Eaglespeak has posted comments and the full text of Admiral Papp’s prepared remarks presented before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, hearing on: “Defending U.S. Economic Interests in the Changing Arctic:Is There a Strategy?” Wednesday Jul 27, 2011.

If you read the postings here regularly, probably there will be nothing surprising in the remarks, but it is a good summary. I notice again the Commandant referring to “ice-capable” vessels rather than simply icebreakers, which leads me to be to believe the Coast Guard may be considering a class of ice-strengthened vessels or small icebreakers rather than limiting consideration to full size polar breakers.

Perhaps the big news is that the “high latitude study” was presented to Congress. “You now have in hand our recently completed high latitude study.” The Coast Guard has gotten a lot of flak because of delays in presenting this, as well as other reports. I haven’t been able to find a copy of it yet, but it ought to be interesting.

“Cdr. Salamander” commented on an interesting development. It seems that America’s most prominent ship designers are offering the Navy a conceptual design for a diesel powered “light frigate” that is not too far off the proposed specs for the Offshore Patrol Cutter. (Note: The illustration appears to be an early artist concept of the Australian DDG rather than of the proposed light frigate for which the design has not been made public.)

The post is based on a San Diego Union Tribune article posted on signonsandiego.com written by Gary Robbins,

“Rick Biben, the company’s president and chief executive, said Wednesday, “We are not competing with any existing design. We’re looking at what the Navy might need in the future, and we’re working to expand our portfolio of ships.”

“Biben stressed that light frigate is not meant to be a competitor to the troubled LCS. Earlier this year, Freedom experienced a crack in its hull, alarming members of Congress. More recently, the Independence was reported to have “aggressive” corrosion in and around its propulsion system.

“The problems led a bipartisan group of six U.S. senators to ask for a formal review of LCS. And Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, has suggested that it might be smart to rebid some LCS contracts because the ships will cost at least twice as much as originally planned.

“Eric Midboe, vice program of program management at Gibbs & Cox, said Wednesday that the light frigate would be a “conventional, shock-hardened ship” whose hull would be similar to those seen on modern Coast Guard frigates.”

While this may not be intended to “compete with any existing design,” it is pretty obvious not everyone is happy with the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program, and they may be thinking that when a new generation of Navy leadership takes over, they may be looking for alternatives.

From the CG perspective, if the Navy does decide to build something like this, it looks interesting because a lightly armed version is close to the OPC concept. Combining CG and Navy programs could result in significant economies of scale with a buy of 66 or more ships. (See Related: My Grand Plan Navy and CG Work Together ) There would be training and logistical advantages. The Cutters could be made readily adaptable to credible war time roles providing additional justification.

There have been several articles recently that argue for the new generation of Coast Guard assets, particularly the new ships, here, here, and here. None of them seem very confident that these assets are coming. The Coast Guard does seem to be “swimming up stream” trying to increase its AC&I budget, while the government as a whole is trying to cut funding.

Ryan Erickson at http://1790.us/ found perhaps the best in an article about how conventional thinking on acquisition backfires resulting in higher unit costs, “How to-Make USCG Modernization Unaffordable,” by former Thirteenth District Commander, Rear Admiral Jeffrey M. Garrett, UCG (Ret.). If you have followed what has happened to the Royal Navy (or the F-35) you have seen this mode of operation:

• It begins with big plans for numerous units of an advanced type.
• Substantial investment is made in research and development, but it will be amortized over many units.
• Procurement is stretched out to cut annual expenditure, unit price goes up.
• Workload is uneven, skilled workers are let go, when work begins again, new workers must be hired and trained. Unit price goes up.
• Uncertainty about how many units will be produced, vendors hedge their bets, unit price goes up.
• Number of units to be procured is cut to save money, unit price goes up.
• Very few units are built, the unit costs are outrageous.

To some extent we have already seen this cycle with the National Security Cutter. I’m not sure there is a fix, but this seems to be a result of communications problems of several types both up and down, unwarranted assumptions, and perhaps a lack of historical background, that results in a mismatch of plans and execution.

The Coast Guard’s plans for large ship construction have been on the table for a very long time, and while there is still room for refinement, it seems late in the game for a complete rethink. If Congress and the Administration are not happy with what is being offered, while effected by the change of the fiscal condition of the country, it is also at least partly due to a lack of guidance on their part.

On the other hand, it appears the Coast Guard has not done its part to make a convincing case for these ships. Years after it was directed to provide one by Congress, there is still no Fleet Mix Study to support projected budget requests that the GAO calls unrealistic.

It seems there is no consensus on how many ships the Coast Guard needs or what their characteristics should be. The Coast Guard obviously sees these ships as warships on some level, otherwise the cost of redundancies and survivability features being sought would not make sense economically. If rumors are true, the DHS does not see it that way, and in fact they may not see sufficient justification for the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) program.

If the department really did not want the Coast Guard to build OPCs, they have not been honest and straightforward in their opposition, because the 2012 budget already has seed money to start the project. Perhaps they are simply assuming it will die, without actually arguing out an explicit decision. Meanwhile the Coast Guard is expending limited AC&I money beginning the procurement process.

I may have missed something, but at a time when the Navy’s fleet is shrinking and it is facing new challenges, the Navy seems conspicuously silent in support of the Coast Guard’s large cutter programs. Despite the “National Fleet” concept, the Navy does not seem to be advocating for ships for the Coast Guard that might be militarily useful. The Navy may see the Coast Guard programs as distracting from their own new ship programs, but that is highly unlikely, since effectively, the split within DOD, between the Air Force, Army, and Navy Departments has been essentially equal for many years and is unlikely to change so Coast Guard programs can complement, but do not threaten Navy funding.

The composition of the Coast Guard fleet does not seem to be considered in designing the Navy’s fleet. The Coast Guard contribution to the Naval balance is not generally recognized. When the Navy tells the Congress that the US fleet is 286 ships (give or take a couple), yes, they are counting CVNs, DDGs, and SSNs, but they are also counting the eleven patrol boats of the Cyclone class doing virtually the same job in Iraq as Coast Guard WPBs and will be counting the Joint High Speed Vessel which is little more than a high speed ferry. They don’t and will not count Coast Guard’s Cyclone class, the very similar Fast Response Cutters, or the more capable National Security Cutters. Why not? It is a “National Fleet” isn’t it?

The DOD is being told they have to trim at least $400B perhaps over $800B off there budget in the next ten years. The Navy alone will have to take cuts that will exceed the entire budget of the Coast Guard. Hopefully there may be opportunities born of the search for ways to make up the lost capability. As Winston Churchill is frequently quoted, “Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we have to think.”

The Navy needs to keep building carriers, submarines, and DDGs if we are going to maintain the construction capacity, but their is no real danger of the US loosing the capacity to build minor combatants as illustrated by the fact that twelve companies expressed an interest in building the Offshore Patrol Cutters. Perhaps it is time for the Navy, Congress and the Administration to recognize the Coast Guard as a Littoral Combat fleet in being that the Navy does not need to duplicate. With a little planning and coordination it could be even more effective in the role for at minimal cost. If a full and honest assessment of American security needs were done, they would find new Coast Guard vessels with Navy design input to meet both peacetime and wartime missions are a bargain.

The Coast Guard seems to have a serious problem communicating it’s value. To a large extent this is a failure of Congress and the Administration to look at it holistically. It is so many different things to different people. They look at the benefits individually, but when they look at the cost they see the whole cost.

The value of our SAR assets is widely recognized because it is seen on local news on a regular basis, but the Coast Guard is so much more. I like the Commandant’s explanation of the Coast Guard,

“We will protect the country against threats from the sea…
“We will protect people who use the sea…
“And, we will protect the sea itself.”

But as clear and succinct as that statement is, it still does not make clear the magnitude of the job. The message I think we need to hammer home is that the Coast Guard is the “Department of Emergency Service,” Police, Fire and Rescue, and Emergency Medical Response, for an area larger than the land area of the entire country. Even that neglects the Coast Guard’s regulatory and aids to navigation missions, but right now our large ships are the part of the organization most in jeopardy, so this is the most urgent message. Complexity is the nature of the beast.

I hesitate to suggest that we need a slogan, because our communications problems are much deeper than that, but as part of a larger communications effort I think we do. In Brendan Flynn’s recent post, “A Global Force for Good?” and the associated comments, we had some discussion of this. I’ll offer one and ask for other suggestions, “The Coast Guard–America’s Blue Chip.”

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Related:

• Studying in the Coast Guard, Bad News For FRC
• Fleet Mix Where Are the Trade-offs
• What’s Wrong With This Picture
• Selling and Saving the Offshore Patrol Cutter Project

The good news is: While the number of attacks is up, the pirates are succeeding less frequently so that the number of seizures is down compared with last year. Armed guards seem to be effective and more countries are allowing them. The bad news is: The situation in Somalia is if anything worse than before. Pirates are now routinely torturing crew members in order to extort ever larger payments from ship owners, and Somali style piracy has metastasized, spreading to the West Coast of Africa. Continue reading →

The Navy is facing some hard questions regarding the declining numbers and readiness of its surface fleet. This post actually puts the best face on a hearing that has not gone well for the Navy.

Coast Guard implications?

• I still see the Coast Guard making favorable references to “optimal manning,” but it has become a dirty word in the Navy resulting in deferred maintenance, poor morale, and declining readiness.
• This is why the Department of Homeland Security can’t blithely say the Coast Guard does not need new ships because the Navy can do those jobs.

Coast Guard Cutter Galveston Island receives fuel from Bertholf in an astern refueling evolution. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

The Coast Guard Compass has a new post “From the Bridge of the Bertholf: Hawaii Patrol.” There are a couple of things I really like seeing in the report, first that they are working in the Western Pacific EEZ, and second that they are working jointly with patrol boat Galveston Island.

A larger cutter operating with a smaller one (or two) opens up a lot of options potentially almost doubling the effectiveness of the large ship, with the smaller cutter providing another 24/7 radar and lookout node, as well as an independent high endurance boarding platform to cover a different geographic area. The Fast Response Cutters with their larger crew and better seakeeping should make this an even more attractive option. (In the article they are doing an astern refueling. I would think that an alongside method could be developed that would be quicker and safer.)

As I noted earlier, the Fourteenth has by far the largest EEZ (5,800,889 sq kM), even larger than the Seventeenth’s EEZ surrounding Alaska  (3,770,021 sq. kM). My impression is that we don’t spend enough time patrolling there and when we do, we always seem to find egregious violations.