A friend of the blog, Leesea, recently pointed me to the recent update of the “National Fleet Plan,” which, despite its name, does not really talk about the entire US Fleet. It is really about the Coast Guard, and how it and the Navy will cooperate to “identify additional opportunities for increased commonality and interoperability.”

You can find it in the form of a pdf here.

I have reproduced the table of contents below. Mostly, it is what you would expect and/or hope would be included. There are potential areas of cooperation, current situation, where they hope to progress, and identification of responsible offices.

It really did not get interesting to me until it started talking about the Offshore Patrol Cutter (page 22-24 particularly).

There was one particular section that I thought might be of interest, the “Strategic Laydown” (page 54), which concerns sharing facilities, including ship homeports, with the Navy.

Plan of Action and Milestones
– Fiscal Year 2015: Process Organizational Change Request (OCR) for Coast Guard System Acquisition Integration Laboratory (CGSAIL) relocation to Navy Combat Systems Engineering Development Site (CSEDS).

– Fiscal Year 2015: Submit revised Strategic Laydown (SLD) request and OCR to homeport 3 X FRCs at Naval Base Guam to include Lessons Learned from maturing CG-7/OPNAV N51 MOA.

– Fiscal Year 2015: Process Organization Change Request to homeport 3 X Medium Endurance Cutters at Naval Station Pensacola.

– Continue to develop solutions to permanently station aviation assets at Naval Base Ventura County.

– Support feasibility studies to identify potential homeport locations for West Coast Offshore Patrol Cutters

I am planning on two follow-up posts, one about what they had to say about the OPC and one about the implications of homeporting Coast Guard ships at Navy Bases.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Section Page No.

1.  Preamble …………………………………………………. 9
2.  Purpose ………………………………………………….. 9
3.  National Fleet Plan Overview ……………………………….. 9
4.  Plan Progression and Oversight……………………………………………………… 10
5.  National Fleet Plan…………………………………………..………………………… 10
5.1.  Current and Evolving Operations……………………………10
5.2.  Integrated Logistics………………………………………….……………..……….. 12
5.3.  Training……………………………………………………………..………………… 15
5.4.  Maritime Security Cooperation…………………….……………………..………… 21
5.5.  Command, Control, Communications (C3) Systems……………….….………… 22
5.6.  Sensors………………………………………………………………………………… 25
5.7.  Weapon Systems…………………………………………………….……….……… 26
5.8.  Engineering Systems……………………………………………………….………… 28
5.9.  Platforms………………………………………………………………….…………… 29
5.10. Intelligence and Information Integration …………………. 34
6.  Programmatic Collaboration…………………………………………………………… 36
7.  Integrated Plan of Action and Milestones…………………………………..…….….. 36
8.  Navy-Coast Guard Memoranda of Understanding/Memoranda of Agreement…… 44
9.  Legal Authorities ……………………………………………….………………… 48
Chartered Commonality Working Groups:  Mission/Plan of Action and Milestones
Appendix A.  Permanent Joint Working Group…………………………………………… 50
Appendix B.  Small Boat Commonality Integrated Process Team …….. 51
Appendix C.  Naval Logistics Integration………………………………………………..… 52
Appendix D.  SSBN Transit Protection Systems…………………………………………. 53
Appendix E.  Strategic Laydown Working Group………………………………………… 54
Appendix F.  Arctic Working Group ……………………………….55
Appendix G.  Maritime Security Cooperation Council ………………… 56
Glossary……………………………………………………………………………………… 57