Today the Coast Guard Compass announced the first fourteen names to be assigned to the Fast Response Cutters (the Bernard C. Webber Class). They are also doing a series explaining the accomplishments of each of the service members the vessels are named for. These are the first two:
The Beluga Fortune, one of the three ships we reported taken by pirates over the weekend, has been retaken as a result of the crews use of recommended countermeasures.
The US Naval Institute Blog has more details on the recapture, facilitated by HMS Montrose (a 4300 ton British Type 23 frigate–same size as the NSC). They also discuss the latest information on best practices for mariners to avoid being taken by pirates, now published as a 78 page pamphlet entitled “BMP3, Best Management Practice 3, Piracy off the Coast of Somalia and Arabian Sea Area.” A pdf copy of the manual is available here: http://www.mschoa.org/bmp3/Documents/BMP3%20Final_low.pdf
Related Posts:
Ryan Erickson’s blog pointed out an article in the Vancouver Sun reporting that the Canadians are considering arming their icebreakers as a way to “bolster Arctic sovereignty.”
This was in response to “recommendations in a report from the Senate fisheries committee about strengthening Canada’s presence in the North.”
“The government also has indicated that it will review new shipping regulations in the Northwest Passage and other Arctic waters with an eye to extending mandatory registration of foreign vessels, which currently applies only to large freighters and other heavy ships, to all foreign-ship traffic in the region, regardless of size.”
Ryan links the report to the 1985 transit of the North West Passage by the Polar Sea, in which the USCG icebreaker transited what the Canadians consider their internal waters and what the US considers an international strait, after the US gave notification of our intention, rather than asking permission.
Since then, basically the US and the Canadians have agreed to disagree. Currently the US and Canada have an agreement that allows access to US military ships. They have given us blanket permission and we have said we will give notification.
For the US Navy this is a matter of avoiding a precedence that could close off access elsewhere.
For the Coast Guard, our interests are a little different, perhaps closer to that of the Canadians. We want Maritime Domain Awareness. We want ships to give notice of their intentions, and ultimately that has to mean we need some options to deny access, but the international norms are still being set.
The talk of arming Canadian icebreakers leads to the question, will the Canadian Coast Guard be transformed by it’s new mission to more closely parallel the military organization of the USCG. There has already been a question about whether the Canadian Navy or their Coast Guard would man the proposed Arctic Patrol Ship since they would be armed, unlike current Canadian cutters.
NATO reports three vessels October 23/24, a Dhow; the YORK, a Singapore flagged 5,076-ton LPG tanker en route from Mombasa, Kenya to the Seychelles, was carrying 17 crew, including a German master, two Ukrainians and 14 Filipinos, and the BELUGA FORTUNE a cargo ship under charter to a German company bound from the United Arab Emirates to South Africa have been seized in two days.
It appears a South Korean flag crab boat, the GOLDEN WAVE, seized on October 9, was used as the mother ship for seizure of the YORK. When the GOLDEN WAVE was seized, she had on board 43 people, two S. Korean, two Chinese, and 37 Kenyans.
Reportedly pirates are currently holding 20 vessels and and 428 hostages.
If you would like to keep up with what is happening with regard to piracy in the Indian Ocean, it looks like “Eagle Speak” is a good source.
Raw Data is available from the NATO site here.
A number of things have happened that makes the Offshore Patrol Cutters potentially important to the national defense, and suggest that the Navy should support their design and construction, including helping with project administration if we need that and testifying before Congress to justify the additional cost of naval features.
If the LCS project is killed, a class based on the OPC’s hull might be able to take its place. If the LCS program is terminated at less than the planned number, Navy ships based on the OPC can supplement the LCS and do many, perhaps all of it’s missions, at a lower cost. Even if all 55 LCSs are built, Coast Guard OPCs can still make a significant contribution to the Nation’s defense; particularly, if they can use systems designed for the LCS.
Navy vessels based on the OPC could cost less than half the price of an LCS. Even without mission modules, the Navy could use the class as the basis for a common hull that could be fill the partnership, patrol, presence, counter-piracy, and drug enforcement roles of the FFGs at a much lower cost and also perform many of the PCs missions with greater endurance and better sea keeping. They are potentially affordable, relatively low tech platforms, that can be exported under the Foreign Military Assistance Program to help our friends. If their aviation facilities are made adequate for MH-60R and MH-60S helicopters (not much different from our own H-60s), with LCS modules they could fill the LCS roles. (This might require them to operate in pairs to carry all the equipment planned for a LCS)
To fulfill its potential in these roles, the OPC need not be much different from current planning. The ship’s description over at the Acquisitions Directorate web site has gotten progressively fuzzier over time, but I will be specific about what I think it needs.
Preparing to write this, I reread some older material from the Acquisition Directorate and was surprised to find that my long held assumption that the Coast Guard would be building OPCs at a rate of three a year (since that was the rate we had built the 210s they are replacing) is not the case. The plan as expressed in the CG9 Newsletter for Oct/Nov 09 by Captain Brian Perkins was to build only two ships a year.
Plus, the same newsletter notes, the OPC program is linked to the NSC program in that it will not be started until after the last NSC is contracted.
As we have discussed the progress on the National Security Cutter Program has been slow. In the nine years since the ships were ordered, only two ships have been delivered and a third is building. Instead of seeing one new ship a year as might have been expected, there was an almost two year gap between the Bertholf and the Waesche, another almost two year gap between the Waesche and the Stratton, and it looks like an almost three year gap between Stratton and the forth NSC, Hamilton. Assuming that Hamilton is awarded this year (FY 2011) and one a year after that, the eighth and last NSC won’t be awarded until FY 2015 and we probably won’t see it in service until 2019. The first OPC(s) will not be funded until FY2016. The last 210 replacement will be funded in 2023 with deliver not likely until at least 2026 at which time the last 210 will be 57 years old. When the last 270 is replaced, in 2031 it will be 41 years old.
This is a plan for disaster. That our fleet is already in trouble was demonstrated by the difficulties we encountered during the Haiti earthquake relief. How are these same ships going to perform in 10, 15, or 20 years.
There has got to be a better way.
First it surely isn’t necessary to take four years to make a decision on the OPC design. Its been discussed and mulled over for years. Might it not be possible to truncate the NSC program at six ships, fund the first OPCs in FY2014 and build them at the rate of three or four a year? And rather than multicrew the NSCs, increase the OPC program by six to provide one for one replacements for the 378s for a total of 6 NSCs and 31 OPCs. That still leaves us four ships short of where we are now, but a lot closer than the eight ships short currently planned.
Because the OPCs are considerably smaller than the NSC and made in greater quantity, they are potentially much cheaper while providing nearly all the capability of an NSC or 378. We are typically spending around $600M per NSC. I’ve heard that the Acquisitions Directorate expects to keep the costs for the OPC around $200M/ship. The ship I think they should build would be a bit more, because it would have added value for national defense, but building three or even four instead of one NSC is not a huge increase in the total Coast Guard budget and will save money in the long run.
The OPCs will have a smaller crew than the NSCs and a much smaller crew than the 378s. The crew may even be smaller than that on the 270s. They are also likely to be much cheaper to maintain than the legacy ships. The sooner we get them in the fleet, the more we will save in manning and maintenance.
If we truncate the NSC program at 6 and begin the OPC program in FY 2014, funding three ships a year, we will have the 33 new ships currently planned by 2025, six years ahead of the current plan, and the entire program, including four additional ships, will be finished by early 2027.
If instead, in 2014 we began funding four ships a year, we would have our 33 new ships finished early in 2024, seven years ahead of the current plan and the the entire program would be completed in early 2025. Still a long way away, but better than the current plan. If we did that, the last 210 to be replace will only be 51 years old.
The Japanese recently released the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that had rammed two Japan Coast Guard vessels. They probably thought that tempers would cool, but it looks like the Chinese aren’t satisfied. They have sent three of their fisheries patrol vessels to the disputed waters to defend what they see as their rights.
French shipbuilder DCNS apparently has designs on our Offshore Patrol Cutter Project. The picture is pretty, but the text is in French. Translation anyone?
Over at www.informationdissemination.net I got into an off topic discussion of the NSC deliveries, when another poster, “RhodeIslander,” asked me why the contract for the for the fourth National Security Cutter had not been awarded.
He shared this with me,
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“Chuck, one of my old co-workers down in Mississippi sent me an interesting Build Schedule for NSC. Evidently this is only for… (STRATTON) 752 which is next to be finished off for USCG.
“At the moment of Contract start, there begins a 4 year cycle for WMSL-752:
“FIRST YEAR: Pre-fab begins down in Mississippi yard. While down in Washington D.C. the USCG orders long lead time stuff, like engines, generators, gears, etc. After about 2 months, “Start Fabrication” commences. And scattered all around the large Mississippi shipyard, many various modules are being constructed.
“SECOND YEAR: Keep is “laid” which now-a-days means the shipyard starts moving all those modules slowly down to the waterfront and welds them all together. This erection process goes fairly quickly and the cutter is all put together outwardly in less than 7 months. Production continues inside the cutter while on land.
“THIRD YEAR: The cutter is “launched” with really means “float off” in modern yards like the one in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Production continues in the water, electrical cables and Command and Control soon start testing. Then diesels engines get lite off, followed by generators and gas turbine.
“FOURTH YEAR: Sea Trials and Dockyard Trials are conducted at the beginning of Year #4, and the cutter is soon delivered to the Coast Guard. The crew moves onboard, trains up, does a few short underway periods. The Mississippi shipyard corrects some deficiencies and finally the new cutter sails away for California. Once in their permanent homeport, the ship gets a short post shakedown overhaul period, where the Mississippi Northrop Grumman yard does Warranty work. At the very end of the fourth year, the Warranty period expires and the Cutter is no longer ever associated with DEEPWATER INC. again.”
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“RhodeIslander” was disappointed in the time required from award to completion. My concern was more that we were falling behind on even a one per year delivery schedule. If we awarded a contract every year and we were using the four year cycle as a routine, you would think there would be four or at least three ships in the pipeline. That does not seem to be happening.
Acquisition directorate says “The U.S. Coast Guard commissioned the second National Security Cutter, Waesche (WMSL 751), on May 7, 2010. Stratton (WMSL 752) was christened on July 23, 2010 and is 59% complete.”
It appears that the NSC2 is in the last 2 months of the cycle (although it has lasted more than four years) and that NSC3 is in the third year. This means we have more than a two year gap (instead of only one year).
Here are some of the milestones for the first three ships. All three were nominally ordered in 2001 and were/are being built at Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, Pascagoula, Mississippi:
NSC 1: Bertholf
Laid down: March 29, 2005
Launched: September 29, 2006
Christened: November 11, 2006
Commissioned: August 4, 2008
Formally Accepted: May 8, 2009
NSC 2: Waesche
Laid down: September 11, 2006
Launched: July 12, 2008
Delivered: Nov. 6, 2009
Commissioned: May 7, 2010
NSC 3: Dorothy C. Stratton
Contract awarded: Aug. 8, 2007
Laid down: July 20, 2009
Christened: July 23, 2010
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/USCGC_Waesche_by_Yerba_Buena_Island.jpg
From Wikipedia, “‘On 7 July 2009, the Government Accountability Office reported that delays in the NSC program are likely to result in “the loss of thousands of cutter operational days for conducting missions through 2017.’ The GAO also that month reported that problems in the NSC program have delayed the OPC program by five years.”
Frankly I think we will continue to see the ripples of this disaster until at least 2027 when it looks like the last OPC might be finished. By that time the newest 270 will be 39 years old. When the youngest 210 is replaced it will likely be at least 54 years old. And if the Acushnet can last until she is replaced by the first OPC she will be 75 years old. (While the average Navy ship is something like 14 years old.)
Here is RhodeIslander’s latest comment, “…WAESCHE NSC-2 is evidently in California getting her post delivery overhaul and last of warranty. Stratton is supposed to Deliver towards end of next summer. That means NSC-4 Hamilton, if and when they ever commence her, will break up the “assembly line” of NATIONAL SECURITY CUTTERS that has finally started to look pretty good down at the Pascagoula yard. So NSC-4 will gap and some expertise will be lost forever, early retirement, taking jobs on other Navy ships, moving to the offshore oil well industry, etc. Even worse than breaking up the “assembly line”, will be the big gap between delivery of NSC-3 and NSC-4 to USCG…Too bad that NSC-4 is not already under construction, and finishing her first year, and beginning to start KEEL LAYING. It’s both a mystery and a shame for the Coast Guard sailors on those ancient High Endurance cutters.”
What really bothers me is that I don’t see that there is any attempt to play catch-up on the part of the Administration, the Congress, or the Coast Guard. I hope I’m wrong, but at the rate we are going, the eighth NSC will not be operational for at least nine years and possibly longer, meaning the newest 378 will be at least 47 years old when it is replaced. We really ought to be awarding a multi-year contract and building more than one ship a year. If we want to award contracts for the OPCs in FY2014 and we don’t want to have to award a contract for NSC(s) in the same FY, it means that we will need to contract for NSCs 5-8 in FY 2012/2013. (Perhaps more evidence we ought to be looking at getting other ships to fill the gap.)
I know Acquisition Directorate is still getting their feet on the ground, and they are short of people, but I hope we will recognize the urgency and that we will get some support from the Administration and Congress. We have to do a lot better than we have so far.
The GAO did a study of US anti-piracy efforts and the results are not good.
“…from 2007 to 2009, the most recent year for which complete data were available, the total number of hijackings reported to the International Maritime Bureau increased, ransoms paid by the shipping industry increased sharply, and attacks spread from the heavily patrolled Gulf of Aden–the focus of the Action Plan–to the vast Indian Ocean.”
Seems we don’t know how much piracy costs or how much our countermeasures cost. We have made some progress in international cooperation, but we haven’t done very well at coordinating efforts within the US government.
At least one commentator thinks the process of learning to work internationally may be more important than the actual results. He also kicked off some additional discussion here and here, including discussion of how this reflects on the Cooperative Strategy 21. (It does look like the Brits are showing some initiative.)
The Coast Guard has already been deeply involved in this issue, from LEDETs on scene to recommending best practices to mariners, and if it ever to be successfully addressed, it will be part of the solution.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
