By Calvin Biesecker
The weight margin designed into the first Coast Guard National Security Cutter (NSC) is nearly used up and the ship may not have room to grow as currently designed, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chairman of a Senate panel that oversees the Coast Guard, said yesterday.
Citing Coast Guard officials, Cantwell said “most of the available weight margin has been consumed during construction, not including the fatigue life structure enhancements. The officials further note that subsequent changes to the ship will cost more than they would have otherwise due to additional redesign and engineering that may be necessary to offset the additional weight.”
Cantwell, who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on the Coast Guard, was referring to the 418-foot CGC Bertholf, which is the first of eight planned National Security Cutters being built by Northrop Grumman [NOC] under the Deepwater modernization program.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen testified that one way the service plans to manage weight on the Bertholf is to instrument the vessel when it takes to sea “and get some empirical data regarding the fatigue of the ship and the implications of the weight that was added.” Based on the results it may be possible later to remove some of the weight, he said. The instrumentation of the vessel to help assess its life expectancy will take place sometime after the Coast Guard takes delivery of the Bertholf, which is expected to occur late this spring or in early summer following acceptance trials that begin in the first half of April.
Allen asserted that the design of the vessel isn’t flawed.
A Coast Guard spokesman told Defense Daily yesterday that while the Bertholf has less weight reserve than originally planned, it still has reserves and meets requirements.
Last summer, the Coast Guard awarded a contract to Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS) for construction of the third NSC. ICGS is a joint venture comprised of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman, with the former responsible for aircraft and C4ISR assets and upgrades and the latter in charge of shipbuilding.
The technical baseline for the third NSC includes design changes to address fatigue life issues in the original design of the new class of ships. Those issues cropped up while the Bertholf was under construction and revolved around whether the NSCs would achieve 30 years of operations before fatigue cracks appear. The design changes will be retrofitted onto the first two NSCs.
“We will validate the direction that the Coast Guard gave the contractor through instrumenting the first ship and empirically determining that that was the right fix and we have room to adjust that moving forward,” Allen said.
Cantwell said she is concerned that the program is moving forward before final testing is done.
The upcoming acceptance trials follow builders and machinery trials that were completed last month (Defense Daily, Feb. 19). The service used those tests as an opportunity to work through a punch list of items that will have to be addressed before final acceptance.
Allen said the Coast Guard and Northrop Grumman are “going through an iterative process in acceptance of the vessel to mitigate risk.” He said 15 areas of risk were identified last fall, all of which are being addressed.
The most challenging risk area is information assurance, which does pose a risk to the Bertholf‘s delivery schedule, the Coast Guard has said.
At yesterday’s hearing Cantwell brought up a recently completed Alternatives Analysis that Allen had directed be done for the Deepwater program as a means to identify possible options to meet various system requirements. Allen said yesterday that one of those options is to take a look at the potential of the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC), which is intended to replace the service’s medium-endurance cutters, to take the place of some NSCs. The NSCs are intended to replace the service’s fleet of aging high-endurance cutters.
The OPC currently exists on paper and the Coast Guard must complete the development of its operational requirements for the vessel before conducting a preliminary design review in two years. The Alternatives Analysis suggests the requirements and concept design of the OPC should be accelerated to provide the service with the option of building two additional vessels in place of the final two NSCs.
The Alternatives Analysis says that the original design of the OPC by ICGS “remains the most attractive candidate for the OPC based on speed, sea-keeping, and endurance requirements.” Allen said that any future competitions for the OPC and other Deepwater assets will be open and controlled by the Coast Guard.