By Calvin Biesecker
The Coast Guard last Friday selected Bollinger Shipyards, Inc., for a potential $1.5 billion contract to design and build the service’s Fast Response Cutter (FRC), beginning a new phase in much delayed program that has left the Coast Guard scrambling to squeeze the most out of its current assets to mitigate a shortage of patrol boat hours.
Bollinger’s initial award is for $88 million and covers design and construction of the lead boat in the new Sentinel class. The first 153-foot FRC, which will be named the Sentinel, is scheduled to be delivered in the fall of 2010.
The contract will cover up to 34 FRCs to be delivered over a period between six and eight years. Each option contract will include between four and six cutters. The 12th vessel is expected to be delivered in the fall of 2012.
The Sentinel class will be based on a proven and operationally fielded Dutch parent craft design called the Damen 4708, designed and built by Damen Shipyards. Modifying the design of an existing patrol boat is aimed at limiting risk in what has been a frustrating effort to begin replacing the Coast Guard’s fleet of around 50 110-foot Island-class patrol boats.
About six years ago the Coast Guard, through its Deepwater program manager Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), embarked on an effort to upgrade the 110-foot cutters, including lengthening them to 123 feet. The Island class vessels were suffering from hull problems. Those problems, along with deck buckling, continued to plague the upgrade effort, leading the Coast Guard to cancel the modification effort after only eight of a potential 123-foot vessels were delivered.
The 123-footers are not in use and are at the center of a legal dispute between the Coast Guard and ICGS, which is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman [NOC].
In parallel with the 123-foot conversion and also as part of the Deepwater program, the Coast Guard had ICGS leading a program to develop a new patrol boat, called the FRC. Originally, the Coast Guard had settled on a composite hull design, which was expected to reduce long-term maintenance costs for its patrol boat fleet. However, this effort was eventually put on the backburner in favor of moving forward with a parent craft design due to cost and technical maturity risk.
Now plans for a composite hulled FRC are kaput.
“After careful research and evaluation, the Coast Guard concluded that not only was the technology not yet mature enough to produce the conceived design, but that it would not possibly be available soon enough to meet the critical mission requirements and capability needs of the service, both now and in the foreseeable future,” the service said.
The 123-foot upgrade problem combined with delays in the original FRC effort, which was expected to deliver the first craft as early as this fall, has led to a shortage of tens of thousands of patrol boat operating hours for the Coast Guard. To mitigate that shortage, the Coast Guard has been using several Navy 179-foot patrol boats and double crewing some of its 110-foot boats.
Bollinger, which built the 110-footers and the service’s current fleet of 65 87-foot Coastal Patrol Boats, beat five other competitors for the FRC.
The Coast Guard doesn’t plan to stop the FRC program at 34 boats, but plans beyond that number are unclear as of now. The service hopes to procure 58 new patrol boats, but some of these could be another version of an FRC, a Coast Guard spokeswoman told Defense Daily on Friday.
The Sentinel-class FRC will be crewed by two officers and 20 enlisted personal and feature dual gender berthing. The vessel will be powered by two 20 cylinder MTU diesel engines and have an operating speed of 28 knots. The original FRC plans called for an speed of 30 knots.
In addition, the new vessels will be armed with one stabilized remotely-operated Mk-38 25mm chain gun and four crew-served .50-caliber machine guns. They will be able to operated for five days at sea and be underway for 2,500 hours per year. The vessel will also feature a stern boat launch ramp for a rigid hull inflatable boat.
The Sentinel represents the first major acquisition program to be managed by the Coast Guard since it took over control of the Deepwater modernization effort from ICGS nearly two years ago.