The Coast Guard’s small but expanding fleet of National Security Cutters (NSC) continues to operate without key unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), which is a source of “neglect,” Senate appropriators say in their report that accompanies the FY ’16 spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“The Coast Guard will procure its first operational UAS in 2015 at the direction of Congress despite having already commissioned four National Security Cutters with which they should be paired,” the panel says in the report.
The Coast Guard recently took delivery of its fifth NSC, which will be commissioned this summer.
The report points out that from the onset of Coast Guard’s ongoing recapitalization program, which is still essentially a “system of systems” architecture that existed under the former Deepwater acquisition program involving a lead systems integrator to acquire and tie all of the individual surface and air assets together, UAS were an “integral” system to support the NSC.
“Over a decade later, the Coast Guard still appears unsure of how to incorporate UAS technology despite examples of such integration within DHS and across the Federal Government,” the report says.
Congress appropriated $6.3 million in FY ’15 for the Coast Guard to acquire small UAS capabilities. The Coast Guard has been testing various small, and even handheld, UAS systems from some of its vessels, including NSCs and the medium icebreaker Healy, as it evaluates how to move forward with an acquisition and deployment effort.
“We are in the process of evaluating currently available UAS and how they can complement the NSC’s missions and capabilities,” a spokesman for the Coast Guard’s Acquisition Directorate told Defense Daily via email on Friday. “No decision has been made at this time regarding the size, type or number that we will ultimately acquire.”
The report says the Coast Guard has previously told the Senate Appropriations Committee that a vertical take-off and landing UAS would boost the surveillance capability of the NSC. The panel wants a report on the procurement plans for a UAS as part of the FY ’17 budget request.
The Coast Guard is currently pursuing a UAS capability for the NSC only, the spokesman said.
The committee approved a nearly $1.6 billion acquisition budget for the Coast Guard in FY ’16, more than $500 million above the request, with additional funding pegged for a ninth NSC, even though it wasn’t requested.
The report praises the NSCs that are operating so far for its wide range of capabilities and missions and expects the vessels to remain in service for “decades to come” given that the legacy assets they are replacing are on average 46 years-old. However, the committee says that the planned buy of eight NSCs to replace 12 Hamilton-class high-endurance cutters was largely predicated on a crew rotational concept (CRC) that would allow the new ships to spend more days away from their homeports annually than the legacy vessels.
“Unfortunately, the Coast Guard has yet to fully test the CRC and will not understand its feasibility until 2019, meaning that the Coast Guard’s goal of meeting or exceeding operational performance of the legacy high endurance cutters within the NSC’s Program of Record may fall well short of mission needs,” says the committee in its justification for adding $640 million for a ninth NSC.
Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] builds the NSC at its shipyard in Mississippi, which is represented by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R). Cochran, who won a difficult re-election campaign last fall, included purchasing additional NSCs as part of his platform.
The Coast Guard’s top acquisition priority is its new medium-endurance vessel, the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC), which is in the preliminary and contract design phase. The committee fully funded the Coast Guard’s $18.5 million request to continue this phase of the program and agreed with a DHS request to allow the department to propose a $70.5 million reprogramming for the award of a detailed design contract if the service is ready to move forward with that award in FY ’16.
Current Coast Guard plans call for downselecting to a single contractor by the end of FY ’16 for the detailed design, leading to an eventual construction contract. The Coast Guard ultimately plans to purchase 25 OPCs with the winning contractor producing the first nine to 11 vessels before the service holds a recompetition for the remaining ships.
Bollinger Shipyards, Eastern Shipbuilding Group, and General Dynamics [GD] each have preliminary and contract design contracts for the OPC.