Tag Archives: nsc

How Much Does National Security Cutter #5 Cost?

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It’s always hard to figure out how much a ship costs, and compare prices, but I was a bit alarmed when I saw this report from the Navy Times concerning the FY2012 budget, “$615 million of the $1.4 billion set aside in the request for acquisitions will go to the fifth NSC.” I add this to the $89M for long lead time items in the previous budget, and I get $714M for NSC #5. Can this be right? Wasn’t the forth NSC $480M? The Navy’s latest contract for the admittedly smaller but high tech, LCSs came in at $440M each.

When we contracted for number four it was “fixed price with incentive” with an option for number five. Did they really give us a price of $480M for #4 and and an option for #5 of $714M? Or had we already paid for long lead time items on #4 as well. I’m so confused.

Manning Ships, Navy Acknowledges Mistake, Will the Coast Guard?

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The Navy has admitted they made a mistake by attempting to minimize the manning of their ships using a concept called “Optimal Manning.” As unfortunate as the mistake may have been–and it has resulted in a lot of pain and may have weakened the service for years to come–poor morale and broken ships–at least now it has been acknowledged. There has been some soul searching about how the mistake was made. The general consensus seems to be that a new generation of leaders was absolutely positive they have evolved to be smarter than those that went before, and since their solution is so obviously superior, there is no need to test it on a small scale be for applying it service wide.

Has the Coast Guard made a similar mistake in attempting to replace twelfve 378s with only eight National Security Cutters, based on an untried concept called “Crew Rotation Concept (CRC)?” Unlike the Navy’s mistake, if we have made a mistake in adopting this concept, it cannot be quickly reversed by moving billets ashore back afloat.

Continue reading →

Comparing Apples and Oranges–Ships and Cars

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Ran across a statement in gCaptain that the 378s had cost $15M each (haven’t been able to find it again). I went looking for confirmation and found another source that listed the cost as $16-20M. In any case, comparing that range, with the range of costs for the National Security Cutters suggests that the price for these admittedly nicer ships is 30 times that of the ships they are replacing.

I bought my first new car in 1971, about the same time the Coast Guard was buying 378s. It cost me $2004 for a Datsun 510, a then technically advanced, but small economy car. (Upper middle-class performance cars like the GTO were going for about $3,500) Cars in the same economy car market segment now cost seven to ten times what my ’71 cost. In fact if you look hard you can find cars (base models of the Nissan Versa or Hundai Accent) that are better in every way and only cost five times as much.

Using this inflation calculator, inflation based on the CPI from January 1971 to January 2010 was 444.44% meaning, costs are about five and a half times what they were in 1971.

Yes the NSC is better equipped and larger than the 378s, but cars in the same market segments today are also about 25-50% larger, faster, safer, have more gadgets, and even get better gas mileage. My Datsun had bias ply tires, a four speed manual transmission,rubber floor mats instead of carpeting, no power windows, no air conditioning, an AM radio, the glass was not tinted, seat covering material was a sticky vinyl, and not even a rear window defogger.

Cars and ships are not exactly analogous, but it is hard to see how the price has gone up 30 times. The high prices for the NSC are not just a Coast Guard problem. In fact, on a cost per ton basis, the price for the forth NSC, $480M, is lower than that for the Littoral Combat Ships in the recent 20 ship buy that seems to have been viewed as a shewd deal.

Looks like there is plenty of room for efficiency improvements in the shipbuilding industry.

All the fault may not be with the ship builders. The Coast Guard has been working with interested builders in preparation for the Offshore Patrol Cutter project. Hopefully they are talking about how to work the price down to something more reasonable.

How We Got in This Mess-A Short History of CG Shipbuilding

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Over the last 60 years the Coast Guard has typically fielded about 45 large patrol cutters, 1000 tons or greater (Is the Fleet Shrinking?) with as many as 36 WMECs. Theoretically we could build an average of 1.5 ships a year and maintain a fleet with an average age of about 15  years with progressive improvements introduced based on experience. This may be something to work toward, but it hasn’t been working that way. The Coast Guard’s current fleet is largely the product of two great spasms of ship building, WWII and one beginning in the 60s, a smaller bump in the 80’s, and long periods when no ships were built.

The last Lake class 255ft WPG/WHEC entered service in 1946. In the 64 years since then, this is the record of Patrol Cutter construction.

  • 1947-1963 (17 years) no new construction patrol cutters entered service. The service did acquire ex-Navy destroyer escorts (what would now be called frigates), 311 foot Barnegat Class former seaplane and torpedo boat tenders, 213 foot former submarine rescue vessels, and 205 foot former fleet tugs.
  • 1964-1972 (9 years) The 16 Reliance class 210s, built in four different yards, including five by the Coast Guard Yard, entered service 1964-1969. The 12 Hamilton Class 378s, all built at Avondale, entered  service 1967-1972. (The original plan was for 36 378s.) (28 ships/9 years=3.11 ships/year)
  • 1973-1982 (10 years) no new construction patrol cutters entered service.
  • 1983-1990 (8 years) The 13 Bear class 270s entered service between 1983 and 1990. (13 ships/8 years=1.625 ships/yr)
  • 1991-2007 (17 years) no new construction patrol cutters entered service.
  • 2008 Bertholf entered service
  • 2009 no new construction cutters entered service.
  • 2010 Waesche entered service.

45 of 64 years, no new construction patrol cutters entered service. All 43 new construction ships (210s, 378s, 270s, NSCs) were delivered in only 19 years. The current rate of construction (two ships in three years) is less than the minimum average long term construction rate (1.5 ships/year).

The program begun in the 60s was a timely effort to replace the ships built in WWII and earlier, unfortunately it was stopped short of completing their replacement.

In 1990 when construction of the 270s stopped, we still had 10 WMECs that dated from WWII: Storis, three 213s, three 205s, and three 180 ft former WLBs. Logically we should have continued building two ships a year to replace these. (In 1991 they were all at least 46 years old.) They would have all been replaced by 1995. Continuing two ships a year, the first 210s could have been replaced in 1996. When replaced, they would have all been at least 32 years old. Continuing two ship a year we could have replaced all the 210s and 378s by 2009. The first replacement for the 270s should have been contracted in 2010 to enter service in 2013.

We had an opportunity to have an orderly replacement program, but we blew it, beginning approximately FY87/88, when we failed to continue building ship, and let our engineering expertise atrophy.

Selling (and Saving) the Offshore Patrol Cutter Project

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Since seeing indications the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) program may be in jeopardy (here and here), I’ve been thinking about how the program might be “sold.” There are a number of approaches that might be considered.

Conceptual Rendering of the OPC

It Is a Money Saver

Get it started as an alternative to the NSC. As discussed in an earlier post (Rethinking the New Cutter Programs), we can get more new cutters on line more quickly if we truncated the NSC program at six and started the OPC program two years earlier. This could also be sold as a money saving step, in that we can probably get two OPCs for little more than the price of one NSC. There is very little the NSC can do that the OPC can’t. (If we include the features suggested below, the OPC will be able to do things the NSC cannot-further justifying the change.) This gets us “over-the-hump” of starting the program. Having built the first ships of the class it will be much harder to kill the project and much easier to revive it, if interrupted. The winning shipyard and their legislative representatives will work to keep the project going.  It will also mean the MECs and one HEC will be retiring at least a year earlier–the 210s will only be 54 to 56 years old.

Make the Consequences of Not Building Them Clear

Publish the decommissioning schedule. This should make the news in all the Congressional districts that will loose assets.

What is the performance difference. Publish an addendum to the latest “United States Coast Guard Fiscal Year 20XX Performance Report” showing the decrease in performance if there had been no MECs.

Publish a plan to scale back or delete missions if the the MECs are not replaced.

Pork with a Purpose:

An infrastructure (shipyard) program. It might be more expensive, but Congress can decide they want to spread the work around. They have been doing this, almost since the day the republic was formed. It would certainly be reasonable to say they wanted the construction contracted to more than one yard, perhaps even one West Coast, one East Coast, one Gulf Coast or some other split. As a stimulus program that also delivers a tangible good, building four a year, two each on the West and East Coasts would not be unreasonable. That this spreads the support base for the program wouldn’t hurt either. It might even promote some competition in the long term.

Mobilize our Allies

Mobilize the shipyards that hope to win contracts. They have political clout.

Get the fishing industry on our side. Some times they don’t like us, but we keep the foreign competitors out, and when there is a medical emergency or their boat starts sinking they’re mighty happy we are around.

Mobile the Navy League. Despite the name, this organization is a great ally of the Coast Guard as well, but I’ve yet to see us make the case for the OPC in the pages of their magazine.

Get the Navy to endorse the program. Not sure they will want to, but there are lots of reasons they should (Offshore Patrol Cutters, Why the Navy Should Support the Program), particularly if the design chosen has the potential to be a useful “low-end” warship. These are exactly the types of ships needed for partnership station, and they are the kind of ships many of our allies should include in their Navies and Coast Guards through Foreign Military Sales.

Strengthen the National Defense Angle

Bring back the ASW mission. Adding a passive towed array to the ship could help in our law enforcement mission, improving the chances of  detecting and tracking semi-submersibles, but the additional military capability could also make the ship easier to justify. Beyond the support for a passive sonar usable for law enforcement, the only additions needed for a credible ASW capability would be having magazine and other storage space for torpedoes, sono-buoys, etc. to support Navy MH-60R helicopters that would prosecute contacts. There is more than enough reason for rejuvenating American ASW assets. As illogical as a US/Chinese confrontation would appear, they have been acting increasingly bellicose. The Chinese Navy already has more submarines than the Germans had at the beginning of WWII, the largest submarine force in the Pacific, while we and our allies have far fewer escort ships than any time in at least the last 70 years. There seems to be a particular need for escort ships for the underway replenishment ships, normally unarmed and unescorted, as they move from the ports where they load their supplies, to the areas where they deliver them to forward deployed task forces. OPCs could perform that mission.

Use the LCS Module Concept. This is ideal for the Coast Guard because it makes the ships adaptable for war time roles without requiring the Coast Guard to maintain either the equipment or the people. It also potentially gives the ships greater flexibility to perform peacetime roles. This requires very little more than some open space, foundations, and bringing up connections for utilities.

The Back Story

As an alternative to the LCS. Not that we can take this as an official line, but if the LCS program continues to draw criticism, particularly if the OPCs are designed to accept mission modules, it is something friends of the Coast Guard can suggest. It has been suggested in the past:

On 5 July 2009, Retired U.S. Navy Adm. James Lyons, former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations, and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, suggested the LCS “program should return to its original target of $220 million per ship and combine with the U.S. Coast Guard to build a dual-purpose ship with a credible integral combat system that can meet limited warfare requirements. This very different ship should be built in large numbers as part of the coming Ocean Patrol Cutter Program…Such a change would achieve huge savings for both the Navy and the Coast Guard tied to large production numbers. The funding saved from canceling the LCS could be used to procure the most capable high-end combatant ship with margins enough to allow future modernization.” –This could ally us with those in the Navy who would like to divert Navy money from the LCS program to other purposes.

Coming Soon-How We Got In this Mess


Virtual Tour Two New French Naval Vessels

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They are not as well done as the virtual tour of the National Security Cutter Bertholf we found earlier but you might find them interesting.

The two ships are FS Mistral, a 21,300 ton amphibious assault ship (LPH), and FS Forbin, a 7,050 ton AAW missile frigate. The Mistral class have gained some ill fame lately because the Russians are buying four of them, two to be built in France and two to be built in Russia with French help and technology transfer.

If you haven’t seen it there is also a small virtual tour of the Great Lakes icebreaker Mackinaw.

Continuing Resolution, Changes in the Wind

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Ryan Erickson is reporting that a continuing resolution has passed the house and will now go to the Senate. (Hopefully  the Federal Government won’t have to shutdown.) In addition to authorizing expenditures, included in the bill is language that will allow the Coast Guard to make some changes, that include decommissioning three ships.

“…the Coast Guard may decommission one Medium Endurance Cutter, two High Endurance Cutters, four HU–25 aircraft, the Maritime Intelligence Fusion Center, and one Maritime Safety and Security Team, and make staffing changes at the Coast Guard Investigative Service…”

There is more detail in Ryan’s article, but a couple of numbers stood our for me.

“…$73,200,000 shall be for vessels, small boats, critical infrastructure and related equipment…” in the AC&I budget, and additionally

… $1,191,502,000 shall be for the Integrated Deepwater Systems program…of the funds made available for the Integrated Deepwater Systems program, $103,000,000 is for aircraft and $933,002,000 is for surface ships.” So there is $155.5M in the Deepwater Budget that is not for aircraft or ships?

Presumably the Deepwater money for surface ships includes exercising the option for the fifth National Security Cutter (about $480M based on the last award) and four more Fast Response Cutters, #9-12 (about $166M based on the last award)

That would still leave about $287M. Could it be that the programs are accelerating? Can someone fill us in?

Offshore Patrol Cutter–Why? The Short Answer

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Yesterday I outlined some basic questions that have to be answered to justify the OPC program. I’m sure there questions have already been answered in one form or another, but we need to make sure the answers are widely understood and we need to apply whatever influence we may have to help the program along.

We have already gotten some good answers in the comment section, and I’m going to make my own stab at it. I’ll answer each of my questions in detail later, I’m still polishing them, but first, I’d like to provide basic justification for our large cutters.

Why do we need them?

The US EEZ is roughly 3.7 million square nautical miles, about 30% more than the entire land area of the United States. The Coast Guard is the “Department of Emergency Services” for the entire area–fire, flooding, medical, and the only law. Only a small portion of the area can be serviced by patrol boats, so perhaps 3 million square nautical miles must be patrolled by larger cutters. A fleet of approximately 40 cutters can keep no more than about 20 on patrol at any one time, so each  cutter is patrols an average of about 150,000 square nautical miles. On average they would be 1,000 miles apart. Because we don’t distribute the ships evenly, in fact, many times they are closer together in areas of interest, but in other areas the separation is even greater.

If we decide not to build these ships, or some sort of large cutter, we will see a rapid decline in our patrol forces beginning in 2020 running down to a force of only the National Security Cutters with typically no more than four cutters on patrol to cover the entire area.

American citizens are on those waters and they deserve and rightfully expect a minimum level of protection.

The nation and the international community take many of the things we do for granted, but like in the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” consider what that area would be like if there were no large cutters. Some of the things that don’t happen because cutters have been there:

  • Fleets of foreign fishing vessels don’t deplete our fishing stocks
  • Pirates don’t terrorize fishermen and pleasure boaters
  • Fisherman don’t die of treatable injuries
  • Ships don’t pollute indiscriminately

(Somehow the conspiracy theorist in me suspects that the movement to end the OPC program is a result of elements profiting from the NSC, wanting to make sure the NSC program is not truncated in favor of more much cheaper OPCs. If successful, we might even see a continuation of the NSC program.)

China Building Six Major Cutters a Year–How many are Enough?

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China Defense Blog is reporting “In order to improve the capacity of marine law enforcement and safeguard marine rights, China plans to build 30 vessels for marine law enforcement in the next five years.” The source is here, but the blog has pictures, as well the complete text, while the source has none.

I found this quotation puzzling:

“China has a vast area of seas, but the number and the tonnage of vessels for marine law enforcement are both small. China’s fleet does not meet the standard of one vessel per 1,000 square kilometers (emphasis applied) and there is a huge gap compared to other developed countries, said Li Lixin, director of South China Sea Branch of State Oceanic Administration of China, on Monday.”

For comparison, from Wikipedia:

The US has the largest EEZ in the world: 11,351,000 sq km

Japan EEZ: 4,479,358 sq km

China’s EEZ is much smaller, 877,019 sq km. Even adding the EEZ of Taiwan and other areas claimed by China, but disputed by others (3,000,000 sq km) the total is 3,877,019 sq km.

Applying a one patrol vessel to 1,000 sq km would mean the USCG should have 11,351 cutters. In fact we have 43 patrol cutters over 1000 tons or about 1 per 264,000 sq km. If the Chinese had a ship to patrol area ratio like ours, they would only need three or four ships. Clearly there is a disconnect here.

We talked a bit about a comparison of the Japanese Coast Guard and their Chinese counterparts here, and it is clearly the Japanese they are comparing themselves to.  There is a pretty good article on the various agencies the Chinese use to do maritime law enforcement missions here.

The other nations with the largest EEZs are Australia, France, Russia. Japan, with the 9th largest EEZ, has the largest fleet of cruising cutters in the world. China’s EEZ is 32nd in size.

Still I think the Chinese may be on to something in terms of justifying their fleet. Maybe we ought to do some sort of resource to area of responsibility comparison. We know that our EEZs in the Southwest Pacific and Arctic are under served.

Progress on the National Security Cutters

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In October, I questioned why there seemed so be so little progress on the National Security Cutters.

In fact there has been a significant milestone. Monday the contract for the fourth National Security Cutter was awarded and the contract includes an option on the fifth ship. The Acquisition Directorate said , “The contract is a fixed price incentive type. It is the first National Security Cutter production contract to be awarded directly to the shipbuilder, outside of the Integrated Coast Guard Systems commercial lead-system integrator contract framework.  The Coast Guard is the Systems Integrator for its recapitalization programs and is responsible for their management and execution.”

Rhode Islander hears from a relative, “Some long lead time equipments for NSC-4  (HAMILTON) have already been delivered to NORTHROP GRUMMAN SHIPYARD  (NGSB),  including the 2 main engines  (MTU), all 3 caterpillar generators, all the reduction gears, the air conditioners, and pieces of the weapons systems.   Therefore, you can conclude that NGSB should be ready to begin cutting steel on NSC-4 within a couple of months at the latest.   Meanwhile,  NSC-3 is proceeding well with key milestones such as generator light off and main engine light off occurring before Spring 2011, and Sea Trials still scheduled for latter next summer.   Final delivery of STRATTON (WMSL-752) to the active duty Coast Guard crew should happen in less than a year.”

Hopefully, we won’t have to wait four years for HAMILTON (WMSL 753) to be delivered and given that the option has already been negotiated that number 5, JAMES (WMSL 754) will follow close behind.