Dangerous Waters

Sea Power, Aug 2005 by Munns, David W

Coast Guard funds intended for a new fleet are being eaten away by the growing costs of patching up existing ships and planes

Repair Costs Rocket Upward

By 2006, repairs to existing ships will siphon off 25 percent of Deepwater's budget.

* Senators warn that nurturing old ships and planes "will soon cripple the Deepwater program."

* New intelligence and communications systems are central features of the Coast Guard's revised procurement plan.

* Level of congressional support remains uncertain.

The Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater System (IDS) faces a critical turning point in its development during the next several months. Funding decisions by Congress and the White House this year will determine, in large part, whether the service will be able to deploy new ships, aircraft and intelligence systems at a rate fast enough to outpace the rapid decline of its existing fleet.

The situation is so acute that 14 senators, seven Republicans and seven Democrats, recently warned House and Senate subcommittees on homeland security that, if "Deepwater funding is not significantly increased in the near term to accelerate the replacement systems, legacy sustainment costs will soon cripple the Deepwater program."

The Coast Guard's existing fleet is wearing out faster than new Deepwater resources can be brought on line. To make the situation worse, the cost of maintaining old, or legacy, Coast Guard cutters and aircraft is rising rapidly, and those costs come out of the annual budget for Deepwater.

The 14 senators, including Republicans Trent Lott of Mississippi and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Democrats Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, noted in their April 8 letter that in fiscal 2003, 7 percent of Deepwater funding was spent to repair the Coast Guard's existing fleet. By fiscal 2006, that figure will have risen to 25 percent of the total Deepwater budget, or $240 million.

The Coast Guard projects for future years a similarly high percentage of funds to be spent on maintenance of aging assets, including ships with hull breeches and faulty helicopters that are being re-engined on an emergency basis.

At a Senate hearing in June, Snowe, chairwoman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Fisheries and the Coast Guard, said the program is venturing into dangerous waters.

"The cold hard truth remains that the Coast Guard is experiencing a record number of casualties and mishaps like never seen before, and it is becoming simply unsafe for our young men and women to serve aboard these aging assets. Catastrophic engine failures and main space casualties have risen at an alarming rate in the fleet," yet, she added, the service "is relying more and more on simply upgrading its legacy assets, at a time when these old assets are failing more frequently."

To deal with this conundrum, the senators recommended in their letter that Deepwater should be funded at $1.66 billion in fiscal 2006, far above the $966 million requested by the Bush administration.

John A. Panneton, national president of the Navy League, told Seapower, "Funding for Deepwater should be at least $ 1 billion annually, and that is in 2005 dollars. A quantum increase in funding this year is imperative. Otherwise, we're going to be walking backwards with this program, and our nation will suffer for it."

Created in 1998 as a response to shortcomings in Coast Guard resource availability and capability, IDS initially was the centerpiece of its efforts to improve readiness by delivering platforms, such as surface and aviation assets and communications and logistics systerns. Working with industry, the Deepwater program office had completed its initial assessments and a time-line for the program less than three months prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The attacks shifted the Coast Guard's focus on safe and efficient use of America's waterways to a new role as the law enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland security. In March of this year, Deepwater offered a revised plan to Congress that modified its original asset requests; included retention, upgrades and conversion of its aging fleet as part of the final asset tally; and sought advanced delivery of its Fast Response Cutter, a high-tech 150-foot fast patrol vessel, and the Offshore Patrol Cutter, a mediumendurance cutter designed to handle more distant patrols, to address post-9/11 needs.

The revised IDS plan proposed a complete conversion, upgrade and modernization of all aviation inventories; cutting aviation assets such as a Bell Agusta helicopter and using existing assets in its place; acquiring fewer unmanned aerial vehicles in lieu of reliable future assets that will have the ability to operate in a variety of long-range surveillance, response and recovery, and transport scenarios; and using composite materials in the hulls of some of its new cutters.

However, top leaders, including Adm. Thomas H. Collins, Coast Guard commandant, assert that the major change is not just new ships and aircraft but an integrated approach to upgrading assets while transitioning to more capable platforms with improved command, control, communications and computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR), and innovative logistics support systems.