Tag Archives: measures of effectiveness

The Navy’s Problems and Underway Time as a Measure of Availability

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USS John S. McCain

The US Naval Institute reports the Navy is acknowledging that they have too often let training slip, particularly among those ships forward deployed to Japan.

The Navy has been largely unable to say no to missions it’s been tasked to do in the Pacific despite not having dedicated training time or keeping up with required certifications, the chief of naval operations said in a Tuesday Senate Armed Services Committee, highlighting the bad confluence of high-demand, low resources and a “can-do attitude” within the service.

SASC Chairman Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in his opening statement that “the McCain (DDG-56) had expired training certifications in six out of the 10 key warfare mission areas. The Fitzgerald (DDG-62) had expired certifications in all 10 mission areas.”

The Coast Guard certainly has suffered its share of “Can-Do-i-tus”

I suspect much of the Navy’s overworking of their personnel is self-inflicted. Why?–Take a look at how much the Navy is underway as I will explain below.

We have all made those reports that apparently served no purpose; well intentioned reports that should have been limited to a specific period to answer a specific question; programs that are well intentioned but relatively unimportant that just crowd out what should be priority work. Even the Navy’s certification program may be unrealistically onerous. They may not have support, facilities, or funding, particularly those based in Japan, but at least I think they have time if they could get rid of the unnecessary.

How much is the Navy underway?

The USNI also provides a weekly update entitled “USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker” (https://news.usni.org/?s=USNI+News+Fleet+and+Marine+Tracker). Having looked at the last eleven weeks, less than a third (31%) of the Navy’s 276 “Battle Force” ships (including 58 MSC ships) are underway at any one time ranging from 81 to 90 ships (average 85.9). They do have a bit over a third of their ships are “deployed” (36.5%, 100.6 on average) but only 65.5% of those are underway. Ships that are not “deployed” are only underway 11.7% of the time.

The Coast Guard has historically used 185 days away from homeport criteria as a reasonable upper bound for scheduling ships, but that of course does not translate into mission days. It may include logistic stops, time in other ports, or even maintenance in a shipyard in a city other than the homeport. Congress has asked us to use another metric to measure availability. Perhaps percent of time underway is a good measure. Undoubtably it would be less than 50%, but I suspect we compare favorably with the Navy in percentage of time actually underway. We probably should make an effort to use the same criteria the Navy does.

Giving More than 100%–Part 3, The Results and Recommendations

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This is the third part of a detailed look at the “Annual Review of the United States Coast Guard’s Mission Performance (FY 2009)” from the office of the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security.  The report is available in Acrobat PDF format from DHS. (I’ll refer to it as the DHS IG report.)

Here, we are going to look at what I consider the informative and important part of the report, that was buried in Appendices C and D. My earlier commentary, parts 1 and 2 are here and here.

Much of Appendices C and D is lifted from the United States Coast Guard Fiscal Year 2009 Performance Report which is also available as a pdf (couldn’t get a link to work, but it’s on google). (I’ll refer to it as the CG report.) This document does a much better job of explaining the categories and the performance measures than the DHS IG report but only goes back to 2004. It does, however, also include the targets for FY 2010. It would probably be better if the IG had just put a cover sheet on the CG report and forwarded it.

Both reports provide the essential same results but their are some differences, which I will note.

24 measured are applied to the eleven Coast Guard missions. For FY 2009, the Coast Guard met 8 of 11 performance measures for its 6 non-DHS missions, and 6 of 13 performance measures for its 5 homeland security missions.

—THE GOOD NEWS—

“Non-Homeland Security” missions did well. Standards were high and even when targets were not met, we came close.

SAR: Percentage of people in imminent danger saved in the maritime environment. Target 76% Actual 77.3%
(I find the math used in this section hard to follow and somewhat questionable–there was a reported improvement over FY 2008, but deaths went up 20%, while total number in danger changed very little (see CG report p15,16))

Aids to Navigation:

  • Federal short-range aids to navigation availability. Target 97.5% Actual 98.0%
  • Five-year average number of collisions, allisions, and groundings. Target 1871 Actual 1878. This was very close to the target and the target is 390 fewer incidents than the target in 2001. I have no idea where they come up with this target, because it moves around getting lower from 2001 to 2007 and then going back up again.

Ice Operations: Number of days critical waterways are closed due to ice. Target 2 avg. and 8 severe. Actual 0. (Note there is no criteria for Polar Operations.) Success in this criteria is strongly influenced by weather.

Living Marine Resources: Percentage of Coast Guard boardings at sea in which no violations are detected when domestic fisheries regulations apply. Target 97% Actual 96.7%, a miss, but close enough to be insignificant.

Marine Safety: (None of these standards were in place until FY2008)

  • Five-year average number of commercial mariner deaths and injuries. Target <529 Actual 475.
  • Five-year average number of commercial passenger deaths and injuries. Target <251 Actual 228.
  • Five-year average number of recreational boating deaths and injuries. Target <4,248 Actual 4,038

Marine Environmental Protection: (Here too, these standards did not apply until FY2008)

  • Five Year average number of chemical discharge incidents per 100 million short tons shipped. Target <25.9 Actual 17.8.
  • Five year average number of oil spills per 100 million short tons shipped. Target <13.5 Actual. 11.8.
  • Percentage of oil removed otherwise mitigated as compared to the amount of oil released for reported spills of 100 gallons or more. Target 16%. Actual No data. this measure is to be replaced because it was found to be impractical.

—THE BAD NEWS—

Homeland Security missions did not fare so well. In general, even when targets were met, the targets were low.

Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security:

  • Critical infrastructure required visit rate. Target 100% Actual 74% (CG report says Actual 100%)
  • Percentage of risk reduction of maritime security risk resulting from Coast Guard efforts to prevent a weapon of mass destruction from entering the United States via maritime means. Target 3% Actual 17%.
  • Percent of reduction of all maritime security risk subject to Coast Guard influence. Target  21% Actual 31% (Why is the target being lowered to 19% for 2010?)
  • Percentage of reduction of maritime security risk resulting from Coast Guard efforts to prevent a terrorist entering the United States vial maritime means. Target 21% Actual 42%.
  • Number of Transportation  Workers Identification Credential (TWIC) spot checks. Target 94,500 Actual 39,100
  • Risk reduction due to consequence management. Target 6% Actual 9%
  • High Capacity passenger vessel required escort rate. Target 100% Actual 53%.

Drug Interdiction (This standard was not applied until FY2009): Removal rate for cocaine from noncommercial vessels in a maritime transit zone. Target 15.7% Actual 15%. (Probably reasonably accurate and probably about as good as we can hope for, but not good enough to truly discourage the smugglers.)

Undocumented Migrant Interdiction:

  • Percentage of undocumented migrants who attempt to enter the US via maritime routes “that are interdicted” Target 69.9% Actual 84.4%
  • (In the CG report there was a second measure: Percent of Undocumented Migrants who attempt to enter the US via maritime routes interdicted by the Coast Guard. Target 50% Actual 37.5%. Could it be the first isn’t really a CG performance measure. And why does this standard go down in 2010?)

Defense Readiness: These three measures are to be replaced next year.

  • Defense readiness of patrol boats. Target 100% Actual 94%
  • Defense Readiness of Port Security Units. Target 100% Actual 19.8%
  • Percentage of time that Coast Guard assets included in the Combatant Commander Operational Plans are ready at a Status of Resources and Training System (SORTS) rating of 2 or better. Target 100% Actual 44%
  • (CG report has an additional measure. Defense Readiness of High Endurance Cutters Target 100% Actual 20.7 This shows a consistent decline from 98.5% on FY2004)

Other Law Enforcement (Foreign Fisheries Enforcement):

  • Number of incursions into the U. S. Exclusive Economic Zone. Target <195 Actual 112
  • The CG report has a second performance measure, Interdiction rate of foreign vessels detected violating the U. S. EEZ. Target 9% Actual 14.3%

—OTHER MEASURES—

Some of the things we did not see measured, that we might want to get a handle on:

  • Safety Inspections and Training for crews of foreign flag oil rigs operating in our EEZ. (Why do we let foreign flag rigs drill in our EEZ anyway?)
  • Ice Operations: We need to have separate out Polar operations. Right now it is getting lost in measures of domestic icebreaking.
  • Percent sorties and return to port by major USN units such as CVNs, SSBNs, big deck amphibs escorted
  • Percent of ships carrying “Certain Dangerous Cargoes (CDCs) escorted
  • Percent of high interest vessels boarded
  • Percent maritime container traffic checked
  • Effectiveness of the Maritime Domain Awareness systems.

—OTHER THOUGHTS—

We really need to consider Domain Awareness for vessels under 300 tons too. Even sailboats can bring in some nasty weapons.

The Department needs to see that their future is in disaster preparedness from whatever cause. Hopefully the terror threat will fade. They need to see, that the “non-DHS missions” complementary DHS missions. When we have a disaster, we need to do SAR and restore Aids to Navigation. Icebreaking may be necessary to get access to a disaster or to prevent one, and environmental disasters are still disasters.

The Coast Guard needs to embrace the DHS missions and recognize that the greater capability, that we really do need to do these missions, also means greater capability to do traditional missions. That Long Rang Identification and Tracking (LRIT) will help SAR is just one example. More boats, more aircraft, more command, control, communications, information, and reconnaissance systems translate to doing all our missions better. To get those assets, we need to make our case, and it can only be made on the basis of DHS missions.

Congress needs to recognize that we are an Armed Service. They don’t expect to see a product out of the Air Force every year. It’s buying insurance. Most of the time, there is no product. Counter terrorism missions are dealing with statistically unlikely, but high impact events. Congress and DHS have a hard time dealing with a multi-purpose organization. From year to year they don’t know what we will be doing because we don’t know either. Mariel Boatlift, Katrina, Haiti, Deepwater Horizon, what’s next? We don’t know!

When it comes time to decide the Coast Guard budget, I would suggest Congress take a different approach. Consider return on investment. If you like the return you are getting from the Coast Guard now, invest more.  Don’t say, “Agency ‘X’ isn’t working, we need to put more money into that.” “The Coast Guard, is doing a good job with their current budget so we don’t need to give them any more.” I don’t quote scripture very often. I’m not religious, but there is some wisdom there. Check out the story of the “good and faithful servant” Mathew 25:14-30.

Giving More than 100%–Part 2, Missions and Resource Hours

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This is a continuation of a look at a report the Department of Homeland Security presented to Congress regarding Coast Guard mission performance begun in part one.

The report divides the Coast Guard’s 11 missions into Department of Homeland Security Missions and Non-Homeland Security missions as follows (percent of hours associated with each mission is in parenthesis):

Homeland security missions include:

  • Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security (25.25%)
  • Drug Interdiction (11.22%)
  • Migrant Interdiction (10.60%)
  • Defense Readiness (7.82%)
  • Other Law Enforcement (foreign fisheries enforcement) (0.93%)

Non-Homeland Security Missions include:

  • Marine Safety (7.32%)
  • Search and Rescue (8.16%)
  • Aids-to-Navigation (14.05%)
  • Living Marine Resources (domestic fisheries enforcement) (13.12%)
  • Marine Environmental Protection (0.41%)
  • Ice Operations (1.12%)

The first thing you may notice is that the “Homeland Security Missions” were Coast Guard missions long before the creation of DHS.
This distinction is artificial. DHS seems fixated on terrorism. Once the DHS is reconciled to the fact that they are the department responsible for disaster prevention, response, and mitigation regardless of whether that disaster is natural, accidental, or a terrorist attack, then they will see that the remaining Coast Guard missions are also to some extent DHS missions.  (Notably the previous year when GAO testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,  “Drug Interdiction” and “Other Law Enforcement” were listed as non-homeland security missions.)

Marine Safety and AtoN help prevent accidental disasters. Living Marine Resources and MEP help prevent environmental disasters. Any SAR case is at least a small scale disaster for those involved. SAR can be a major part of disaster mitigation as in the case of Katrina or Haiti. The SAR organization is the frequently the basis for post disaster communications. Even Ice Operations can mitigate the possibility of flooding by preventing the accumulation of water behind Ice dams that may release catastrophically–all good DHS missions.

As noted in part 1, the report seems to miss a signifiant part of the Coast Guard’s operation, but for now lets look at what it does show. We will look at Measures of effectiveness later.

General:

The report actually covers the entire period from 2001 to the present and compares current operations with a baseline established on the basis of eight quarters prior to 9/11. One important item is that although total resource hours declined since 2005, hours are still up considerably compared to pre-9/11 levels, up from a little less than 500,000 hours to 717,992 hours, so a decline in percentage doesn’t necessarily reflect a decline in activity.

Homeland Security Resource Hours:

Hours increased significantly as might be expected, 115%, from a baseline of a bit less than 200,000  to 400,742.

Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security: By far the greatest percentage of hours (181,264 hours/25.25%) was taken by ports, waterways and coastal security missions. Resource utilization is up ten fold from the baseline after peaking in 2003/4/5.

  • So what are these Cutters and aircraft doing? Mostly patrolling.
  • Did we do patrolling before? Yes.
  • So if they saw an oil spill, a SAR case, or a suspected drug smuggler, would they ignore it? No.

So maybe we ought to add another 25.25% to MEP, another 25.25% to SAR, and another 25.25% to Drug interdiction. Still do we patrol enough? The vessel and aircraft related measures of effectiveness targets are being exceeded. But the targets are abominably low, considering we are dealing with events with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Drug Interdiction: Hours are down 34% from the pre-9/11 baseline from a little over 120,000 down to 80,564. Here we are getting substantial help from DOD but that doesn’t show up in the hours, and the efforts of our LEDETS, like those of the small boats, are also not reflected by the resource hour measure.

Undocumented Migrant Interdiction: Up more than 150%  to 76,100 hours. Reportedly we are achieving record high interdiction rates.

Defense Readiness: Hours are up considerably, to 56,128 hours or 7.82% but the baseline was ridiculously low at what looks like less than 7,000 hours or less than 300 unit days. The results have been poor with little improvement expected until the National Security Cutters and Fast Response Cutters replace the 378s and 110s.

Other Law Enforcement: (6,686 hours 0.93%) The number of hours has bounced around quite a bit by percentage (now 19.2% below the baseline). The entire effort is less than 280 unit days, but the service is exceeding its performance goal by a wide margin.

Non-homeland security

Non-Homeland Security hours (317,250 hours or 44.18%) dropped below the baseline in 2002/2003/2004 but are currently slightly above the baseline.

Search and Rescue: SAR Hours are down more than a quarter, from over 80,000 to 58,607 hours or 8.16%. Even so, we are meeting our performance objectives. SAR hours are demand driven. In 2005, hours were still below baseline, but bumped up 14.8% from 2004 as a result of Katrina. Hopefully we will be able to do more rescuing and less searching as a result of innovations like Rescue 21. The depressed economy may have a role here too.  If we were a SAR only organization we would have to fly or get underway just to train and maintain proficiency. As it is, much of the proficiency training is done working on other missions, so perhaps we should credit a few more percentage points to the hours we spend on SAR.

Marine Safety (52,579 hours 7.2%): The Coast Guard did not even report commitment of resource hours to Marine Safety before 2005. I’m still not sure what we are doing with this much cutter and aircraft time that effects the number of commercial mariner and commercials passenger deaths or injuries (two of the three measures of effectiveness) Most of these hours must go to Recreational Boating Safety (the third measure of effectiveness). This may be another way to count patrol hours.

Aids to Navigation: AtoN hours show a drop from the baseline of about 10% to 1000,904 hours, but it is still 14.05% of the current total. Improved reliability of aids appears to have made this possible without a drop in service.

Ice Ops (8,033 hours/1.12%): This category is primarily a reflection of ice conditions on the Great Lakes and navigable waterways that can fluctuate substantially year to year. It says very little about our Arctic capabilities, long in decline.

Living Marine Resources (94,178 hours/13.12%): Hours declined after 9/11 but now slightly exceed pre-9/11 baseline.

Marine Environmental Protection (MEP) (2,949 hours/0.41%): Like Marine Safety, MEP recorded no resource hours committed before 2005. Hours are down over 40% since 2005, but in FY2009 we exceeded our goals for prevention of chemicals and oil discharges per units shipped. There were no performance measures specifically related to safety of or pollution from offshore wells. I suspect most MEP work is not done by the cutters and aircraft included in this report, but that we will see a big increase in MEP hours when figures come out for FY2010. In the minds of most people, fisheries enforcement, both “Living Marine Resources” (domestic fisheries) and “Other Law Enforcement” (foreign fisheries) is a form of “Marine Environmental Protection.” Perhaps we need to group them with regulation of the chemical and petroleum industries and pollution clean-up under an expanded Marine Environmental Protection Program, so that there will be a better appreciation of what the service does.

Conclusion:

Traditional Coast Guard missions continue within the Department of Homeland Security. They have not been neglected.

For the Coast Guard to have gone from less than 500,000 resource hours to consistently over 700,000 hours, a more than 40% increase, when there has been no substantial increase in assets and as the average age of the assets increased has got to be a strain.

Coming in Part 3: Performance Measures and Where the Problems are.

Giving More Than 100%–Part 1, Report of USCG Mission Performance

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The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security recently completed his “Annual Review of the United States Coast Guard’s Mission Performance (FY 2009)”.  The final report is available in Acrobat PDF format from DHS.

I’ve seen some dismay expressed over the results, particularly with regard to the allocation of resources, while Appendices C and D which discuss how the Coast Guard is meeting its measures of effectiveness have been largely ignored. These are the types of comments I have seen:

  • That the Coast Guard was no longer a SAR organization, because we spend only 8.16% of our resource hours on SAR.
  • That we were not interested in Marine Environmental Protection because resource hours have dropped to 0.41% of our total.
  • That the Coast Guard is neglecting its traditional missions because for the eighth consecutive year, the Coast Guard dedicated more resource hours to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) missions than to non-homeland security missions, confirmed because the gap between DHS and non-DHS missions performed by the Coast Guard increased from 10 percent in FY2008 to 12 percent in 2009.

The utility of  the resource allocation information provided is questionable at best. Frankly, I think it is a fraud perpetrated on the Congress at their own behest. That they accept it in this form doesn’t reflect well on Congress, and that it is offered in this way suggests that the Department of Homeland Security and the US Coast Guard have a low opinion of Congress’ attention span.

This report claims to address the annual review of the United States Coast Guard’ s mission performance required by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. When the Department of Homeland Security was created, there was a concern that traditional missions would get short shrift, so an annual report was required to make sure non-Homeland Security missions were not being neglected. A laudable goal, but is the percentage of resource hours as provided a meaningful measure?

  • Resource hours, as used here, lump together utilization of cutters, boats, and aircraft as if they were interchangeable.
  • It gives no credit to work done that doesn’t require an aircraft, cutter, or boat.
  • Apparently hours for small boats and some small cutters, are not included (see below).
  • It simply doesn’t reflect how the Coast Guard  uses its money or manpower.

Here is how the report defines “Resource Hours”:

“Resource Hours.  The Coast Guard uses resource hours— generally, the number of flight hours (for aircraft) and underway hours (for boats and cutters) used to carry out a specific mission— to determine the amount of time expended on each of its non-homeland security and homeland security missions.  During our review, we obtained data on the total number of resource hours reported by the Coast Guard from a baseline of pre-September 11, 2001 data, through Fiscal Year (FY) 2009.  The Coast Guard– calculated baseline is an annual average of resource hours based on eight FY quarters preceding September 11, 2001.  We did not verify the resource hour data reported by the Coast Guard, nor did we validate whether the Coast Guard accurately classified resource hours used for each mission.  We assessed total resource hours for the 11 individual missions in order to identify the changes in each.”

Notice there is no definition of which units are included, yet it leaves the impression that all boats are included.  The report, however, indicates that the Coast Guard expended approximately 700,000 resource hours in FY2009.  That sounds like a lot, but if you divide by the number of hours in a year you get only about 80 resource years.  We have over 200 vessels 87 feet and larger, and over 200 aircraft.  They alone should easily account for 80 resource years.  This means that our approximately 2,000 boats and cutters smaller than 87 feet are unaccounted for and were not considered.  That leaves a lot of the Coast Guard’s work uncredited.

I will be revisiting this subject to discuss the resource allocation indicated by the report and the measures of effectiveness.