Coast Guard blamed for new ship’s flaws
WASHINGTON – The Coast Guard’s newest cutter, the flagship of a $24 billion plan to modernize the nation’s coastal fleet, suffers from significant design flaws, and the service has failed to supervise properly the contractors doing the work, government inspectors have found.
The 418-foot National Security Cutter is the largest ship the Coast Guard has ever commissioned but as designed would be limited in its ability to venture far from U.S. shores in search of drug smugglers and terrorists, according to a report scheduled to be released Monday.
Technical experts said the design of the vessel was likely to result in “fatigue cracks” that would sharply increase maintenance costs and shorten the ship’s useful life. And the report said the Coast Guard appeared ill-equipped to supervise the project’s contracting team, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which had been given wide latitude in running the program.
The agency lacks the “appropriate workforce, business processes and management controls for executing a major acquisition program” like this one, the report by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general said. “The Coast Guard is still trying to come from behind and create the organization needed to manage the program.”
The Coast Guard and its contractors hindered the audit of the program, known as Deepwater, after ignoring years of warnings from technical experts about the ship’s design, the report said.
A representative for the Coast Guard did not return a call for comment Friday. But in a response included in the report, the service challenged the inspector general’s conclusions, saying the findings do not represent the “most current, comprehensive, or technically accurate data.”
“The Coast Guard opinion is that decisions regarding structures and production have been well-considered and were prudent and correct,” the response said.
The inspector general’s report is the latest indictment of Deepwater, which aims to modernize and replace the Coast Guard’s aging fleet of ships, planes and helicopters over the next 25 years. In December, the Coast Guard sidelined eight Miami-based 123-foot cutters produced under the program after finding that they were not seaworthy.
The report has been circulated in the Department of Homeland Security and in Congress. A source provided it on the condition of anonymity because the document is not authorized for release yet.
The inspector general’s report is the latest in a series of audits that have faulted the Department of Homeland Security for its failure to manage contracts for its most complex and demanding missions. Deepwater was the single largest project on a list of 32 Homeland Security contracts worth $34 billion singled out in July by the House Government Reform Committee as marred by “significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement.” Other projects cited included the hiring of airport screeners and deploying baggage inspection equipment, as well as programs involving nuclear detection equipment, border sensors and emergency housing after Hurricane Katrina.
The Coast Guard cutter report laid much of the blame on the Coast Guard’s relationship with its contracting team.
The ship’s “design and performance deficiencies are fundamentally the result of the Coast Guard’s failure to exercise technical oversight over the design and construction of its Deepwater assets,” the report said. The Coast Guard plans to build eight new cutters. The first was christened in November and will be delivered to the service in August. The second is slated for delivery in October 2008.
The combined cost of the first two ships has already increased from $517 million to about $775 million. That does not include the cost of addressing the design flaws or an additional $302 million for “re-pricing of all work associated with the production and deployment” of the first two ships, the report said.
Put another way, the cost of the first two ships will roughly double while their expected service life will likely be cut by 20 percent.