By Geoff Fein
The Coast Guard Friday said it is delaying source selection of its Fast Response Cutter (FRC) until September or early October, a Coast Guard official said.
The Coast Guard had anticipated contract award for the FRC this month.
“While the Coast Guard is interested in obtaining a patrol boat as soon as possible, it is even more important that we acquire the Fast Response Cutter that represents the best value, one intended to serve the public for over 20 years,” said Rear Adm. Gary Blore, the Coast Guard’s chief acquisition officer, in an all hands message.
In March 2007, the Coast Guard announced it was terminating the acquisition authority of Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS) for the procurement of the FRC-B under the Deepwater modernization program. Instead, the Coast Guard took over management of the FRC-B program (Defense Daily, March 15, 2007).
The Coast Guard issued the FRC-B request for proposal in April 2007.
The 25-year, $24 million dollar Deepwater effort to recapitalize the Coast Guard’s ship, aviation and communication systems is run by a partnership between Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman [NOC].
The Coast Guard had planned to upgrade just about all of its fleet of nearly 50 Island-class vessels, which were already suffering from hull cracking, to extend their life until the service developed and purchased the Fast Response Cutter (FRC) later in the Deepwater modernization program. However, hull deformations, deck buckling and shaft misalignment issues with the 123-foot vessels led the Coast Guard to drop that upgrade effort in favor of accelerating the FRC program (Defense Daily, May 28).
“The source selection process for the Fast Response Cutter is ongoing at this time. The Coast Guard is actively engaged in discussions with all offerors in the competitive range. The competitive range includes those offerors with the most highly rated proposals.,” Blore said. “Those discussions will provide all offerors in the competitive range an opportunity to improve their proposals and address any deficiencies and/or weaknesses. This brief discussion period–relative to the time we will use these assets-will enhance the Coast Guard’s ability to make an award based on the best value to the government, helping to ensure that the Coast Guard gets a patrol boat that is optimal for our missions.”
To accommodate these additional discussions, the anticipated contract award date is now September or early October of this year, he added.
The service has already made its initial selections of various designs that meet the requirements of the FRC-B program. However, the Coast Guard has declined to name which companies and their respective designs have made the final list The service has however noted that multiple firms are in contention (Defense Daily, May 28).
It is possible that the winning bid, if it meets all of the original FRC requirements, could be the only FRC the Coast Guard purchases. If not, the service will likely move forward with plans for the FRC-A, which would be a new design. The Coast Guard plans to buy at least 12 FRC-Bs and has option to buy up to 34 of the vessels. In total the Coast Guard plans to buy 58 FRCs.
The principle characteristics of the FRC-B are: 120-feet to 160-feet overall length, 10-foot maximum draft, 28 knot minimum flank speed, independent operations for five days, crew size of 22, and the ability to safely launch and recover the cutter boat through sea state 4, according to the notice (Defense Daily, June 4, 2007).
FRC-A is a composite hull design patrol boat.
Earlier this year, Blore said the Coast Guard disagreed with a study examining Deepwater assets that undervalued the risks associated with a composite hull maritime patrol craft (Defense Daily, March 10).
The study examined the pros and cons of using a composite hull for the FRC.
An independent analysis of composite hulls led the Coast Guard to reconsider the advantage of the lightweight material, Blore noted in March.
“We’ve done our own detailed business case analysis of composites patrol boats. We hired an independent firm to do that. It was clear in that analysis there was no cost benefit to composites,” he said. “If there is no cost benefit why would you take on the low manufacturing readiness and the low technology readiness to build a patrol boat that you are getting no cost benefit from? (Defense Daily, March 10).”
The Coast Guard felt the Alterantives Analysis didn’t go far enough in pointing out the negatives of composite hulls.
“We think it’s a little concerning to build a patrol boat when you don’t know what its performance characteristics might be in a heavy sea,” Blore said earlier this year.