By Emelie Rutherford
The House Appropriations Committee (HAC) wants to cut the Coast Guard’s funding request for its fourth National Security Cutter (NSC), a reduction that marks the biggest difference between House and Senate appropriators’ proposals for the Deepwater modernization program.
Overall, the HAC and Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) are sticking fairly close to the White House’s $990.4 million fiscal 2009 proposal for the Coast Guard’s once- troubled Deepwater ship-aircraft-and-system upgrade effort. The HAC marked up the FY ’09 Homeland Security appropriations bill on June 24 and included a $56.7 million cut to the administration’s Deepwater request and the SAC on June 19 marked up its bill with a $23.7 million increase.
Planned action on the Homeland Security spending bills in the full House and Senate remains unknown on Capitol Hill, while the fates of varied appropriations bills in this election year are being questioned.
Most of the HAC’s proposed $56.7 million Deepwater reduction is within a $53.7 million cut to the NSC program, which would drop the Bush administration’s request from $353.7 million down to $300 million. The SAC, by comparison, granted the administration’s NSC request–signaling a likely friction point for a potential conference committee.
The HAC notes in the report accompanying its bill that the administration’s cutter proposal is primarily for production of the fourth of eight NSCs–418-foot craft that are the cornerstone of the Deepwater program. However, the committee predicts that construction of that fourth ship–for which the Coast Guard issued a request for proposals on June 25– will be delayed. The committee also notes concerns of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) regarding NSC price data.
The Coast Guard since last year has been phasing out Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS)–a partnership between Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Lockheed Martin [LMT]–as lead systems integrator of the $24 billion, 25-year Deepwater effort.
The first NSC is set to be commissioned in August and the second cutter is under construction. After concerns were raised about the fatigue life of the first two NSCs’ hulls, the Coast Guard came up with a design fix that will be applied to the first two ships at a later time.
The HAC’s report notes that the technical reviews of the third NSC’s fatigue life enhancement design changes are being conducted now, and follow-on design and technical reviews of the third NSC are expected to finish in December.
Thus, the report says, “the Committee believes that construction of the fourth NSC likely will be delayed, since the design and technical changes made to the fourth NSC will require another substantive technical review.”
Coast Guard spokeswoman Laura Williams said the service does not agree with the committee’s belief that construction of the fourth NSC will be delayed.
“No, if the President’s budget is fully supported by Congress, the Coast Guard foresees no delay in construction of the fourth NSC,” she said yesterday.
The HAC report also notes that the “GAO found that [the] Coast Guard plans to proceed with issuance of a task order for long-lead materials on the fourth NSC despite not having reliable data on which to base an evaluation of the contractor’s proposed price.”
The Coast Guard already has issued the task order, and is now evaluation the proposal.
The GAO has pointed out that because the Coast Guard “lacks confidence in how the contractor is representing its cost and schedule performance on the NSC, the Coast Guard is likely to be in the position of paying the contractor for future projects without the understanding necessary to evaluate proposed prices,” the report states.
Thus, the HAC directs the Coast Guard to “increase its visibility into the contractor’s earned value management data before it enters into a contract to construct the fourth NSC.”
Asked about the GAO’s assessment, Williams pointed out that the oversight office “reported that they believe the Coast Guard approach to increasing visibility of Northrop’s data will address their recommendation.”
As to the HAC’s overall proposed Deepwater reduction, Williams said: “Approval of the President’s budget is critical to continuing all of the Coast Guard’s modernization efforts.”
Aside from the NSC-related cut, the only other reduction the HAC made to the administration’s Deepwater request relates to studying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The committee provided the requested $3 million for the studies, but placed the money in a different account outside of the Deepwater program.
The $23.7 million the SAC wants to add to the administration’s Deepwater request would pay for completing the stalled and overbudget project to missionize the final three of the service’s six HC-130J aircraft. The administration did not request and the HAC did not propose any HC-130J missionization funds. The work includes improving radars, sensors, identification systems, displays, and antennas on the aircraft.
“While the Committee remains concerned with the program’s price escalation, missionizing aircraft 4 through 6 is critical to closing the shortfall of maritime patrol resource hours, which is nearly 50 percent below its resource hour needs,” the SAC’s report accompanying its bill says.
Both the HAC and the SAC call on the Coast Guard to submit detailed Deepwater expenditure plans. The HAC’s report says $500 million in Deepwater funds would not be available until congressional appropriators approve the plan. The SAC report proposes no such fencing off of funds.