Like the House version that passed earlier this year, the Senate’s Coast Guard Authorization Bill that is expected to be voted on Wednesday includes multi-year contracting authorities for major acquisition programs and the establishment of a land-based unmanned aircraft system (UAS).
The bill authorizes the Coast Guard for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, and for 2019 allows for the appropriation of $7.9 billion in operations and maintenance funding, $2.7 billion for acquisition efforts, and $29.1 million for research, development and testing.
The Senate bill was introduced on Monday by John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and Tom Carper (D-Del.), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Environmental Protection Agency.
The key differences in the Senate bill versus the House are changes related to incidental vessel discharges. The Senate bill gives the EPA the lead in writing rules for vessel operators that the Coast Guard will enforce.
“This agreement to have the Coast Guard enforce standards established through an EPA-led process will create needed clarity for vessel operators while remaining sensitive to local concerns about invasive species,” Thune said in a statement.
The multi-year procurement authority allows for the use of block buys, economic order quantity purchases, and incremental funding. It also permits the Coast Guard to enter into a multi-year contract for the 10th, 11th and 12th National Security Cutters (NSC).
The bill also calls for the Department of Homeland Security to create a land-based UAS program under control of the Coast Guard but stipulates that as long as the Coast Guard is funding the design or construction of an Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) it can only lease, acquire or acquire the services of a system if it’s already a program used by a federal entity or is leased or acquired through another federal agency. Design and initial procurement of the OPC is underway and the Coast Guard is expected to be buying the ships for the next 10 to 15 years.
The Coast Guard recently leased small UAS from Boeing’s [BA] Insitu unit, which will also operate the ScanEagle systems aboard the service’s NSC fleet.
A provision of the bill also directs the Coast Guard to enter into an agreement with the National Academy of Sciences, which will assess “available unmanned, autonomous, oe remotely controlled maritime domain awareness technologies” that the service can use. Another provision directs DHS to conduct a one-year pilot program of different persistent surveillance systems to monitor illegal maritime activities in the Western Pacific region.
Other provisions call for the Coast Guard to provide Congress with its operational fleet requirements to meet statutory missions and authorize a service life extension program until at least 2025 for the service’s only operational heavy polar icebreaker, the Polar Star. In addition, the bill requests a report on progress toward implementing the nation’s strategic objectives in the Arctic, and prohibits the service from certifying as ready for operations its eighth NSC until it develops a new method for tracking operational employment of major cutters.
The Senate on Tuesday evening was scheduled to vote on cloture for the bill. If cloture is invoked, the bill will be voted on Wednesday.