[devane617]

I posted a story last week from the Miami Herald on this subject. The NYTimes story has a bit more detail.

[SandRat]

Tonk a USCG Story

[VOA]

bump

[Mark was here]

All they need to say is we need bigger boat to catch the drug dealers and Bingo, Billions more of taxpayer dollars go down the rathole, to pay payrolls, all for the War ON Drugs.

Canceling the war on Drugs would save the Coast Guard Billions, not to mention the reduction of law enforcement payrolls all across the board.

Drug use is stupid, but it is the choice stupid people make. Let Darwin deal with them.

[daviddennis]

I'm just wondering ... isn't it a fairly obvious folly to take 110 foot ships that are near the end of their service life and convert them, using the same rusty hulls and the like?

I would think that in the case of boats that old you would always want to simply replace them with completely fresh models. Just as it's often cheaper to build a new house than remodel an old that's decrepit and feeble, I would think it could actually be less expensive (and certainly more reliable) to build from new.

Thoughts?

Oh, by the way, I thought the real workhorses of the Coast Guard were the 38' or 42' cutters. Is that not so? I don't think I've ever seen one of the 110' boats.

D

[GATOR NAVY]

Admiral Allen said he had been given assurances that the ship was not at risk of a catastrophic hull failure and would not pose a safety threat to its crew.

Ouch.

[greasepaint]

buy an off the shelf design.

let some other country pay for a new design

[timer]

My 4 side propeller invention would have solved a lot of their design/speed problems, but hey, it's the government and that old saying applies : well, it's good enough for government work...

[decimon]

“The computer broke for some reason,”

Haven't heard that excuse for some years now.

[USCG SimTech]

Myself being a retiree contractor to the CG, not directly related to Deepwater, I see the silver lining in this.

1. The boss, ADM Allen, stepped in to fix it and not let people die in the 1st storm the vessel would be tested in.

2. All the retirees as contractors... squealed. Placed God/country/CoastGuard above money/company/promotion. Heroes every one.

3. No hiding the story. The attitude is "We're going to fix this! We acknowledge we made mistakes"

My personal opinion:

Turn every nook and cranny, 100% over to ADM Allen. No one in the country is better qualified to fix this. Keep the politicians and private companies out.

[XBob]

Government incompetence, again, and again, and again.

Why in the world do they award a boat contract to aircraft and spacecraft designers? - "Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin"

What do they know about designing boats?

And 500 million (1/2 a billion) !!! for a coast guard cutter???? An aircraft carrier, or a battleship, or a fleet of coast guard cutters, yes, but just one boat????

In fact, the last time I remember the government did something like this was when they awarded an intra-city bus contract to Grumman, and the engines promptly fell out (literally) of thousands of busses, on hundreds of city streets and the airconditioners failed to work in the South, and the windows wouldn't open.

Idiots - the government should stay out of stuff like this.