New London Day reporter Julia Bergman did a nice article covering an event in honor of Veterans’ Day at the Academy. Three Coast Guard Vietnam vets, two 82 foot WPB skippers and an HH-3 pilot, related their experience to the cadets. The story comes to us via “Stars and Stripes.”
The Navy League’s “Seapower” magazine has an article about how aging assets are impacting the Coast Guard’s mission effectiveness. You can read it on line here. (You will probably have to expand it to make it readable.)
Frankly, I have been disappointed that they had not been talking about this much earlier. There has been entirely too much happy talk about how great the new assets are without much discussion of the general decrepitude of most of the fleet. Of course this has probably been our own fault. Even in this article, there seems to be little sense of urgency. The article barely mentions the fact that the planned slow motion replacement of Medium Endurance Cutters by the Offshore Patrol Cutter will prolong the pain. After all, we don’t expect the last OPC until 2034, a fact not mentioned in the article. They refer to a “two-plus decade program” to build 91 new surface ship, but in fact the first National Security Cutter was funded in FY2001, and the roots of the program go back further still, so this is at least a three and a half decade program, that was begun at least ten years after it should have.
Through some comments, from Tups and Matthew Coombs CWO4 USCG (retired), on a previous post we have learned that construction on a medium icebreaker begun for Shell has apparently been suspended because Shell is no longer attempting to drill for oil in the Arctic.
This might be an opportunity for the Coast Guard to obtain one or two reasonably capable medium icebreaker in the near term on favorable terms.
Reportedly the ship was laid down in December so the design and much of the material has already been bought, costs Shell is responsible for.
The icebreaker should be pretty capable, it is reportedly Polar Class 3. Polar class 3 means “Year-round operation in second-year ice which may include multiyear ice inclusions.” My understanding is that the ship will have Four 5060 KW generators. If so it will have more horsepower (20,240 KW/27,131 SHP) than the diesel electric engines of the Polar class (18,000 HP), more than the Glacier (16,000 KW/21,000 SHP), and almost as much as the Healy (22,400 KW/30,027 SHP). It would also be more than twice as powerful as the Wind class breakers (12,000 SHP), the National Science Foundation’s leased M/V Nathaniel B. Palmer (9,485 kW/12,720 HP), or USCGC Mackinaw (6,800 KW/9,119 SHP). It would also be more powerful than all but one of Canada’s icebreakers, and powerful enough to lead a break in at McMurdo Sound.
Politically this might gets some traction because, I am sure the Louisiana delegation would love to see their people go back to work to finish the ship, and the Alaska Senators desperately want more icebreakers. This might even be a circumstance where leasing might make sense.
If Shell is truly abandoning attempts to exploit the Arctic, it is also likely that their other ice class vessels, including the icebreaker Aiviq, are also excess to their needs. Adding Aiviq and the ship under construction to the Healey, would meet the Coast Guard’s stated requirement for three medium icebreakers and provide the backup we need if one of the two existing breakers had a breakdown in the ice.
Our friend at the British Defense blog ThinkDefence has a short post regarding some experiments being undertaken by the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. They have reportedly succeeded in having 50 small unmanned aircraft operating cooperatively all under the control of one man.
The thing that caught my eye was this statement, “There are also algorithms for search-and-rescue operations, in which the flight pattern resembles that of foraging bees.”
The linked post is about doing SAR post natural disaster on land, but perhaps there are some possibility for the Coast Guard here.
Photo: Russian Coast Guard Project 97P Border Patrol Vessel Volga (#183). The Russian Coast Guard is part of the Border Guard Service of Russia. This photo was taken by the crew of the USCGC Boutwell in Petropavlovsk, Russia during the North Pacific Coast Guard Forum in September 2007.
As is widely known Russia has plans to greatly expand use of the “Northern Sea Route,” the passage between the Atlantic and Pacific via the Arctic Ocean near Russia. To make this economical they are planning to greatly expand the presence of their Coast Guard in the Arctic. This includes a new class of ships.
“Efforts to build up an Arctic Coast Guard force have been ongoing since at least 2011, when the Federal Security Service (FSB) — the successor to the KGB, which oversees the Coast Guard and Border Guard services — ordered its first of a planned six “Ocean” patrol ships. The vessels, small ships with a displacement of 2,700 tons, are nevertheless built to withstand icy Arctic conditions.
The lead ship, known as “Polyarnaya Zvezda,” or North Star, has been completed and is undergoing final preparations for regular service in Kronstadt, near St. Petersburg. Two additional Ocean ships, known in Russia by their “Project 22100” designation, are under construction, and should be ready by 2019.
“Plans for new Arctic Coast Guard ships won’t stop with the completion of the Project 22100 class, according to Mikhail Barabanov, a naval expert at the Moscow-based Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST).
“‘Construction is planned for several larger Coast Guard patrol ships with a displacement of 6,000 to 7,000 tons,’ Barabanov said, adding that the ships will double as icebreakers. Several design bureaus are now competing for tenders to design the ships, he said.
“The Coast Guard is also expanding its infrastructure along the Arctic frontier with a chain of 10 Coast Guard stations. These stations will be used to launch search and rescue operations if ships run into trouble.”
The Project 22100 ships sound a bit like the Offshore Patrol Cutters. Specs found here indicated a displacement of 2700 tons, length of 91.8 meters/301.2 feet, beam of 14.8 meters/48.6 feet, speed of 20 knots, a range of 12,000 miles, a crew of 41, and an armament of one 76mm and two 14.5mm, and accommodations for a Ka-27 (a 12,000kg/26,455 pound helicopter). The German Navy blog Marine Forum reported on 10 October that first of class “POLYARNAYA ZVEZDA completes four days of sea trials in the Gulf of Finland.” The next two ships are not expected to be commissioned until 2019.
The US Naval Institute News Service has provided access to a report to Congress, “Coast Guard Polar Icebreaker Modernization: Background and Issues for Congress,”by Ronald O’Rourke, Specialist in Naval Affairs, September 25, 2015.
I am repeating here the last two paragraphs of the Summary. I think they explain quite clearly the sad state of our icebreaker fleet.
“On September 1, 2015, the White House issued a fact sheet in conjunction with a visit to Alaska by President Obama indicating that the Administration, in its own internal planning, had at some point over the past two years deferred procurement of a new polar icebreaker to FY2022, but that this has now been changed to FY2020. The newly announced procurement date of FY2020 is a two-year acceleration from the previously unpublicized date of FY2022, and a two-year deferral from the FY2018 date implied in the FY2013 and FY2014 budget submissions. The fact sheet states that the Administration will also “begin planning for construction of additional icebreakers” beyond the one that the Administration proposes to procure in FY2020.–
“A polar icebreaker procured in FY2020 might enter service in 2024 or 2025. Polar Star has been refurbished and reentered service in December 2012 for an intended period of 7 to 10 years—a period that will end between December 2019 and December 2022. Consequently unless the service life of Polar Star is further extended (or unless Polar Sea is repaired and returned to service), there will be a period of perhaps two to six years during which the United States will have no operational heavy polar icebreakers. The issue for Congress is whether to approve, reject, or modify the Administration’s plans for sustaining and modernizing the polar icebreaking fleet.”
The US Naval Institute has a good article by a Coast Guard author, about the potential problems and opportunities that result from the new relationship between Cuba and the US. You can access the current issue here.
The Coast Guard has begun a new SeaPay system as reported by Coast Guard All Hands.
The new five-table system takes into consideration desirability of different cutter platforms, personnel tempo, deployment lengths and programmed operational hours.
“We made a conscious decision to shift most of the sea pay increases to mid-level enlisted paygrades in an effort to incentivize them to return to sea duty assignments,” said Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard Steven Cantrell. “A three-level system just wasn’t enough, and it didn’t allow flexibility to change with the times. These changes don’t take place in a vacuum – a lot of decision and a lot of discussion went into these just to get it right.”
This system is relatively complex, but it appears a realistic effort to achieve the stated goals.
Can’t help believe this only happened because we have a “Cutterman” as Commandant who understands that all sea duty is not equal.
The linked post includes the five pay charts.
The US Naval Institute’s News Service has provided access to a Coast Guard report to Congress mandated in the Howard Coble Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2014 (Pub. L. No. 113-281).
Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Commandant of the Coast Guard shall submit to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the House of Representatives a report on any gaps that exist in writings on the history of the Coast Guard. The report shall address, at a minimum, operations , broad topics, and biographies with respect to the Coast Guard.”
The document is relatively short. There is a fairly long list of topics, but I’m not sure how useful it is. I am sure Bill Wells will have something to say about this.
It seems lately we have seen more from the Atlantic Area Historian than from the Coast Guard Historian.
It also seems the Coast Guard has not “weaponized” its history. The Coast Guard is not using it to enhance the image of the service.
US Navy photo, USS Halsey (DDG 97)
The US Naval Institute reports that the Navy intends to put auxiliary electric motors, or hybrid electric drive (HED) system, on 34 Burke Flight IIA guided missile destroyers (DDGs), by adding an electric motors to a preexisting quill drives in the main reduction gear. Reportedly these will power the vessels at up to 13 knots.
These systems will not only save money when the ships are cruising slowly, they will also allow them to remain on station longer.
Although the typical diesel power plant on cutters is more efficient at low speeds than the DDG’s gas turbines, a HED should also be applicable to Coast Guard cutters. We do seem to spend a lot of time cruising slowly. It would also provide a redundant propulsion system as a backup if the main engines were disabled. I am hoping there will be something similar on the Offshore Patrol Cutter.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 