CLARIFICATION

Due to an editing change, the article, "Building a Foundation for Future Readiness," in the May issue of Sea Power describes the Coast Guard's Deepwater program as a 30-year effort to upgrade the service's hardware. Deepwater is planned for completion in 20 years with contract options that could extend the program to 30 years.

The Deepwater Integrated Logistics System: Building a Foundation for Future Readiness

By DAVID REGAN and RUSSELL BAUER

During the past year, the Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater System (IDS) recapitalization program has steadily gained momentum and a heightened sense of urgency. The compelling need to recapitalize and transform the Coast Guard's operational forces also has assumed greater clarity in light of the service's growing responsibilities under the Bush administration's new national-defense and homeland-security strategies. Deepwater will bring important new capabilities to the Coast Guard's maritime homeland-security, national-security, and other mission sets.

As Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thomas H. Collins said in testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation on 13 March, full funding of the Deepwater program is "imperative," in his view, because of the need to expand the Coast Guard's current levels of operational capacity and to increase the service's range of capabilities required immediately for homeland security and other missions.

Deepwater is a 30-year, $17-billion effort to vastly upgrade and expand the Coast Guard's current resources and capabilities. It encompasses three new classes of cutters and their associated small boats, a new fixed-wing manned-aircraft fleet, a combination of both new and upgraded helicopters, and both cutter-based and land-based unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). All of these highly capable assets will be linked with new C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems, and will be supported by an integrated logistics regime that will transform the Coast Guard's ability to serve as the nation's maritime guardian and "sentinel of the sea."

Deepwater's Integrated Logistics System (ILS), which is being designed in tandem with the development of the Deepwater ships and aircraft, will in many ways provide the solid foundation needed to support this extraordinary transformation of the Coast Guard's operational capabilities. Collectively, the numerous components of this evolutionary project will lead to near-revolutionary improvements in the Coast Guard's ability to provide totally integrated logistics support for the entire Deepwater system and its individual platforms. The Deepwater ILS, designed to interface with the Coast Guard's current logistics infrastructure, will ensure that all Deepwater platforms are not only ready on arrival, but remain so during their operational assignments.

"Real transformation requires, from all of us, new ways of thinking as well as new strategies for success--built around capabilities, rather than threats--and the courage and willingness to address them," Collins said. The ILS team has incorporated this philosophy in its work to design and implement a system that, in the words of Collins, will "... link operational assets with their support lifelines."

Deepwater's program executive officer, Rear Adm. Patrick M. Stillman, describes integrated logistics as one of Deepwater's key transformational attributes. "ILS places logisticians at the heart of the acquisition process," he said, "by ensuring that our platforms will be designed to be reliable, maintainable, flexible, and supportable--with optimum manning levels. Conceptually and practically, we must change our approach to logistics if we are to achieve the reductions necessary in total life-cycle costs."

In addition to its significant potential to increase productivity, Deepwater's ILS linkage to the operator will enable the Coast Guard to achieve higher levels of reliability and maintainability--leading in turn to increased operational readiness, lower total ownership costs, more cost-effective stewardship of Deepwater assets, and markedly improved working conditions for operators in the field. Operational excellence is not simply a factor of bringing new assets with improved capabilities on line--it also entails the ability to operate, maintain, and support those assets at high levels of readiness and to reduce total ownership costs.

It is not hard to envision tomorrow's Coast Guard relating to Deepwater's system for integrated logistics in a manner similar to what Adm. Ernest J. King said during the early years of World War II: "I don't know what the hell this 'logistics' is that Marshall [Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall] is always talking about, but I want some of it!"

Performance-Based Requirements

In Coast Guard parlance, logistics is a generic term encompassing all those support activities associated with developing, acquiring, testing, and sustaining the mission effectiveness of operating assets through their service lives--with the overall objective of providing "the right persons, things, and information" at the right time, in the right place, and at reasonable cost.

Since the award of the IDS contract last June, the Deepwater program's ILS staff has established a solid partnership with its industry counterparts at Integrated Coast Guard System (ICGS)--a Northrop Grumman/Lockheed Martin joint venture--to begin the formidable task of designing, developing, and deploying a logistics system that will be, for the Coast Guard, of unparalleled scope and breadth. The logistics system envisioned will use a requirements-driven and performance-based approach to integrate the processes and support capabilities needed to improve operational effectiveness and reduce total ownership costs in each of the principal IDS program areas: air, surface, and C4ISR.

Deepwater's Integrated Logistics System is following the overall IDS strategy for performance-based acquisition by incorporating logistics performance specifications across the entire IDS system of new or modified assets. The commonality of equipment, processes, and information systems--and their availability through the use of, for example, commercial-off-the-shelf products and services--will be emphasized in the design phase.
More specifically, ILS performance-based specifications are being tailored to satisfy the following requirements:

* Integrate industry and government support to improve operational effectiveness;
* Achieve a higher level of readiness by integrating logistic support into asset design and post-delivery support;
* Establish higher-level "key performance parameters" (fulfilled primarily through asset design and post-delivery support);
* "Incentivize" performance to meet and exceed goals;
* Tailor and evolve goals to meet operational requirements;
* Establish a public-private partnership so that day-to-day data and performance- monitoring facilitate and support strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making;
* Develop common standards for organic Coast Guard and contractor support; and
* "Flow down" performance requirements in subcontracts and ensure accountability.

Metrics and other performance parameters will allow the ILS team to assess the program's progress in achieving these outcomes.

The wide scope of ILS improvements will cover, among other things, maintenance planning, manpower and personnel, supply support, support and test equipment, technical manuals, training and training devices, computer support, and facilities, as well as packaging, handling, storage, and transportation. All will be made possible through a robust interface between logistics requirements and the asset-design process.

A Focus on the Operator

The ILS maintenance philosophy has an overarching goal of maximizing the availability of mission-critical equipment so that the Coast Guard spends more time performing operational missions and less time on repairs and maintenance.

ILS improvements also will leverage the use of technology through the increased use of automation to reduce operator workload and training requirements, and to permit condition-based maintenance. An Integrated Support System (ISS) also will be designed based on best-business processes and performance-based logistics principles.

ICGS is making every effort to reduce the most significant contributor to total life-cycle costs--crew manning requirements--by leveraging ILS with the Coast Guard's own cutter-crewing analysis, human-centered design principles, and the lessons learned from the Coast Guard's previous experiences in Department of Defense acquisition programs.

Government and contractor support will be integrated to deliver best performance at best value, in a way that will be largely invisible to Coast Guard men and women. Deepwater's coincident design and development both of physical assets and of the logistics system needed to support those assets will enable a higher degree of integration and supportability than was possible in previous acquisition programs.

ILS will obtain active, full, and continuing fleet customer participation and satisfaction in its design, development, and deployment phases. Deepwater's Integrated Logistics System is, first and foremost, focused on the operator.

Build a Little, Learn a Lot

Deepwater's ILS is being designed in concert with other Coast Guard logistics initiatives to remedy existing systemic deficiencies.

ILS will focus particularly on such areas as systems integration and management, life-cycle engineering, systems architecture, facility-impact coordination, and a multiyear business process review (BPR).
The BPR's three stages--process discovery, investigation, and reengineering--will encompass the areas of supply, maintenance, technical data, platform configuration, personnel, and information systems. The ongoing process-discovery stage, based heavily on input from fleet operators and other stakeholders, will lead to the definition of system requirements and the mapping and description of today's "as-is" processes. This initial stage of the ILS BPR will be followed by a careful investigation of the results of the process-discovery effort and will include benchmarking with "world-class" logistics enterprises, the documentation of best business practices, and the development of a business-case analysis.

The BPR's final reengineering stage will lead to such critical outputs as integrated systems, the validation of existing processes as benchmarks, redesigned processes, and the use of best business practices. Throughout the BPR's three stages, the focus will be on the end user--the operators--and on desired outcomes. The Coast Guard's goal is to take the "logistics monkey" off the back of the deckplate work force so that Coast Guard people do not have to work as hard in the future to maintain the readiness of the service's platforms and systems.

The ILS BPR will lead to the reengineering of the Coast Guard's future business processes with a focus on mission capability, integrated support, multi-echelon sparing for parts and consumables, and smooth blending with the service's legacy platforms. Throughout the BPR's iterative process, the goal will be to build a little, test a little, field a little, and learn a lot!

Network-Centric Logistics

Beginning with this year's conversion of the first of 49 Island-class 110-foot patrol boats to a 123-foot vessel, new ILS support programs and processes will be implemented incrementally as upgraded or new Deepwater assets become operationally available. The upgraded 123s, followed by Deepwater's maritime patrol aircraft, will serve as springboards in developing improved ILS support for future platforms in the air, surface, and C4ISR domains.

Looking ahead, the fully deployed ILS will be in place to support Deepwater's three new classes of cutters (National Security Cutters, Offshore Patrol Cutters, and Fast Response Cutters) and the service's new manned and unmanned aerial platforms as they enter service beginning in 2006.

Several organizational constructs frame ILS program management. Foremost among them is an Integrated Product Data Environment (IPDE) information system, which will provide a single database for program performance and metrics. Evolving technical design information on each of Deepwater's assets is retained in the IPDE, as well as the processes needed to support IDS product teams.

A number of functional Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) have been (or will be) formed to ensure ILS involvement in all aspects of the Deepwater program--from a system-level perspective down to the detailed design work required in each domain.

A new Logistics Information Management System (LIMS) will automatically collect and process logistics data to project support requirements and trends. It is envisioned that LIMS eventually will provide instant readiness assessments to operational commanders. LIMS will be fielded by early autumn in anticipation of the delivery, in November, of the first IDS 123-foot converted patrol boat.

Similar ILS innovations will be evident in the program's approach to human-centered design (HCD) principles--which are based on the allocation of requirements to personnel and accurate documentation of personnel workloads. Thanks to its ability to provide the right information to the right people at the right time, LIMS will facilitate the software applications necessary to make Deepwater's vision of network-centric logistics a reality.

The Readiness Equation

Looking ahead, the fully implemented Integrated Logistics System offers the potential to achieve significant savings in the Coast Guard's annual OE (operating expenses) budget for Deepwater assets through the combination of automation, improved reliability and supportability, easier maintainability, and performance-based logistics.

Deepwater assets will have reliability designed into them from their inception. Logistics requirements will be assessed during design trade-offs, single-point failures will be reduced, state-of-the-market technology based on proven performance will be introduced, and a continuing-improvement program will generate future performance increases. Similarly, IDS products will be designed for improved maintainability through concurrent engineering, a "remove-and-replace" concept for components and modules, and the simplification of repair tasks.

Coast Guard personnel at all levels of command look forward to the day when cutter and aircraft crews will have maintenance-support technologies in place to permit step-by-step computer-generated instructions, augmented by 24-hour expert assistance available through "one-touch" remote support services, and other world-class assistance.

A focus on potential ILS cost savings alone, however, would be misleading because it represents only one side of the readiness equation. Increased reliability and improved supportability also translate into increased readiness for the operator because they provide more "up time" for air and surface platforms. When the time needed for maintenance and repairs goes down, there is additional time available to spend on operations and on mission training. Easier and lower-cost maintainability also will improve readiness trends as the actual time needed to complete maintenance or repairs is decreased.

Because the Deepwater Integrated Logistics System will be phased in incrementally during the years ahead, the total sum of its benefits may not be immediately apparent. They will accrue progressively, and massively, as the full spectrum of upgraded or new Deepwater air and surface assets, and C4ISR systems, enters service. Achievement of this long-term goal of the program, though, will require a degree of trust, some acceptance of risk, and an early investment of additional funding if ILS is to be implemented properly and realize its full potential.

But, recalling Admiral King's stated intention to acquire the modern logistics capabilities needed to support far-flung naval forces during an earlier conflict in American history, the Deepwater ILS team has every confidence that its integrated and performance-based approach to logistics support will generate similar enthusiasm in the Coast Guard of tomorrow. *

Capt. David Regan, USCG, is the Integrated Deepwater System's project manager for the Integrated Logistics System. Russell Bauer is the Integrated Coast Guard System's ILS associate project manager.