strong support from the Bush administration and bipartisan congressional backing, the Integrated Deepwater System (IDS)--the Coast Guard's highest capital priority--is moving forward smartly to transform the capabilities of the nation's sentinels of the sea in nearly all of its mission sets.

Outpacing the Rate of Change

Retired Navy Vice Adm. Arthur K. Cebrowski, director of the Department of Defense's Office of Force Transformation, maintains that the United States must outpace the rate of change of current and potential adversaries. In his view, warfighting attributes must be re-evaluated based on their "information fraction"--the ability to access and contribute to larger information networks, the speed of command, and situational awareness.

Judged against that criteria, the multiyear Deepwater program promises to transform the Coast Guard's operational capabilities in several important ways. IDS encompasses the progressive upgrading or replacement of the Coast Guard's patrol boats, fixed-wing aircraft, and helicopters; the introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and three new classes of cutters and their associated small boats; and the development of improved systems for integrated logistics and C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance).

Deepwater's network-centric system of C4ISR is critical for effective accomplishment of all Coast Guard missions. It also will improve maritime domain awareness by providing more capable sensors to collect information, along with the means to disseminate it.

Armed with more accurate and timely information, intelligence, and knowledge about relevant maritime events, Coast Guard commanders will have access to a common operational picture, enabling them to manage risk more prudently and deploy assets where they can be used most productively.

Deepwater's more effective and more technically capable air and surface platforms will be designed for increased endurance and range, better sea-keeping, and ease of maintenance. These attributes translate into added capacity and greater presence. The IDS combination of manned aircraft and unmanned aerial platforms, for example, will deliver 80 percent more flight hours than today's legacy inventory of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.

Deepwater's Integrated Logistics System (ILS) will, in many ways, provide the solid foundation needed to support this extraordinary transformation of the Coast Guard's operational capabilities. The integration of ILS performance specifications across air, surface, and C4ISR domains will help drive platform designs while the Coast Guard considers such factors as optimal crewing, supportability, maintainability, reliability, and total ownership costs--ultimately leading to ease of maintenance, higher operational readiness, improved safety, and lower operating expenses.

Transforming Acquisition

Each of the IDS domains--surface, air, C4ISR, and logistics--has advanced during the past year in pursuit of Deepwater's overarching goal: to deliver the greatest operational effectiveness while minimizing total ownership costs. A secondary benefit of Deepwater is its transformation of the procurement process through a "system-of-systems" acquisition strategy that is uniquely crafted for a recapitalization program of extraordinary breadth. Unlike past Coast Guard procurement programs, Deepwater will not replace assets on a one-for-one basis. As an alternative, the IDS acquisition strategy calls for the delivery of an entire system of interoperable platforms and supporting systems designed to meet performance-based requirements, to maximize operational effectiveness, and to minimize total ownership costs.

As the IDS Mission Need Statement makes clear, "The goal of this effort is not to replace ships, aircraft, and sensors with more ships, aircraft, and sensors, but to provide the Coast Guard with the functional capabilities required to achieve mission success safely."

Cost is treated as an independent variable in the IDS acquisition program. This approach is essential if the Coast Guard is to remain within currently planned annual expenditures of $500 million (in fiscal year 1998 dollars adjusted for inflation) over the life of the program. Our industrial partner, Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), the joint venture formed by Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, is being encouraged to leverage its innovation and state-of-the market technologies to achieve the Coast Guard's systemwide capabilities requirements. Commercially available "state-of-the-market" and nondevelopmental items will be the basic building blocks for Deepwater's assets and components.

Teaming and Partnering

Partnerships are another key aspect of the Deepwater program. The Coast Guard and the Navy have agreed to a memorandum of understanding and the creation of a joint working group to address many issues of mutual interest. Tasked to achieve close collaboration and cooperation, the group will ensure that each service works to specify common technologies, systems, and processes critical to both the Navy's future Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and the design and development of Deepwater's new National Security Cutter, Offshore Patrol Cutter, patrol boats, and C4ISR system. LCS and Deepwater offer a number of transformation points where Navy and Coast Guard operational requirements overlap.

The Coast Guard stands on the threshold of a new era in its 213-year history. The Integrated Deepwater System's platforms and systems promise to transform performance capabilities to sustain the Coast Guard's operational excellence well into the 21st century. Deepwater also will serve as an appealing model for a system-of-systems and performance-based acquisition strategy well suited to the nation's future security and defense needs. n

Rear Adm. Patrick M. Stillman is the program executive officer for the Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater System.

Deepwater Details

The Integrated Deepwater System, the largest acquisition in the Coast Guard's history, comprises an array of new platforms and systems to be purchased at an estimated cost of $17 billion over 20 years. These numbers, from a Coast Guard report to Congress, are subject to change as the program develops.

* Three classes of new cutters, including eight 425-foot National Security Cutters; six 321-foot Offshore Patrol Cutters; and an undetermined number of 130-foot Fast Response Cutters.

* Associated small boats, including 63 Short-Range Prosecutors and 14 Long-Range Interceptors, which have a maximum speed of 45 knots.

* New fleet of fixed-wing aircraft, including 35 HC-235 Maritime Patrol Aircraft to be built by EADS CASA.

* New and upgraded helicopters, including 10 AB-139 VTOL Vertical Recovery and Surveillance Vehicles to be built by Bell-Augusta; and upgrades of 93 Multimission Cutter Helicopters now in the fleet.

* Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) based aboard cutters and on land. These include 53 Bell HV-911 Eagle Eye vehicles and an undetermined number of high-altitude UAVs.

* All assets linked via command, control, communications and computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems.

* Integrated logistics system.

Congressional Action Encourages Deepwater Acceleration

By RICHARD R. BURGESS
Managing Editor

The Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater System program received a significant vote of confidence on 11 July 2003 with the approval by the House Appropriations Committee of $702 million for the program, endorsing the efforts of Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), chair of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries, and Coast Guard to increase funding for Deepwater in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2004 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill.

Snowe--an advocate of accelerating the Deepwater program--pointed out that the bill's funding level--a substantial increase over the $500 million proposed by the Bush administration--"will not accelerate the program but will rectify the current funding shortfall and get the program back on track." Working with Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), Snowe--who has inserted a manager's amendment in the FY 2004 Coast Guard reauthorization bill that included acceleration of the Deepwater program--has built a coalition of 22 senators to support this increase in Deepwater funding.

The increased emphasis in Congress on homeland security--in view of the demonstrated and latent terrorist threats against the United States--has generated substantial interest in Congress for accelerating the timetable for the Deepwater System while saving several billion dollars.

Under the present plan, Deepwater's aircraft, ships, and sensors would be purchased over 20 years at an estimated cost of approximately $17 billion. If the schedule is accelerated to 10 years, however, the cost would be reduced by more than $4 billion, for a reduction of 29 percent. Much of the savings would be derived by spreading overhead costs over a larger number of units built each year. Significant savings also would be realized with early retirement of legacy systems, and the savings could be devoted to funding replacement systems. For example, the HH-60J helicopters and the Famous-class medium-endurance cutters would require service-life extension programs (SLEPs) under the 20-year plan. Acceleration of Deepwater would negate the need for the extensions and free up more funds for new procurement.

A disadvantage of acceleration is that annual funding for Deepwater would be doubled through 2012. Thereafter, funding would be substantially less each year relative to current estimates.

These figures are contained in the Coast Guard's 10 March Report to Congress on the Feasibility of Accelerating the Integrated Deepwater System. Required by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the report asserts that accelerating Deepwater would provide "significantly increased operational capability sooner to support Maritime Homeland Security." The Coast Guard quantified the additional capability in terms of "943,000 additional (and more capable) mission hours" over 20 years in support of maritime homeland security and other Coast Guard missions. The report was provided to Snowe and to the House authorizing committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

The Coast Guard concluded that accelerated procurement of three concurrent classes of new cutters--the part of the program with the greatest impact on the nation's industrial base--would not overly stress the nation's shipbuilding industrial capacity.

Temporary workforce increases would be required, the Coast Guard determined, "to meet training and crew requirements associated with the accelerated plan." The service indicated a preference for outsourcing--which is used successfully to satisfy present workforce surge requirements--to meet the demand.

Accelerating the implementation of Deepwater's network-centric C4ISR architecture will enhance homeland security sooner with the establishment of a layered defense, as well as by improving interoperability with the other U.S. armed services and other homeland security agencies. Readiness also would be enhanced by arresting and then eliminating the increasing maintenance costs associated with retaining older ships and aircraft.

The Coast Guard expects that the acceleration would increase its ability to provide greater homeland security and to respond to other core missions. Since 9/11, the service has had to commit so many assets to homeland security that its ability to cover its other mission areas--such as search and rescue, immigrant interdiction, and drug interdiction--has been under severe strain.

Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), chairman of the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is leading the effort in the House to accelerate Deepwater funding, citing the long-range savings to taxpayers and the advantages to Coast Guard modernization of halving the program timeline.

The House FY 2004 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill provides $530 million for the Deepwater program, $172 million less than authorized by the House and insufficient to make up for past and current shortfalls in the program and to keep it on track. Appropriations and authorizations bills are considered separately in Congress.

LoBiondo offered, but later withdrew, an amendment that would have increased funding for the Coast Guard by $110 million, including $75 million to get Deepwater back on track. LoBiondo continues to push for additional FY 2004 funding and has asked the Department of Homeland Security to request $1.89 billion for FY 2005 to fund Deepwater development and procurement, according to his press secretary, Rob Geist.

James Carafano, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, sees the $530 million in the House Homeland Security Appropriations Bill as a positive sign of support in Congress for robust funding of Deepwater, and he believes the Coast Guard report helped "a good deal" in making the case for acceleration. He pointed out that the Coast Guard's research and development budget is insufficient to support rigorous exploration of technologies that could improve the options for Deepwater systems, and that there "probably are ways to do Deepwater smarter."

Carafano urged the Congress and Coast Guard to "meter the pace" of the Deepwater program--which was planned before 9/11--to incorporate new technologies that could offer more capability at lower cost. *