The Coast Guard is trying to create the impression that there are no further delays in getting its first National Security Cutter into service by placing the vessel, Bertholf, into a “special” commissioning status. The status will allow her to sail with a crew to her home port in California, but won’t allow her to go on regular patrols.
But don’t take it from me. Navy Times reported this weeks ago:
Whether or not there are delays, the ship will be in “special commission status” when it enters the fleet, so that it can operate the systems it needs to get from the yard in Pascagoula, Miss., to its new homeport in Alameda, Calif. Until it satisfies the TEMPEST and information assurance requirements, the cutter cannot take on any Coast Guard missions.
Today in a UPI report, the Coast Guard tried to re-define this special status, adding adverbs like “fully”:
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Gary Blore admitted there were issues with the Bertholf‘s ability to fully utilize its classified systems, noting the ship was cleared for deployment but not fully mission capable.
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.
But they’re not unprecedented. For years the U.S. Navy has used deft semantics to cover up huge problems with its LPD-17 class of amphibious ships, as Defense Industry Daily details:
The LPD-17 was initially budgeted at $954 million, but will likely end with a final price tag about $804 million over budget ($1.76 billion). The LPD-18, which is nearly 70% complete, was budgeted at $762 million and is likely to run $249 million over budget ($1.01 billion). The need to tear down and rebuild completed sections of the LPD-17 was a major cause of its overruns, while attrition rates as high as 35% annually led to construction delays.
The rub is that, despite ongoing problems, the Navy has always accepted the ships from builder Northrop Grumman (which also builds Coastie cutters), placing them into a special commissioning status that makes them official Navy property but doesn’t let them go on real-world missions. The reasons the Navy does so are murky, but the results are clear:
“By taking delivery of incomplete ships with serious quality problems, the Fleet has suffered unacceptable delays in obtaining deployable assets,” [Navy Secretary Donald] Winter wrote to Ronald Sugar, Northrop Grumman’s chief executive officer. Two years after accepting the San Antonio, “the Navy still does not have a mission capable LPD ship,” Winter wrote.
Related posts:
I understand you’re trying to do a good thing and shine a light on critical issues, but you really need to get yourself familiar with shipbuilding and commissioning in the defense world.
Brompton:
Dude, I’m always eager to learn. What can you tell me?
Mr Brompton states to David Axe: “but you really need to get yourself familiar with shipbuilding and commissioning in the defense world.”
Okay, Mr Brompton, perhaps you should educate yourself with a well-known expert on defense world shipbuilding, his name is Mr. Colton, and his website is http://www.ColtonCompany.com. Here is a taste of one of his articles about Deepwater:
http://coltoncompany.com/newsandcomment/news/2008/02.htm#MORE_NSC_PROBLEMS
Okay, Mr Brompton, tell us about the design capabilities of and innovations from the major shipbuilders like NASCO and Northrop Grumman Ship Systems.
Tell us how much integration there was between Lockheed C4ISR efforts and Northrop’s design efforts on the National Security Cutter project.
When Newport News (heaven only knows what name they have now they’ve changed so many times in the last 25 years)finished the Theodore Roosvelt the bitch list of repairs and defects was something over 1000 pages!
Including a jp-5 pumproom that flooded with fuel during a shock test due to faulty construction of two adjoining hull sections resulting in a pipe being hogged over with a chain hoist and welded. When the shock test went down the bulkheads flexed and the weld broke letting the pipe flex back to its original length and spewing fuel five inches deep in the room.
When they built Carl Vinson, she was more than a year overdue and they had the gall to charge the Navy both pier fees and the electric bill to keep alongside the pier while they fixed the problems!
Litton Ingalls Pascagoula (now Northrop Grumman)has always had problems with initial quality control on lead ships witness the first Spruance class. It took years to get all the bugs out of that class especially electrical, combat systems stability, and fresh water problems. I was a Spru-can that basically was on freshwater rationing from about a week into any at sea period. Along with a persistent potable water contamination problem due to a hull flexing problem that cracked welds in a freshwater tank. Pascagoula NEVER, Never, built anything without major problems and it, unfortunately, is normal for the Navy.
Coltoncompany.com reports about a new GAO study that states the Coast Guard Deepwater’s National Security Cutter program is 90% over budget.
Read more at:
http://coltoncompany.com/newsandcomment/
news/2008/03.htm#GAO_REVIEW_OF_NSC_PROGRAM
and
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08270r.pdf
[...] The 420-foot cutter Bertholf, flagship of the Coast Guard’s troubled “Deepwater” fleet, will be a year late and 100-percent over-budget when it finally gets commissioned this fall, assuming there are no further delays and cost increases. This according to recent press reports and a new study by the Government Accountability Office. Maritime consultant Tim Colton has recreated a table from the GAO report that tracks rising costs on Bertholf and her two sister ships. [...]
This post will be included in Maritime Monday 102 (to be posted on 17 March) on gCaptain.
The Navy and Coast Guard should get private shipping companies to handle their shipbuilding projects. Private clients don’t let this pass. If they did, they’d go bankrupt.
Gents Mr Brompton is right, it would appear that you folks just do not understand the technical “terms of art” and mix up the steps in a ship acceptance process with the ship commissioning process.
To wit, from an ship acquistion/contracting standpoint, ships can be accepted if full (but not usually), conditionally (as is probably the case with NCS and MOST naval ships), or rejected (that doesn’t happen often). Conditional acceptance is the govt accepts the ship from the shipbuilder but notes any difieciencies that must be corrected before full acceptance. The final INSURV report has a lot to do with that.
Ships can be commissioned fully or in special commission, this for legal title and personnel matter as much as contractually. P.S. in my old world, MSC ships were placed in service not commissioned.
One NCS acceptance issue wraps around a TEMPEST in a teapot. Having undergone many TEMPEST inspections, it is very easy to fail on the most minute physical or administrative matter. Kind ofd like electronic bookeeping? So not passing TEMPEST is not a big deal.
And before you jump on me, I contribute to Tim Colton’s website.
Also having worked with many private shipping companies on acquisition, they are NOT the ones who should “handle shipbuilding projects”. If there is anything which has been learned about the problems of Deepwater, it is that the US Govt must be the lead ship integrator (term of art) NOT private companies. The USN and USCG must become expert at that which is terrible to say at this late date.
I cannot agree any less with “leesea”. Why does the Coast Guard issue “limited authority” to operate its communication circuits when back in September 2007 that the communication discrepancies (i.e., TEMPEST) were minor? They lied in September 2007, and now they are trying to cover it up by using this “limited authority” order.
So let’s not downplay this and call this all standard operating procedure!
[...] If Northrop Grumman will get its act together on the construction of LPD-17s, and if the Navy really does design a Marine-transport module for the new Littoral Combat Ship, we could be on the verge of a golden age for amphibious warfare. [...]
[...] first ship delivered, the Cutter Bertholf, was not allowed to perform any missions for almost seven months after commissioning due to its own failure to [...]