I have this dream. Actually, more of a premonition. I’m floating out to sea in an inner tube, wearing nothing but Bermuda shorts, with only a six-pack of PBR and a bottle of sunscreen to preserve me.
One day, I’m sure, I will count on the U.S. Coast Guard to chug out and rescue my sorry ass from some truly irresponsible act. That’s why I love the Coast Guard. And that’s why I write stories like the one in yesterday’s The Washington Times. I write because I want young Coasties to have the equipment they need and deserve:
Faulty radios have delayed by six months the deployment of the first oceangoing Coast Guard cutter, the latest problem in a $25 billion effort to turn the U.S. coastal protection and police force into a potent weapon in the war on terrorism.
Radios on the 420-foot USCGC Bertholf have a checkered past. When the same model was first installed on smaller Coast Guard cutters, guardsmen discovered they were not waterproof. That proved fairly easy to fix. But a bigger problem that has yet to be resolved involves the wiring, which is not properly shielded so that outsiders — including terrorists — can eavesdrop on Coast Guard communications. The Bertholf is slated to begin service sometime this summer instead of its planned deployment in February, Coast Guard officials say.
Man, was the Coast Guard brass livid when they read this. Coastie flack Jim McPherson called me on my cell. (“Come on, David. I mean, come on.”) And his brother Brendan McPherson, also a flack, emailed my editor at The Times. Later, the service called a teleconference with reporters, including at least one of my old co-workers. They disputed three major points that I made.
* They said the Coast Guard has just 42,000 people, not 50,000 as I reported.
* The delay would be just three months, not six.
* The radios are not the problem.
Navy Times bought this argument hook, line and sinker. Other media were more skeptical. I must respond:
* Counting reservists, who I believe deserve to be counted, the Coast Guard has 49,000 people, which I rounded up to 50,000. (I rounded all numbers in the story. I even rounded DOWN the cutters’ cost from $600 million to “about $500 million.”)
* My story in The Times used the term “deployment” to refer to the cutter’s full clearance for service. We said that would take another six months. The Coast Guard says no, that acceptance is slated for May this year, vice the original February. Actually, the Bertholf‘s original original acceptance was intended for last fall, but got bumped to February, then to May. But the May acceptance is represents a “special commission status” that allows the service to legally sail the ship to its new home port in California. But that doesn’t mean the vessel will be ready for operations. The Coast Guard itself says that there are “information assurance” problems (look for the 2/25 entry if you follow this link) with the cutter’s “Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance” (C4ISR) suite that could require as long as two years to work out. But Jim McPherson told me he was confident the ship would be commissioned into service in August. I don’t count May’s “special commission.” It’s clearly semantic mumbo-jumbo to paper over problems with the ship. The cutter is not ready. It might be ready by August, six months from now. But even that is optimistic.
* I said the problems were with radios. Technically, the problem is with this aforementioned C4ISR suite, a common design of which is installed on all new Coast Guard platforms, including cutters, airplanes and shore stations. What we’re talking about here is network gear and communications. For a newspaper with a lay readership, that means “radio.” The Washington Times does not use the term “Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance suite” Jeez.
The funniest part of the Coast Guard’s complaint is this, echoed in Navy Times:
[Admiral Gary] Blore said he believed the details in The Washington Times story came from the Internet rumors that have surrounded the Bertholf in particular and Deepwater in general. “We’re watching an interesting phenomenon in the blogosphere. If you asked me … if you have any frustration with the Coast Guard coverage, what would it be, it’s less with … print media, established media, traditional media, you pick the word. You all have standards,” he told reporters. “The blog is anything you want it to be; it may or may not have any standards, or fact checking. … It could be anything.”
What’s he talking about? This, this and this, I suppose. Never mind that my article is based on a dozen interviews, plus government reports and leaked documents and emails.
“Wow,” one of my (print) editors told me. “They hate you.”
Yes, they do. But as long as the Coast Guard rescues me on that day I find myself floating to Haiti, I don’t really mind. This isn’t about being liked.
Related posts:
1. Your 50,000 number does not include full time civil servants, which the Coast Guard has about 7,000. So the number is about 57,000 strong. Not the 42,000 that the Coast Guard claimed today.
2. Back in August 2007, Aviation Weekly reported the Coast Guard official comment that the TEMPEST problems would be fixed before delivery. TEMPEST is the government and industry standard to design and build communication systems that handle classified messages and information. The Coast Guard downplayed these TEMPEST problems claiming they were minor.
Now during this month the Navy Times reported the Coast Guard will be fixing them after delivery, and will issue a “limited authority” for the Cutter to operate its communication systems until the problems are fixed.
3. Since the Coast Guard is working to address rumors and correct errors in Deepwater reporting, , why did the the Coast Guard not correct you on the $1 billion citation? It is close to more like $1.14 billion, not $1 billion.
4. Your article in no way discusses the Coast Guard decision to cancel the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) program after spending $100 million through the Deepwater program. The Coast Guard gets no hardware or software for this $100 million it spent; it just gets a decision that it will not buy the UAV designed over the last few years through the Deepwater program.
4. Why were the TEMPEST design issues not identified and corrected during the Cutter’s approximately 2 and ½ year design period? Think about the additional costs the Coast Guard will incur to correct the discrepancies after the NSC is delivered. So these costs are added to the $1.14 billion dollar cost for the first two Cutters which are already about 100% over budget.
5. If you read the Navy Times recent article abou the NSC, the Navy Times reports “Spokespeople for the Coast Guard and contractor Lockheed Martin had separately denied to Navy Times that there would be problems with the C4ISR systems on the ship.” Did the Coast Guard keep denying these problems in the past since they viewed them as “rumors” also? But wait, these “rumors” were actually transformed into “truths” in the matter of a few months.
go to http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/02/coastguard_bertholf_delays_080226w/
great comment Spin Brothers
[...] Semantics are the Coast Guard’s last refuge. It papers over Bertholf’s problems with temporary certifications (scroll down to the 2/25 post) and special statuses. It builds its media campaign on disputing my assertion that a “Command, Control, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance suite” is, essentially, a radio. And it keeps civilian Coast Guard employee Tony D’Armiento — who last year leaked unclassified documents related to Bertholf’s problems — in legal limbo, paying him his regular salary to stay home and away from Coast Guard programs, without giving him any idea when or if he might ever return to work. These are the acts of a desperate organization. [...]
David, it is nice to see someone else say what I have said, and other bloggers too … that we do what we do for the Coastie. Adm. Allen has stated his position on Transparency Breeding Self Correcting Behavior; all we ask is for a sign that he meant it when he said it.
Dragging out the inevitable with regard to Deepwater is ridiculous at worst, and a bad business practice at best. To let new media and mainstream media break his bad news for him makes no practical sense. Get the bad news out in the open, hold those who failed accountable, including him if needed and let the Coast Guard heal and move on.
We’re close to releasing the next three in a series of reports on Adm. Allen’s Director of Civil Rights Terri A. Dickerson. As our readers know, we’ve already uncovered several irregularities with her official Coast Guard Biography, and we have move to report. Again a battle we’re fighting for the men and women who rely on that office (and all offices) to have the credibility to meet and serve their needs.
Dickerson’s bio seems to prepare her as much to be Director of Civil Rights for the Coast Guard as does Radm. Blores as we reported to today, which includes ZERO acquisition experience. 27 billion seems like a pretty big number to me for someone with no professional acquisition training or experience.
The unofficial CGblog has stated that David Axe wins the debate against the Admirals about the latest Deepwater news, read more at the following link
http://www.cgblog.org/2008/03/is-it-possible-to-spin-trivia.html
Signed, the Deepwater shaman
This is mostly about a TEMPEST in a teapot! Failure to meet that standard on the first of a class is not unsual or difficult to correct. In my experience, TEMPEST deficiencies are mostly minute physical problems or even administrative errors. Usually they are installation issues not design in nature. There are many naval ships which continue to operate while correcting TEMPEST problems.
It is not the show stopper that the news and bloggers are making it out to be.
Cost issues are another matter all together.
[...] A couple months back, the Coast Guard contested my assertion in The Washington Times that problems with unsecured communications systems aboard the new flagship cutter Bertholf (pictured) would delay that ship’s entry into service. Three months later, the Coast Guard proudly announced that Bertholf had passed a rigorous Navy inspection … and would be accepted. [...]