Coast Guard Fleet fiascos

Crowther's Coast Guard Vessel

On a far less political note here was my choice for a 'new generation, vessel for our coast guard.

You would have needed to read the 'request for proposal' to see how close this vessel design came to meeting their desired capabilities.

Alas any such idea of a multihulled vessel at that time was 'out of the question'. In fact I believe it would still meet stiff opposition from the coast guard itself after all these years of proven viability of multihull craft

 

The days of "Cost plus" defence contracts, where a contractor builds it at "Whatever" it costs then gets 10% are over. This was done in the past because the government wanted something never done before and no one knew how much it would cost. The contractors took advantage of this because the more it cost the more they made. Now most programs have unlimited risk for the contractor (they give a price and in MOST cases if it goes over they have to eat it). Another thing against the contractors in most current contracts there is a Maximum profit they can take (If the bid is 100 million and they figure a ten million profit then end up with 20 million profit they have to give 10 million back even if they did everything right). Many of the really messed projects you hear about are not because of the contractors but the customer's requirements being stupid in the first place because they were thought up by beaureaucrats. An example is the radios not being waterproof and shorting out. You can bet the radios were exactly what the government asked for, inspected and got per their contract. Everyone knows what the problem is (beaureaucrats, politics etc...) but the problem people are the only ones in a position to fix the problem, that is unlikely since they created it and would have to admit they messed up. I support the contractors much more than most because my father is an engineer/manager for Lockheed Martin and has told me of the really stupid things they ask of the contractors, then want it done for much less money. My Grandfather retired as vice president of Grumman (Operations division) many years ago and had many similar stories.

 

Video from the whistle blower

Here's an interesting posting on another forum on this subject. Catch the remarks at the end concerning Lockheed..



Here is a link to the You Tube page with the video that was relesed by the whistle blower after the news media turned a deaf ear on his story:

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...e arch=Search



PS:Let me add a clarification here. Please do not assume that I have it in for Lockheed Martin. I think it is a very well run organization, particularly much better than our government ones. BUT, it has over-developed this competitiveness that exist here in Washington to grab off every contract bid the DOD and other government agencies offer. It has a huge infrastructure and employee base that it must 'feed' with all of this money Congress puts out feeling they can solve problems by throwing money at it.

Witness the Homeland Security fiasco. I said to a buddy when Congress was considering this Homeland Dept founding, "I've NEVER seen anything in the government get bigger and thusly more efficient!! This is 'feel good legislation' that will bite us in the pocket down the road, and acually work less efficient....New Orleans...I rest my case"

You should have witnessed all of the Defense contractors scrambling for a piece of that spending pie...unbelievable. They had no qualms that some of the subject matter was not even in their domain, but rather like a bunch of rats going for the cheese, they all scrambled their lobbist, and Congessional contacts, and ex-staffers, and ex-military to get a share of that cheese. As Eisenhower warned, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

 

I watch all three of his videos.

He is doing his duty as an American, we should all be proud of him. His efforts in the end will save lives, American lives.

GQ man of the year, who did Time put on their cover this year?

I also watch "Feel the Coast Guard" by helituned, rock'n!

 

UPDATE:

Coast Guard's Deepwater FRC Program Terminated
http://www.defensetech.org/

 

I think it's time to buy some plans for the River Class patrol boat from Vosper Thornycroft and get them out to tender. Why reinvent the wheel?

 

More talk like that and they will do away with the Jones Act, nice little ship you have there.

 

But...the Island cutters are a Vosper 'off the shelf' design. Not intending to be a smart aleck here..but they didn't exactly impress anyone with their service life. That said..it would be interesting to compare the displacement of the original Vosper-built hulls with what the Island's grew to be. If it anything like what happened with the Cyclone-class PCs..it would be a rather large number and big difference. The kind of 'growth' that occurs with just about anything built here is always a problem..and potentially a 'hull-busting' problem. I've yet to meet a USN 'small ship' program that did not pile on so much 'stuff' that it becomes impossible to accomodate it all on teh original vessel size. The LCS monohull is just the latest example of that..but many more (mercifully) died on the drawing board, sunk by the weight of too many combined requirements.

 

Quite true. Yet the US Navy has an exemplary track record with frigate and destroyer class programs over the past 40 years. Multiple systems added and/or retrofitted, yet the hulls have stood up to service all over the world, tropics to arctic seas, calm to storms and hurricane fringes. The vast majority of the budget on these ships goes to electronics and weapons systems, rather than the hulls. Obviously, designing and building a rugged hull is both possible and cost-effective. One difference, as pointed out earlier, may lie with the Coast Guard's traditional second class priority in funding. Another relates to the consolidation of defense contractors. There are fewer, they are bigger, and their top management is influenced, like so many publicly owned companies, by the stupidity and short-sightedness of the "investment community", "Wall Street", or however one designates the managers of huge investment funds. All of them focus on maximizing quarterly earnings, and with electronic trading massive amounts of stock are sold off in an instant at any hint that earnings are less than forecast, even if the forecast was by outsiders rather than company management. Top management is motivated to cover up problems to protect their immense bonuses and stock options. Venal politicians (sorry to sound cynical, but that does sound redundant) fight for space at the feeding troughs of big union and business campaign contributions and the right to claim that they brought/kept big contracts for their districts. All too often, also, the government watchdogs are under pressure to bring programs to completion. Those who uncover problems and demand that the program be held up until the problems are fixed are too often censured, which can mean deadending a career path.

I watched all 3 of the whistleblower videos. If true, the charges amount to, at best, corrupt business practices and, at worst, deliberate endangerment of national security. Some years ago, there was a major scandal over the Air Force's need to replace aging KC135 tankers. Boeing and some Air Force procurement officials worked up a program to lease new Boeing-built tankers. The deal was structured as a sole source, non-compete contract. The planes were good, but the deal would have resulted in the Air Force paying nearly double what the normal costs would have been. The whole point of the scheme was to maximize profits for Boeing. Some Boeing top execs were fired and the Air Force procurement official in charge of the program is now in federal prison. So it is possible to terminate or fix bad programs, if the will exists.

Hopefully, Adm Allen is serious in his pledge to fix the Deepwater program, and Congress is serious in its commitment to demand it be fixed and fund what is necessary to fix it. Meanwhile, I can't help thinking of the many offshore oil support vessels and seagoing rescue vessels that operate in 40' seas routinely. The vessel in this video, similar in size to a USCG Medium Endurance Cutter, has more than 800 rescue missions in 28 years of service and is still going strong. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2TXkmX--wc

 

Cool, I wish I could find some hovercraft and SES videos like that.