Down at the Bollinger Shipyard in Lockport, Louisiana, the U.S. Coast Guard recently set about lengthening an old 110-foot cutter, The MATAGORDA, by an additional 13 feet.
The better to accommodate a small, stern-launching boat, the Coast Guard thought – and that little boat needs to zoom around faster and more safely, now that the Coast Guard has so much new responsibility for Homeland Security.
This cutter, commissioned back in 1986, was the first among eight such patrol boats slated for lengthening over the next five years, under the Coast Guard’s “Deepwater” plan to upgrade and modernize its vessels, aircraft and technology, and it seems it needed to replace more hull plating than originally anticipated – but never mind about that. The key thing here is what Chief Petty Officer Dennis Hall of the Coast Guard had to say about why this equipment-upgrade project ran way over budget: “When they take the paint down to the metal, that’s when you reassess your needs.”
This story explains a lot about what’s going on with the Coast Guard these days.
A year ago (on March 1, 2003, to be precise), when the Department of Homeland Security became an official reality, resources from 22 government agencies were pulled together under one roof, one mission. Only two agencies were swallowed whole in the process, and one of them one of them was the Coast Guard.
“When we were with the Department of Transportation, we were the little guy, and Homeland Security put us back in the spotlight,” explains a Coast Guard expert on the staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
Back in 2001, before 9/11 changed the world, the Coast Guard’s budget was a $5.079 billion. This year, this agency has been allocated $7.030 billion – several billion dollars more, now that it’s charged with providing Homeland Security. Currently, Congress is reviewing the 2005 budget; the Bush Administration has requested $7.460 billion. And that number doesn’t include “Deepwater,” which is expected to cost $17 billion to implement over a roughly 27-to-30-year period.
A person could get into some deep water trying to understand this project, but basically it’s all about getting the Coast Guard up to snuff to be able to handle all the responsibilities it’s been “tasked” to do under Homeland Security. Most of the Coast Guard’s cutters were built 30 years ago, and many of its aircraft are from the 1970s and 1980s. When you cut through all the government-speak, the Deepwater project is all about repairs, upgrades and the kind of high technology required to look for modern terrorists.
However, as you might expect in any major overhaul of a massive government agency, unanticipated problems have begun to crop up – such as engine fires, faulty helicopters and deteriorating vessels – that make it difficult for the Coast Guard to operate effectively.
“We are receiving increasing reports of cutters being sidelined for emergency repairs due to engine fires and cracks in the hull as well as helicopters losing power in flight,” wrote Maine Sen. Susan Collins in a letter she sent last February to the Senate Budget Committee in her capacity as chair of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. Her committee is recommending that Deepwater be accelerated to a 10-year schedule; meanwhile, on March 10, the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee voted to complete its ship modernization and acquisition program by the year 2016 – seven years ahead of the Bush Administration’s timetable.
“In the first four years of the project, the Coast Guard has already spent $140 million above what it had planned to keep its aging fleet operational,” Collins continued.
In other words, it might just be more cost-effective to replace, rather than fix, a lot of the old stuff. Antiquated cutters and helicopters are expensive to maintain and take a lot more of the Coast Guard’s “man-hours,” which is also not very cost-effective.
As one source on the Senate Government Affairs Committee explained, the Senator’s “crusade to support the Coast Guard” is “so that it is able to provide all of its services at the same level as before 9/11 – for example drug enforcement, fisheries enforcement and environmental protection, which are three areas that have seen some decline in mission hours.”
The Coast Guard’s mission to provide search and rescue continues to remain sacred. “Search and rescue has always been our sexiest mission,” explains the Coast Guard expert on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee staff.
To keep up with all its missions, however, the Coast Guard not only needs to upgrade older ships and helicopters; it also needs a lot of new intelligence-gathering equipment.
For example, the Coast Guard just signed a contract with Bell Helicopter, in Fort Worth, Texas, for three prototypes of unmanned air vehicles, the size of a sedan, with super sensors and a tilt rotor design. This James Bond-type aircraft will be able to scan entire areas far off shore for terrorists – “so that pilots can be busy doing something else,” explains Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Hall.
Meanwhile, the General Accounting Office (GAO), the agency charged with keeping track of how the government spends taxpayer money, issued a report on Deepwater on March 4, entitled “Coast Guard’s Deepwater Program Needs Increased Attention to Management and Contractor Oversight.” The report assesses whether the Coast Guard is effectively managing the Deepwater program and overseeing the contractor. It also looks closely at whether or not there is sufficient competition, noting that competition is critical to controlling government costs.
In the summary of this comprehensive study, the GAO charges that Deepwater management “has been hampered by changing membership, understaffing, insufficient training, and inadequate communication among members.”
Margaret Wrightson, the communications expert at the GAO charged with explaining these reports about the Coast Guard at congressional hearings, summed it up: “Readiness issues at the Coast Guard are serious, and the issues surrounding maintenance of legacy equipment are serious.”
On March 22, another GAO report will be out that promises to take a closer look at the Coast Guard’s increased responsibilities and its ability to handle this new workload. While no one was willing to give a sneak preview of this study in mid-March, you can tell it’s not good news by its title: “Coast Guard Program Relationship Between Resources Used and Results Achieved Needs to Be Clearer.”
As the Coast Guard wades further into the Deepwater project – intensified by the spotlight of Homeland Security – you can really only be sure, right now, of inevitable complications…because when they take the paint down to the metal, that’s when you reassess your needs.