Posted on 12/01/2006 4:14:26 PM PST by devane617
KEY WEST - The U.S. Coast Guard, one of the key lines of defense in the Florida Straits on homeland security, drug smuggling and migrant interdictions, took eight of its 10 Key West-based patrol cutters out of action indefinitely Thursday because of structural problems.
The decision, announced by the Coast Guard's top commander, Adm. Thad Allen, who flew to Key West to tell crews personally, will create a hole in surveillance and law enforcement of the Florida Straits at a potentially critical time, with the failing health of Fidel Castro.
''I would say there is no good time for this,'' said Commander Brendan C. McPherson, a spokesman for the admiral.
Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard and former commander of District 7, which includes Key West, said a contingency plan is in the works to ensure that the hole is filled.
''We know we require a credible presence in the Straits of Florida,'' he said. ``No matter what happens [with the fleet], there will be a credible presence in the Straits of Florida.''
The eight cutters -- the Atty, Manitou, Matagorda, Metompkin, Monhegan, Nunivak, Padre and Vashon -- were tied up at the Key West Coast Guard base Thursday. Allen said he did not know if the cutters will sail again.
Their crews -- the cutters normally carry 16 -- will be reassigned, many to double up with crews on other boats, Allen said.
''These are really proud sailors and to have their cutters tied to the dock is a hard thing to take,'' said Chris O'Neil, Coast Guard spokesman for District 7. 'But we are a military organization and take our orders, say `Aye, aye' and press on. We're there to save lives and protect the country and we're going to do that regardless of the platform available to us.''
Allen said he knows firsthand that under normal circumstances there can't be a drop in patrolling of the waters between the United States and Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. A sudden mass migration, he said, would be a ''totally different scenario'' and the Coast Guard and other agencies would deploy all necessary resources to the area.
UPGRADE AT FAULT
The eight patrol boats were part of the Coast Guard's $24 billion modernization program called Deepwater, which replaces or updates the aging fleet of boats and aircraft.
The 110-foot cutters were converted to 123 feet, to add an automated small-boat launch and make room for additional communications and navigation systems. The plan was to convert all 49 of the 110-foot cutters.
McPherson said the modifications were meant to tide the Coast Guard over while new patrol boats are designed. ''These patrol boats were already at the end of their life cycles,'' he said.
But the conversions stopped in June 2005 when problems began to show up: decks cracked, hulls deformed and shafts became misaligned shortly after they came out of the repair yards in 2004.
Coast Guard engineers, joined by counterparts from Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, which were awarded the Deepwater contract, tried to correct the problems. During this time, the boats' use in heavy seas was limited.
But when additional problems began to crop up, Allen decided to dock the boats for a more thorough review.
''This is kind of a bittersweet moment for us,'' he said. ``These cutters were converted as part of the initial Deepwater project and have the technology and capability on them that the folks down here love.''
PROTECTION PLANS
The patrol boats serve multiple missions, including search-and-rescue, migrant interdiction, drug interdiction, fisheries enforcement, general law enforcement and recreational boating safety.
Allen said each cutter was expected to operate about 2,500 hours a year. Now Key West is left with just two operating cutters, an 87-footer and a 110-footer. But cutters from other areas of the country routinely patrol the Florida Straits.
Options to pick up the slack include relocating vessels, authorizing more hours for other boats and increasing air surveillance.
The Coast Guard has about 250 cutters and 200 aircraft around the country, with 52 cutters and 39 aircraft assigned to District 7, which covers Florida.
If they are structurally unsound, the cutters will fail during stressful maneuvers at sea. This puts the lives of the crews in jeopardy.
I have seen these cutters in dock and just now realized those bucket of bolts, I saw are the ones they are talking about.
I can understand completely why they were pulled from service.
They are in very bad shape.
Ah, poop!
Are there no old Navy ships in mothballs that we might reactivate for the Coast Gaurd?
Are there no confiscated speedboats that might be fitted with a .50 cal?
I agree that the safety factor put these particular boats out of action, but can't we replace them at least in the short term?
I wonder if we have any spare A10 Warthogs that could be thrown into the breach.
That'd get the druggies back to that ole time religion.
Isn't new news, the severe problems with these ships are discussed in detail in a couple of big naval reference guides.
The Coast Guard operates on a real shoestring budget in general.
It's surprisingly expensive and difficult to reactivate ships from mothballs - also if they have old propulsion plants the crew needs to be trained to use them, etc.
I will reread my big naval reference guide. Must have missed that part. :)
No, it would be BETTER to properly fund the USCG in the first place. They're always the ones getting the short straw. Maybe, in fact, they're publicizing this in hopes that this nitwit 'Rat congress will be shamed into increasing the funding--but if so, it's probably a slim hope at best.
Yes, you are right. We can't afford to have a weak USCG anymore than we can afford a weak border.
If there is a God may he help us now, we really need it.
The Coast Guard can't find some other cutters? Crikey.
So The Manitou reincarnated as a boat in Florida? Whoda thunkit. Long live Tony Curtis!! Gitchee Manitou (one of the all time great, bad B movies)!
"Pursuant to this mission, the USS Kidd intercepted a drug-smuggling boat in 1983. When the smugglers refused to yield without force, the problem of passive versus active law enforcement was handled by lowering the Navy ensign on the ship and raising the Coast Guard ensign. The Coast Guard asset USS Kidd then fired on the smugglers’ ship, rendering it immobile and leading to its seizure, along with 900 bales of marijuana."
See The Myth of Posse Comitatus by Major Craig T. Trebilcock, U.S. Army Reserve
Perhaps one US Coast Guard officer could take "command" and make a Navy destroyer a Coast Guard destroyer.
ping for later
WTF?
As a Key rat, I'm spooked. a little.
I wonder just how much experience Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin had in rebuilding ships when they won the contract.
There are plenty of good ship yards out there that make mods like these.
Yea, I agree. You guys have little defense.
To start with, to save money, the Coast Guard purchased an existing design from an English company. It was thought that the design, successfully used in the Indian Ocean, would meet Coast Guard needs. Unfortunately about the only design quality they had in common with Coast Guard needs was their size...and did I mention, they were CHEAP?
To start off, the existing design did not provide sufficient fuel for Coast Guard patrols, so our naval architects simply added additional fuel tanks to the design. Unfortunately, central to the design was a light aluminum hull structure that wasn't up to the stresses caused by the additional fuel tanks.
The first 110's delivered developed stress fractures in their hulls just transiting from New Orleans to South Florida in calm weather. This lead to significant design changes to strengthen the hulls. (This last modification was doomed to failure; the hulls were too light, already over-stressed and at the end of their effective life already.) The first time you stepped aboard a 110 you knew you were screwed...when you walked across the deck it feels sponging...the light construction.
Many of the 110 class were intended for operations in northern regions, including Alaska. Unfortunately, a design for the more tropical Indian Ocean, insulation/ventilation, isn't necessarily good for colder climates. In Alaska the interiors were either cold or were dripping wet from condensation...or both. On the funny side, the engine configuration weren't suited for colder climates either. Whenever they would be fired off on cooler days they would produce great quantities of what appeared as white smoke until the engines were warm. So much so that the local fire departments would come to a reported fired whenever they fired up the engines. In one S.E. Alaska town the cutter was forced to relocate it's berth to another location so it wasn't such a problem.
Another charming aspect of the design...did I mention it was CHEAP...was that you can't clutch down the screws. A great money saving feature but totally insane given the Coast Guard's missions. To illustrate the point, imagine that your car has no brakes, but you can put it in neutral, forward and reverse...but the slowest it will go in forward and reverse is 5 mph. Now, maneuver your way through a tight parking lot, parallel park, etc...remember, you can't use the brakes. Now think what it would be like if you had separate engines/controls for each side of the car which combined will move you forward/back at 10 mph.
The 110's were a temporary, stop-gap, CHEAP fix that should have never happened. They were never intended to remain in service and should have been replaced already. The crews deserve far better. (A side note on the insanity involved with this cutter class. Back in 86-87 (?) when we were escorting oil tankers thru the Gulf, there were actually plans to send some of these cutters over. The plans to make them combat ready was to put a 25mm gun on them. Fortunately an anti-ship missile would probably just pass right through them unless they hit an engine.)
As far as those cutters going out of service, it's not nearly as problematic as it sounds. Most likely there will be little to no loss of operational coverage as other resources fill the gaps (buoy tenders do a better job then most people would think) and some cutters go to rotating crews (much like nuke subs). This kind of up-tempo operations is Coast Guard bread and butter.
The real problem is with replacement cutters. We need a good, capable replacement for the 110's; not another CHEAP temporary replacement. Add to that, the Coast Guard's blue water fleet, the High Endurance Cutters, (to the average person they would look like a destroyer) are old, obsolete and seriously need replacement.
Hopefully their replacements will be nothing like those for the Medium Endurance Cutters (think small destroyer). The latest Medium Endurance Cutters were an absolute compromise; the DoD insisted that they have dedicated space for drop in missile systems, etc. Imagine your mail carrier's vehicle including mounts and dedicated storage for anti-tank missile systems, chemical warfare detection sensors, advanced guidance systems. Sure, if you need a letter delivered in downtown LA during a riot it will get there...but it's not much good in delivering your mail in suburbia in all kinds of weather.
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