Future USCGC Pickering (Image: Austal USA)
Forbes reports on, Offshore Patrol Cutter builder, Austal’s continuing difficulties.
The author, Craig Hooper, whom I regard as a friend of the Coast Guard, was at one time an Austal executive, departing in 2013. I would have to believe; he knows what he is talking about.
Thanks to Nick for bringing this to my attention.
gCaptain reports the US has made its claim to Continental Shelf beyond its Exclusive Economic Zone.
Much of the area is in the Arctic. I am sure research conducted by scientists operating from USCGC Healy had a lot to do with researching this area.
There are overlaps in areas also claimed by Canada, the Bahamas and Japan that will have to be resolved.
USCGC Polar Star moored in Australia, presumably at HMAS Kuttabul, in Sidney. The large vessel in the background is a Canberra class LHD, HMAS Adelaide (L01) I believe. While, with modifications, this two-ship class probably could operate F-35B VTOL fighters, I have seen no indication that they intend to do so.
Just passing along this news release from Coast Guard News. More photos there.
Editor’s Note: To follow the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star’s Operation Deep Freeze journey, click here for more imagery.
HOBART, Australia — U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star (WAGB 10) and crew departed Hobart, Wednesday, after a four-day port call in Hobart and an earlier stop in Sydney, to begin the journey across the Southern Ocean en route to Antarctica in support of Operation Deep Freeze 2024.
While in Hobart and Sydney, the crew hosted tours aboard the Polar Star for guests from the U.S. Embassy including U.S. Ambassador for Australia Caroline Kennedy and members from the Australian government, Royal Australian Navy, Tasmanian government, local industry partners, and local schools and universities.
“A sincere thank you to our Australian hosts and all our international partners whose incredible collaboration has defined the success of Operation Deep Freeze,” said Capt. Keith Ropella, commanding officer of Polar Star. “The cohesion among Antarctic programs reinforces the significance of our joint efforts, fostering a legacy of success for future scientific endeavors in this challenging environment.”
Operation Deep Freeze is a joint military service mission to resupply the United States Antarctic stations of the National Science Foundation, who is the lead agency for the United States Antarctic program (USAP). This year marks Polar Star’s 27th voyage to Antarctica. Every year, a joint and total force team work together to complete a successful Operation Deep Freeze season. Military members from the U.S. Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, and Navy work together through Joint Task Force-Support Forces Antarctica to continue the tradition of providing U.S. military support. Operation Deep Freeze works closely with other Antarctic programs to include those of Australia and New Zealand, as well as those Nations’ respective defense forces.
Leading up to and during the transit, the crew received training and prepared themselves to support this vital mission despite the austere environment. Operation Deep Freeze is one of the more challenging U.S. military peacetime missions due to the harsh environment in which it is conducted. Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, most inhospitable continent on the planet, and each trip requires careful planning and coordination.
“Through rigorous training and specialized preparations, our Coast Guard team stands ready for the challenges of Operation Deep Freeze,” said Lt. Cmdr. Don Rudnickas, operations officer of Polar Star. “The Coast Guard’s unwavering commitment underscores our dedication to the success of U.S. missions in the Polar Regions, ensuring the safety and efficacy of our operations.”
The Polar Star provides heavy icebreaking capabilities to facilitate sealift, seaport access, bulk fuel supply, and port cargo handling for three U.S. research stations in Antarctica with McMurdo Station being the largest. The cutter’s icebreaking capabilities enable the safe delivery of critical supplies to sustain USAP’s year-round operations and support international partnership in the harsh Antarctic environment. It’s vitally important that the U.S. maintains a maritime domain presence in Antarctica to protect uninhibited international access to the region.
When the Polar Star deploys in support of Operation Deep Freeze, they routinely spend the holiday season away from home. During the cutter’s first stop in Honolulu, the crew celebrated Thanksgiving while underway and moored alongside the U.S. Navy fleet at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu.
During the transit across the Pacific, the crew sailed through the position 0 degrees latitude and 180 degrees longitude, also known as “The X” marking the intersection of the equator and international date line. Crossing this exact position is a unique and rare opportunity among Coast Guard crews.
On December 10, the Polar Star moored at HMAS Kuttabul alongside several Royal Australian Navy ships close to the center of Sydney during a logistics stop for fuel and supplies.
The Polar Star departed its Seattle homeport November 15 and has traveled approximately 7,700 miles with stops in Honolulu, Sydney and Hobart.
The Polar Star is the United States’ only asset capable of providing access to both Polar Regions. It is a 399-foot heavy polar icebreaker commissioned in 1976, weighing 13,500 tons, 84-feet wide, with a 34-foot draft. The six diesel and three gas turbine engines produce up to 75,000 horsepower.
USCGC Diligence recently completed a 52-day counterdrug patrol in the Caribbean Sea. Mostly it was a typically successful patrol, but they did do something a bit unusual.
“Diligence also conducted a joint training exercise with the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). During the exercise, the Diligence crew and pilots from SOAR completed daytime and nighttime helicopter landing evolutions.”
The Helicopters were AH-6s. The 160th SOAR has a history of flying off of floating units.
Between 1987 and 1989 the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, also known as “The Night Stalkers,” flew Little Bird helicopters from barges and Navy frigates in the Persian Gulf. Operation Prime Chance paired the U.S. Army helicopters with Navy SEALs, Marines, and Special Boat Units in an undeclared war against Iranian Revolutionary Guards units harassing civilian shipping. Six Little Birds, both MH-6 utility and AH-6 attack versions equipped with SEAL snipers, rockets, and machine guns, flew patrols as low as thirty feet.
This might be a reminder that Army and Marine helicopters could be operated from Coast Guard Cutters for limited periods for Special Operations, particularly in areas where there are few Navy assets such as the high North and 4th Fleet.
Wikipedia’s report on Operation Prime Chance here.
More photos of Diligence’s operation with AH-6 here.
Thanks to Peter for prompting me to write about this.
Future USCGC Pickering (Image: Austal USA)
“The court last month ruled against Eastern Shipbuilding, which had appealed the Coast Guard’s decision. The court unsealed the case documents Dec. 14, though with some redactions.”
There is a link to the 42-page court document, but really there is a lot more here than just the decision.
Eastern’s offer was judged better in several respects, but Austal’s price and indoor assembly facility were deciding factors.
“Ultimately, Austal’s proposal came to $3.22 billion, or about $292 million per hull, according to the unsealed documents.
“Eastern’s price is redacted in the documents but is characterized as a “very large price differential.””
It was noted,
“…only one OPC could be built in the indoor facility at a time, meaning the heel-to-toe production cadence could lend itself to “notable disruptions” to schedule.”
This suggests to me, that Austal might have trouble building more than two OPCs a year if the Coast Guard wanted to accelerate OPC production.
The paragraph below may refer to the same presentation by RAdm Jacoby discussed earlier, where he expressed a sense of urgency regarding the OPC program, but there is also an admission that maintaining the Medium Endurance Cutters has become problematic.
Coast Guard acquisition chief Rear Adm. Chad Jacoby said at a recent conference there’s no current plan to have both yards build concurrently into the future but that he’d be open to it if lawmakers increased annual OPC spending, since it’s “urgent” to get OPCs into the fleet to replace “the medium endurance cutters, which are struggling to maintain operational capability right now.”
The Drive reports on a new sort of modular system that has a wide range of possible uses including as an anti-air weapon against threats from small drones to cruise missiles. It is small and relatively cheap. It can loiter. It can return and be refueled. It requires only minimal maintenance. It can be cued by a number of systems. It probably would work against surface targets too. It is jet powered, with high sub-sonic speeds.
Map of the Arctic region showing shipping routes Northeast Passage, Northern Sea Route, and Northwest Passage, and bathymetry, Arctic Council, by Susie Harder
NORTHCOM’s online magazine, The Watch reports,
Adm. Rob Bauer, chair of NATO’s military committee … is concerned that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will try to convert its current shipping through Russia’s Northern Sea Route into a military presence in the Arctic.
“We know there are military scientists on board these ships,” Adm. Rob Bauer, who chairs NATO’s military committee, told Bloomberg News on 21 October 2023. “They haven’t said they won’t go there militarily.”
The US does have a strong geographic position, in that it holds one side of the narrow Bering Strait through which any shipping (including submarines) using the direct route between the Pacific and the Arctic must pass.
The question remains, is the US strong enough to hold and exploit its geographic advantage in the event of a major conflict.
PERU, 10.06.2023, Courtesy Photo
U.S. Coast Guard District 11
U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Alder raises the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization (SPRFMO) flag while patrolling the Eastern Pacific Ocean during Operation Southern Shield in October 2023. The Coast Guard recently completed the first high-seas boardings and inspections off the coast of Peru under a newly adopted multi-lateral agreement to monitor fishing and transshipment operations within the SPRFMO Convention Area, a region which encompasses nearly a quarter of the Earth’s high seas. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Kenneth Honore)
The Indo-Pacific Defense Forum reports,
“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the leading abuser of forced labor on fishing vessels globally, according to a new study…The United Nations International Labour Organization estimated that 128,000 fishers worldwide were trapped into forced labor aboard vessels, according to the 2022 “Global Estimates of Modern Slavery” report. That figure, however, “likely significantly understates the full extent of the problem. The isolation of the workplace makes it difficult to reach the fishers affected, while the extreme vulnerability that comes with work at sea, as well as the risk of repercussions, can lead to reluctance on the part of fishers to report and discuss abuses,” the report stated.
This practice goes hand in hand with Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing.
“The PRC’s plundering of coral, clams and fish is “theft on a grand scale, unrestricted warfare on natural resources,” Kevin Edes, a maritime security analyst for SeaLight, a project of Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, wrote on the SeaLight website in November 2023. Edes noted that Adm. Linda Fagan, commandant of the United States Coast Guard, described the PRC’s IUU fishing as “theft of a nation’s natural resources.”
USCGC Healy (WAGB-20) and the Norwegian Coast Guard Vessel Svalbard sail in formation while en route to conduct joint exercises in northern Norway in the Barents Sea. US Coast Guard Photo
Below is a news release from MyCG.
By Senior Chief Petty Officer Charly Tautfest, U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area
U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy (WAGB 20) and crew returned to its homeport Dec. 15, 2023, after circumnavigating the globe covering 25,000 miles in 159-days in support of the 2024 Arctic science missions.
The Healy and crew made port call stops in Seward and Kodiak, Alaska; Tromsø, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; Reykjavik, Iceland; Charleston, South Carolina; and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Additionally, Healy transited the Panama Canal on its return to Seattle.
“I am incredibly proud of the crew’s performance during our 159-day deployment,” said Capt. Michele Schallip, commanding officer of Healy. “The Healy continued demonstrating the nation’s commitment to the global science community as it seeks to improve understanding of the changing Arctic, particularly in ice-covered waters difficult to reach by most research vessels. This deployment also allowed for engagements and joint exercises with Canada, Norway, The Kingdom of Denmark, and Iceland, which promoted interoperability and cooperation in the Arctic region. The crew was able to share similarities and differences with crews of ships conducting similar work to Healy for their respective nations, a special opportunity to build on these long-standing partnerships.”
The cutter’s first mission supported the Office of Naval Research’s Arctic Mobile Observing System, deploying data collection buoys, subsurface gliders, and other sensors in ice-covered waters north of Alaska. The second mission was in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation. Healy and scientists recovered and replaced subsurface moorings with oceanographic instruments and sensors as part of the Nansen and Amundsen Basins Observational System in the East Siberian and Laptev Seas. In addition, the cutter hosted a team from the Coast Guard Research and Development Center, who conducted a broad portfolio of research to develop better techniques and technologies for operating in the Arctic environment.
While deployed, Healy conducted crew exchanges with crews from the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Sir Wilfred Laurier and the Icelandic Coast Guard Vessel Thor. The cutter and crew participated in a similar exchange with the Norwegian Coast Guard Vessel Svalbard and crew before joining in a multi-agency search and rescue exercise in Norway. In addition to these valuable engagements with Arctic partners, the cutter visited port cities on the Atlantic coast of the United States, increasing awareness of U.S. Coast Guard missions in the Arctic.
Healy is the Coast Guard’s only icebreaker designed specifically to support research and the nation’s sole surface presence routinely operating in the Arctic Ocean. Commissioned in 1999, the Healy is one of two active polar icebreakers.
The unmanned aircraft sensor payload capability is varied based on the Coast Guard’s desired mission and search conditions: MWIR 3.5 is a mid-wave infrared for thermal imaging capability, for use at night or periods of low visibility; EO-900 is a high-definition telescopic electro-optical (EO) imager to zoom in on targets at greater distance; and ViDAR is a visual detection and ranging wide-area optical search system that is a comprehensive autonomous detection solutions for EO video. Courtesy Photo.
Below is a news release from the Acquisitions Directorate (CG-9). The solicitation is for Group 2 or 3 UAS.
The minimum performance specifications are not particularly demanding, including:
There are some interesting specifications that may reflect how the systems are used.
This sounds very much like a continuation of the Scan Eagle operations already being conducted on National Security Cutters (here, here, here, here, and here). Forgive me if I point out that I recommended we try this system back in 2011, five years before we actually did.
Requirements for the MUAS include fully automated flight operations, a minimum 12 hours of flight time a day, ability to be launched and recovered from the host cutter flight deck, and ability to provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The MUAS must be capable of carrying a payload including electro-optical and infrared sensors and communications relay and be capable of providing surveillance, detection, classification and identification for all of the host cutter’s operational missions.
The Coast Guard plans to award one indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity firm fixed price contract. Initially, the contract will be used to continue UAS capability on the national security cutter (NSC) class; however, the contract could be used to support additional cutter classes in the future.
The full RFP is available here. Responses are due by 1 p.m. EST Jan. 11, 2024.
For more information: Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program page
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