The Coast Guard is reviewing its options for replacing the capabilities provided by its fleet of aging cutters and barges for supporting aids to navigation on federal waterways in the interior of the U.S.
The service’s fleet of inland cutters, most of which have been operating for more than 50 years, includes 35 vessels in nine classes and subclasses ranging from 65-feet to 160 feet. The oldest, the 100-foot construction tender USCG Smilax, was commissioned in 1944.
The inland fleet also includes 27 barges.
The Coast Guard on Monday said that even though it has begun to review its options for the path forward to conduct its aids to navigation mission, formal acquisition planning won’t start until Congress approves an FY ’18 spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security.
Currently, the Coast Guard is pulling together its requirements and operating concepts and plans to issue a Request for Information regarding its inland water mission environment in 2018 for market research and obtain industry input on “creative and affordable solutions,” the service said.
The options the Coast Guard are mulling include recapitalizing and standardizing its inland waterway capabilities “most modern, state-of-the-market cutters specially equipped to conduct missions in the Western Rivers, Intracoastal Waterway and inland and coastal waters of the United States as well as along the U.S.-Canadian border,” the service said.
Recapitalizing the inland cutter fleet is one of the Coast Guard’s unfunded priorities. The service has requested $1.1 million to begin pre-acquisition activities in FY ’18. More than $4.5 trillion in economic activity traverses the U.S. inland waterways annually so the safe flow of commerce helped by navigational aids is an important mission of the Coast Guard.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft in June told Defense Daily that the rough cost for each new inland cutter his service buys will be $25 million. He said the vessels would be purchased off-the-shelf and require minor modifications.
Senate appropriators, in a chairman’s mark last week, are recommending $6.1 million for the Coast Guard’s inland waterways acquisition activities in FY ’18. House appropriators, in their markup of the DHS spending bill in July, proposed $1.1 million, in line with the budget request.
Funding to purchase new inland cutters will compete with the ongoing recapitalization of the Coast Guard’s surface vessel fleet and the acquisition of new heavy polar icebreakers.