By Geoff Fein
The Coast Guard’s philosophy had always been that Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), the lead systems integrator (LSI) for the Deepwater recapitalization effort, would handle procurement and maintenance support from cradle to crave, according to a top Coast Guard official.
That all changed in April 2007, when Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen decided the service should handle the LSI role for Deepwater. Service personnel had already begun preparing for the process, but only for procurement and maintenance, Giao Phan, deputy program executive officer for acquisition programs, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
In January 2011, when the contract between the Coast Guard and ICGS ends, the Coast Guard will assume all responsibilities previously handled by ICGS.
ICGS is a joint venture between Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman [NOC] to recapitalize the Coast Guard’s fleet of ships, aircraft and communications systems.
There were some who questioned whether the Coast Guard would be up to the task of taking on such a huge project as Deepwater. The effort would require the Coast Guard to build up its acquisition workforce and eventually handle all contracting for assets such as the National Security Cutter (NSC), as well as maintenance and logistics for Deepwater platforms.
“The Coast Guard has always operated under a bilateral maintenance concept. They have done that for systems, ships and aircraft,” Phan said. “For Deepwater assets, we leveraged existing infrastructure…leveraged the centralized maintenance concept that the Coast Guard has used.”
But when the Coast Guard took over the LSI role, it wasn’t up to speed to handle support of NSC, Phan noted.
“When we took over LSI from ICGS we didn’t have the full capacity of capabilities to support NSC right away,” she said. “We established an interim support plan. All the spec holders met, defined the roles and responsibilities to support NSC post delivery and also for deployment.”
Out of this the Coast Guard developed a two-step approach, Phan said.
First is the interim support plan, which runs for 24 months after delivery of NSC-1. At the end of the 24-month period, the Coast Guard would then transition to a long-term support plan, she said.
Under the 24-month interim support plan, the Coast Guard would use the existing ICGS logistics support plan. The Coast Guard would also turn to its own support facilities, for example, the engineering and Logistics Center (ELC) in Baltimore, Md., Phan said
The ELC has prepared to take over this role once the contract with ICGS expires in 2011, she added. “They also have established contract vehicles with several vendors [with] equipment on NSC.”
Those original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) include, Rolls-Royce, Sperry Marine, a division of Northrop Grumman, and MTU.
“Our goal is that after the 24-month period, when we mature, we will have the capacity and capability to do it,” Phan said.
Another change coming for the Coast Guard’s surface side is that the maintenance and logistics centers (MLC) will look more like aviation logistics centers (ALC) in that they will manage maintenance and logistics by product line, Phan said.
“For the surface platform, we never had a product line organization set up before,” she said. “The aviation model, ALC, in Elizabeth City, N.C., they had a model set up.”
What will be a challenge, however, is maintenance and logistics of Deepwater mission systems.
Lockheed Martin developed the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence systems (C4I). Phan said the Coast Guard does have an existing logistics contract vehicle with ICGS. “This allows for a smoother transition.”
“When the ALC is comfortable and has enough expertise with the missionization portion of the aircraft, they would take [that work] over,” she added. “Aviation has much better, more well-organized maintenance support.”
The Coast Guard’s Engineering and Logistics Directorate (CG-4) and (CG-6), the Assistant Commandant for command, control, communications, computers and information technology (C4&IT), have established a working group to examine how the Coast Guard transitions maintenance and logistics, Phan said.
“We identified what we need that ALC cannot provide, so we narrowed the scope of logistics support,” she added. “As we move away from ICGS, we want Coast Guard organizations to be stood up and supported [so that they can take over that work].”
There are also funds within the original Deepwater budget for facilities, Phan said. “Because if we have new assets, we have to think about infrastructure.”
The Coast Guard has a facilities plan layout looking at what homeports are needed for NSC, the Fast Response Cutter (FRC), and the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC), she added.