Category Archives: News

China Building Six Major Cutters a Year–How many are Enough?

Posted on by
2

China Defense Blog is reporting “In order to improve the capacity of marine law enforcement and safeguard marine rights, China plans to build 30 vessels for marine law enforcement in the next five years.” The source is here, but the blog has pictures, as well the complete text, while the source has none.

I found this quotation puzzling:

“China has a vast area of seas, but the number and the tonnage of vessels for marine law enforcement are both small. China’s fleet does not meet the standard of one vessel per 1,000 square kilometers (emphasis applied) and there is a huge gap compared to other developed countries, said Li Lixin, director of South China Sea Branch of State Oceanic Administration of China, on Monday.”

For comparison, from Wikipedia:

The US has the largest EEZ in the world: 11,351,000 sq km

Japan EEZ: 4,479,358 sq km

China’s EEZ is much smaller, 877,019 sq km. Even adding the EEZ of Taiwan and other areas claimed by China, but disputed by others (3,000,000 sq km) the total is 3,877,019 sq km.

Applying a one patrol vessel to 1,000 sq km would mean the USCG should have 11,351 cutters. In fact we have 43 patrol cutters over 1000 tons or about 1 per 264,000 sq km. If the Chinese had a ship to patrol area ratio like ours, they would only need three or four ships. Clearly there is a disconnect here.

We talked a bit about a comparison of the Japanese Coast Guard and their Chinese counterparts here, and it is clearly the Japanese they are comparing themselves to.  There is a pretty good article on the various agencies the Chinese use to do maritime law enforcement missions here.

The other nations with the largest EEZs are Australia, France, Russia. Japan, with the 9th largest EEZ, has the largest fleet of cruising cutters in the world. China’s EEZ is 32nd in size.

Still I think the Chinese may be on to something in terms of justifying their fleet. Maybe we ought to do some sort of resource to area of responsibility comparison. We know that our EEZs in the Southwest Pacific and Arctic are under served.

WLR, WLI, WLIC, WTGB, WYTL

Posted on by
5

There is a bit of news on some of our smaller vessels.

The November 2008 issue of the Acquisition directorate’s newsletter included some information about planning for the replacement of the WLR/WLIC inland buoy tenders.

“We are in the process of updating propulsion, generators, steering systems, and fire suppression on our WLIC fleet, with similar updates for the WLRs in the future. For the long term, we have been appropriated funds by Congress in the fiscal year 2009 budget to initiate a WLR/WLIC replacement project, which we’re calling the “Heartland Waterway Vessel (HWV) Project”.  The sponsor in CG-7 and the ATON Program Manager in CG-5 are jointly developing the requirements for the HWV.  The final form of the HWV depends upon completion of the requirements development process and an alternative analysis, but the HWV may very well take the form of a WLR-like tug and barge but with enhanced C4I capabilities plus a high-speed, multi-mission cutter boat.  The good news is this effort has the necessary highest-level support and momentum for the first time in recent history.”

I did a little follow-up, and with the help of MCPO Brett F. Ayer, who is master chief for the Acquisitions Directorate, I contacted Ms. Maureen Schumann,Director of Communications, Assistant Commandant for Acquisition (CG-9), and she was good enough to answer some questions:

Q: …was wondering about the current status of the WLR/WLIC refurbishment and replacement program. Could you provide an update that I can share with our readers?

A: In FY09, we were appropriated funds to begin the Inland Rivertender Recapitalization Project (former Heartland Waterway Vessel Project). Since that time, we have completed the necessary mission analysis reports and drafted the mission needs statements.

Q: Is there a plan for replacement of the 65 ft WYTL harbor tugs? Are they part of the HWV program?

A: There are currently no plans to replace the 65′ WYTL harbor Tugs and they are not part of the WLIC-WLR Recapitalization Program.

Q: Have we begun planning replacements for the 140 ft WTGBs? (I know they are newer than a lot of our vessels but they are hitting the 30 year mark.)

A: There are currently no plans to replace the 140′ WTGBs. However, we are in the process of standing up a 10-year Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) for this fleet. The 140'WTGB SLEP is tentatively set to begin in late 2013.

Strategic Communications?–Coast Guard Can Do

Posted on by
5

Strategic Communications? Its a new label for me (sounds a lot like common sense–writing with a purpose–in a new wrapper), but some people in the Coast Guard are apparently we are already doing it.

Another blogger gives props to the First District PIO, ESCANABA (WMEC-907), Cdr. Westfall and his crew and a backhanded slap to the Navy for doing it wrong.

The Glamours Life of a Narco-Sub Captain

Posted on by
1

http://www.informationdissemination.net/ which has been providing excellent coverage of the crisis in Korea, also found a piece of particular interest to the Coast Guard in Der Spiegel (in English) recounting an interview with a man purported to have piloted vessels smuggling cocaine North for two years including semi-submersibles.

It makes interesting reading.

India on the Challenges of Guarding the Coast

Posted on by
2

The Indians have had a lot of incentive to secure their maritime borders since the terrorist attack on Mumbai of November 26, 2008, an event they refer to as 26/11 just as we refer to 9/11. The success of this attack was a direct result of a failure of their Navy and Coast Guard. For more information on how the attack developed, including the murder of two Indian Coast Guard boarding officers, go here. Since the attack, India has embarked on a program to triple the size of their Coast Guard, a component of the Ministry of Defense that grew out of the Navy in 1978.

The Hindustan Times reports of an interview with Vice-Admiral Sanjeev Bhasin, flag officer commanding in chief of the Western Naval Command, provides and update on their efforts.

“…securing India’s western coast is the Navy’s biggest challenge. The threat perception of terrorists using the sea route, as they did for 26/11, has increased.

“India has a huge coastline, stretching 7,600 km, and we have island territories as well. We, along with the Coast Guard, have fortified patrolling. But there are grey areas where [unauthorised] landings can be carried out because the state governments concerned had not kept them under surveillance till 26/11 occurred.”A detailed plan has been chalked out with the Coast Guard and the Director General of Lighthouses to revive lighthouses and set up 30 radar stations along the western coast.

“Trials of two such radar stations have started at Okha and Kandla in Gujarat.

“The Navy has found it tough to monitor fishing boats. This is a weakness identified [and exploited] by the terrorists. About 30,000 fishing boats are registered in Gujarat, 20,000 in Maharashtra, 20,000 in Karnataka and 2,000 in Goa.

“Radar stations fitted with the Automatic Identification System (AIS) have been planned along the coast.

“AIS devices will also be installed on these vessels. It is a massive problem and it cannot be taken care of only by the Navy and Coast Guard.

“We need fishermen’s cooperation; we want them to be our eyes and ears. They have been very cooperative.”

Progress on the National Security Cutters

Posted on by
38

In October, I questioned why there seemed so be so little progress on the National Security Cutters.

In fact there has been a significant milestone. Monday the contract for the fourth National Security Cutter was awarded and the contract includes an option on the fifth ship. The Acquisition Directorate said , “The contract is a fixed price incentive type. It is the first National Security Cutter production contract to be awarded directly to the shipbuilder, outside of the Integrated Coast Guard Systems commercial lead-system integrator contract framework.  The Coast Guard is the Systems Integrator for its recapitalization programs and is responsible for their management and execution.”

Rhode Islander hears from a relative, “Some long lead time equipments for NSC-4  (HAMILTON) have already been delivered to NORTHROP GRUMMAN SHIPYARD  (NGSB),  including the 2 main engines  (MTU), all 3 caterpillar generators, all the reduction gears, the air conditioners, and pieces of the weapons systems.   Therefore, you can conclude that NGSB should be ready to begin cutting steel on NSC-4 within a couple of months at the latest.   Meanwhile,  NSC-3 is proceeding well with key milestones such as generator light off and main engine light off occurring before Spring 2011, and Sea Trials still scheduled for latter next summer.   Final delivery of STRATTON (WMSL-752) to the active duty Coast Guard crew should happen in less than a year.”

Hopefully, we won’t have to wait four years for HAMILTON (WMSL 753) to be delivered and given that the option has already been negotiated that number 5, JAMES (WMSL 754) will follow close behind.

Optionally Manned RHIB?

Posted on by
1

We know the Coast Guard is working on UASs (Unmanned Aircraft Systems). Perhaps they should also be looking at optionally manned surface vessels. I’m thinking in terms boats that can continue to fill the role of the RHIBs we already have, but with the additional capability of being programmed to conduct a (semi) autonomous search that complements the mother-ship’s own search to almost double the mother-ship’s effective search capability. It looks like the technology, including obstacle avoidance,  may already be out there.

Of course we can do a complementary search with a ship’s boat now, but the endurance of the crew limits this option. We can’t routinely expect a boat crew to operate effectively in a search mode for long periods, but a RHIB could operate for eight or more hours even in weather conditions that would be problematic for a boat crew. With the sensors linked to the mother-ship where sensor operators can be rotated, the search should be almost as effective as a second cutter.

The new 154 foot Hero Class Cutters (FRC) will not operate a helicopter, but a optionally manned RHIB could allow them to effectively patrol an area almost twice as large as they could search unassisted.

A large cutter might use it to complement helicopter or UAV search patterns, filling in when air resources are not available. It could also search in the shallows, close inshore, where we could not take a ship.

Because it is relatively difficult to detect, an optionally manned RHIB, scouting 20-30 miles ahead of the cutter, might detect smugglers that attempt to avoid the cutter by using their own scouting vessels.

The Coast Guard did look at the “Protector,” a small unmanned surface vessel, in 2006, but that looks like a very different concept of operation.

The Singapore Navy already seems to have adopted this technology. Units of various capability are already being offered by Italian, German, and Israeli vendors, some with partners in the US.