By Geoff Fein
While the Coast Guard’s effort to convert eight 110-foot cutters to 123-foot vessels continues to draw the attention and ire of lawmakers and watchdogs, the service has been successfully renovating 20 of its 110 fleet to keep them in service until the Fast Response Cutter (FRC) arrives.
The Coast Guard is also renovating a number of its 210-foot and 270-foot Medium Endurance Cutters as part of the Mission Effectiveness Project (MEP), Ken King, project manager (PM) of 110-foot, 210-foot and 270-foot MEPs, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
The 110-foot MEP began back in early 2006 and ran concurrently with the 110-foot conversion effort, King said.
A design defect compromised the physical integrity of the eight cutters and led to the inability of the boats to meet the performance requirements of the contract. That, in turn, led the Coast Guard to issue a letter of revocation for the eight 123-foot patrol boats in June 2007 (Defense Daily, Jan. 8).
Of the 49 110-foot cutters the Coast Guard has, 20 are going through the sustainment process. To date, four of the vessels have undergone renovation at the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Md.
The reason the Coast Guard opted to only renovate 20 of the 110-foot boats is that the service plans to eventually replace its fleet of cutters with the Fast Response Cutter (FRC)-B.
The service is expected to award a contract for the FRC-B sometime this spring.
The renovations will keep the 110-foot vessels running economically and reliably until they are replaced by the FRC-B, King added.
Work on the 20 110-foot cutters will be completed by FY ’14, he said.
The cost to refurbish each 110-foot hull varies because of the amount of corrosion each boat has endured, King said.
“It’s roughly $7 million to $9 million per hull,” he said.
Ships from the Gulf Coast area and Florida seem to have had the most hull corrosion. Ships from the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast have shown less hull corrosion, King noted.
“The ships in really bad shape are operating down in District 7…Florida…Miami. Warm salt water seems to accelerate corrosion, so we are seeing a lot more corrosion on the warm weather hulls,” he explained.
Each renovation was taking 12 months. However, personnel at Curtis Bay worked to complete each job within nine months, King said. “They are doing a heck of a job. As the [program manager] PM, I am really pleased with the job they are doing.
“We are trying to give our operators more operational hours back. We are trying to compress the availability time in the shipyard to get the ships back sooner,” he added. “So we are putting more resources on them, trying to do things smarter to get them back in operation sooner.”
Besides restoring the 110-foot cutters’ hull, personnel at the Coast Guard Yard are also redoing the stern tubes that the propeller shafts run through, installing new water making machines, removing corrosion and repainting the machinery spaces, putting in new fire detection and new fire fighting systems, rehabilitating the berthing areas, bringing new life rafts onboard, providing a new emergency power system and installing new rudders and fins, King said.
“On the 110s we get these ships in and it’s almost like we strip them apart, just take everything out and rebuild the thing,” he said. “We are replacing a lot of hull plating so it’s almost like we are completely rebuilding these things.”
The 110-foot renovations is one of three MEPs currently underway at Curtis Bay.
The effort to renovate the 210-foot and 270-foot Medium Endurance Cutter will enable the vessels to remain in service until the Coast Guard takes delivery of the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC).
There are 14 210-foot cutters and 13 270-foot cutters undergoing MEP. Of the 14 210-foot boats, four have been completed.
For the 270-foot cutters, each hull goes through two phases, King said. So, for the 13 hulls slated for renovations, there will be 26 availabilities, he added.
“What we’ve completed so far is six availabilities. One is ongoing and 19 remain,” King said. “We’ve completed six of the 270s…the first phase. They have to come back for the second phase over the next year or two or three; it varies.”
The Coast Guard budgeted $317 million for the renovation work on the two cutters. “We are roughly putting $15 million into each 270 and $5 million to $6 million into each 210,” King added.
According to the Coast Guard, MEP funding to date is $69.2 million for the 110-foot sustainment project and $93 million for the medium endurance cutters.
All the MEP efforts are funded through Deepwater, the Coast Guard’s effort to recapitalize its fleet of ships, aircraft and command and control systems.