The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last week approved the Coast Guard’s requirements for a new class of medium-endurance cutters that emphasize endurance and the ability to operate its air and additional surface assets in rough seas, the service’s top official said yesterday.
The decision by DHS to approve the requirements for the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) essentially clears the way for the Coast Guard sometime this year to release modified specifications for the vessel class as well as a Request for Proposals (RFP) that will cover preliminary and contract designs. In the meantime, the service continues to work on the OPC’s specifications. A draft RFP is slated to be released in the third quarter of FY ’12 with the final RFP in the fourth quarter.
A single award for detailed design and construction of the OPC is expected in FY ’16, which is when funding for the program is expected to ramp up significantly with $200 million being provided that year, according to DHS budget documents.
While affordability remains the primary driver in carrying out the OPC program, the most important requirement is sea-keeping because the Coast Guard is going to need these cutters to operate at range in areas like the Gulf of Alaska, the Bering Sea and Western Pacific, Commandant Adm. Robert Papp told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on the Coast Guard.
Another key requirement approved for the OPC is being able to launch and recover helicopters and small boats in sea state 5, Papp said. Sea state 5 refers to rough conditions where wave heights are between 2.5 and four meters.
The Coast Guard’s current fleet of medium-endurance cutters, which consist of a number of aging 270-foot and 210-foot vessels, “cannot perform in extreme weather conditions that you find sometimes in the North Atlantic, much less the Arctic and Bering Sea,” Papp said.
Papp said that with current plans calling for just eight high-endurance National Security Cutters to replace an existing force of 12 Hamilton-class high-endurance cutters, the Coast Guard will need the OPCs to go into areas its current medium-endurance cutters can’t.
Overall, the Coast Guard’s proposed budget for FY ’13 is about 4 percent less than appropriated in FY ’12, with the request for the acquisition of new assets, including cutters, boats, aircraft and other capital assets, about 19 percent lower. Papp said the service’s patrol boat and shore forces are in “the best shape I’ve ever seen” in nearly 40 years of personal service but that threats need to be intercepted offshore.
On the other hand, the state of service’s fleet of medium and high-endurance cutters “is deeply concerning,” Papp said. “Our legacy high-endurance cutters are only achieving 70 percent of their programmed underway hours and more than 50 percent of the time they sail with debilitating casualties. This is cause for concern because the key to interdicting threats offshore is maintaining a persistent presence with major cutters.”
There is “actionable intelligence” of drugs being smuggled in the western transit zones but “we miss targets all of the time, almost on a weekly basis because we don’t have the major cutters out there,” he said.
The OPC program is expected to be the Coast Guard’s largest ever, with planned spending of $8.1 billion required for the design and purchase of 25 vessels, with the first cutter to be delivered in 2020. Papp said delays in the program have stemmed from the Coast Guard taking the “long view,” meaning the service has to get the requirements for the OPC right because the cutters have to be operational for 40 years.
Despite the fact that the Coast Guard’s FY ’13 budget request shows no funding in the out-years for additional NSCs, Papp reiterated the service’s need for eight of the vessels as is currently planned. The Coast Guard has three NSCs operating and is under contract with Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] for two more vessels. The budget request contains $658 million for the sixth NSC.
On Wednesday afternoon Papp told the Senate Commerce Subcommittee that oversees the Coast Guard that the service’s most recent Fleet Mix Analyis and “Cutter Study” it did for DHS all show the need for eight NSCs and 25 OPCs. Eight NSCs remain in the program of record, he said.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last month said that funding for additional NSCs is being withheld due to budget constraints and pending a review by the Navy of its own force mix to see how those plans align with the NSC’s missions (Defense Daily, Feb. 16). Papp suggested to the House panel that such reviews are routine as part of the budget process given the tight budgets and that DHS needs to “work with the Navy to make sure we are building complementary assets, not just redundant assets. That’s just part of the process and we do that on a regular basis.”
The OPC requirements were approved as part of an Acquisition Decision Event-2 milestone review by the DHS Acquisition Review Board. According to the Coast Guard’s Major Systems Acquisition Manual, an ADE-2 approval validates the program to move to the “obtain phase,” which includes the lead cutter, as well as the initial Acquisition Program Baseline for the project, which shows the expected long-term costs for the program.
In a response to query, the Coast Guard provided Defense Daily with some additional OPC requirements, including a minimum range of 8,500 nautical miles and an objective of 9,500 nautical miles at 14 knots sustained speed. The service also said that other requirements include a medium caliber forward gun system and .50 caliber crew served guns, and and food storage for 45-60 days fully crewed.