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:
D. E. Reddick was good enough to point me to this site, which seems to have good information on various vessels that narcotics trafficers used or apparently intended to use to smuggle their product.
Some of the other pages on the site might also be interesting, particularly if you might be involved in harbor defense some day.
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?
Coasties frequently compare the size of their service to the New York City Police Force. The Marines think they are a small service, but Coast Guard is only one fifth their size. We usually only see comparisons with Navies in terms of how old our ships are, but how do we stack up in terms of numbers of people?
Would it surprise you to know that with over 42,000 active duty Coast Guardsmen, we have as many, or more people, than the British or French Navies?
The following list is not exhaustive and I can’t guarantee it’s 100% accurate (Wikipedia), but it is representative of the personnel numbers for some significant Navies around the world. As near as possible I’ve only included active duty. In some cases, even when not marked, the figure includes Marines.
U.S. Navy: 330,729
People’s Republic of China : 250,000
Russia: 161,000
India: 56,000
Japan: 46,000
(North) Korean People’s Army Naval Force: 46,000
France: 42,550
Spain: 47,300 including Marines
Republic of Korea (South): 68,000 including 27,000 Marines
Royal Navy: 39,100 including 7,500 Marines
Italy: 35,200
Chile: 25,000
Pakistan: 24,000
Republic of China: 23,000
Argentina: 17,200
Germany 17,000
Australia: 12,500
Netherlands: 10,000
Canada: 9,000
The US Navy is shrinking. We seem to be included in Navy planning more than in the past, but it still seems the services potential as a “naval reserve” frequently goes unrecognized and the potential of relatively modest expenditures to enhance that role are not considered.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 