Dedicated to Those Who Are Always Ready
U.S. COAST GUARD
Mission Guardian Rear Admiral Mark E. Butt Assistant Commandant for Capability U.S. Coast Guard
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December 2012 Volume 4, Issue 4
Coast Guard Program Management Updates O C4ISR Training Criminal Justice
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U.S. Coast Guard Forum
December 2012 Volume 4 • Issue 4
Features
Cover / Q&A
Coast Guard Program Management Update Keeping the Edge Coast Guard program managers detail the various programs and major milestones in their development.
4 Training for the Worst Mission rehearsal and training prepares the Coast Guard for worst-case scenarios—like Sandy. By Steve Hirsh
18 Rear Admiral Mark E. Butt
8 Coast Guard C4ISR Sails Ahead
Assistant Commandant for Capability United States Coast Guard
The maritime agency is buying and fielding new systems to improve its ability to gather and share mission-critical information. By Marc Selinger
10
Departments in the Coast Guard This exclusive Who’s Who supplement includes a pictorial of senior Coast Guard leadership and a telephone directory of major offices and commands.
13
2
Editor’s Perspective
3
Nav Notes
12
On the Horizon
27
Resource Center
Criminal Justice Whether looking to enhance a Coast Guard career or to utilize the practical experience of serving in the Coast Guard beyond your service, criminal justice offers great opportunities. By Heather Baldwin
22
Industry Interview
28 Bob Montgomery Director for Homeland Security Programs L-3 Communication Systems - East
U.S. Coast Guard Forum Volume 4, Issue 4 • December 2012
Dedicated to Those Who Are Always Ready Editorial Editor-In-Chief Jeff McKaughan jeffm@kmimediagroup.com Managing Editor Harrison Donnelly harrisond@kmimediagroup.com Online Editorial Manager Laura Davis laurad@kmimediagroup.com Correspondents Adam Baddeley • J.B. Bissell • Peter Buxbaum Henry Canaday • Erin Flynn Jay Kenya McCullum
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EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE It is common in this day for businesses to ask their employees to do more work with the same level of resources. When done responsibly, this is called becoming more efficient. How to determine when the line is crossed from being efficient to being unrealistic is hard to determine and even harder to see until knee-deep into unrealism. More than a billion dollars separate the fiscal year 2011 discretionary funding for the Coast Guard and the requested FY13 amount. Almost $910 million of that comes from the acquisition, construction and improvement line item. It is clear that the Coast Guard, for most of its modern life, has been over-utilized and underJeffrey D. McKaughan funded—no good can come from that combination. Editor-IN-CHIEF In Rear Admiral Mark Butt’s interview in this issue, he does a great job of explaining how newer technologies built into today’s boat designs create mission capabilities far and above existing platforms and replacing one hull for one hull actually increases capabilities. Congress needs to continue to fund existing cutter programs and give the Coast Guard the resources to meet mission demand—or realistically reduce the mission demand, which is not in the best national interest! The Coast Guard’s elasticity is finite and the service has the will to do all, for all, but the machinery is ambivalent to that will and has true limits. In mid-December a liquefied natural gas, ice-class tanker, accompanied by a Russian heavy ice breaker, sailed a northern route to Japan through the Arctic Ocean. There is economic significance in shaving three weeks off the transit time and fees for moving through the Suez Canal; however, there are potentially national interest concerns that come hand-in-hand with receding ice caps in the Arctic region. With no heavy ice breaking capability and only a single medium ice breaker, the Coast Guard would find it extremely difficult to support and protect U.S. economic interests in the Arctic region. The Coast Guard has been working to fund a new ice breaker, but even under the best of scenarios it would be a decade or more before it would take to the ice. In between, it take a major renovation investment to keep at least one of the existing ice breakers in service. Not too long ago, Nome, Alaska, residents were dependent on the Coast Guard’s ice breaking capabilities as the Cutter Healy led a Russian tanker with critically needed fuel oil to the isolated town.
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NAV NOTES
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
New Davits for Icebreaking Tug The U.S. Coast Guard’s 140-foot WTGB Ice Breaking Tug class cutters are in need of a service life extension. In order to begin this anticipated extensive maintenance project numerous items/ systems are required. To this end, the Coast Guard has issued a pre-solicitation notice concerning the requirement for the boat davit system (boat davit and supporting equipment) for each of the cutters/ ships; there are a total of nine ships which will need this boat davit system. Although the Coast Guard is accomplishing installation of the boat davit system, the vendor will be required to supply on-site technical support at the installation activity to ensure the equipment is installed correctly for start-up, commissioning and operator training. Hardware and component items (for each ship) covered by this procurement are as follows: One single-point lift, A-frame type, davit and supporting foundation. The davit shall be able to
launch and retrieve from the water a rigid hull inflatable boat 20 foot in length with a 9-foot beam. The davit shall operate and be certified with a working load limit of 4,000 pounds. The working load limit includes the weight of the boat, sling, fuel, outfit and crew. The anticipated contract vehicle will be a requirements contract with a base year and four option years all containing firm fixed unit prices. One boat davit system will be awarded in the base contract year. The remaining eight boat davit systems will be awarded within the following four option years when funding becomes available. Although the remaining eight boat davit systems are called for in option years, all of these remaining eight boat davit systems are considered essential and a definite Coast Guard need; however, funding will not be available until the option year periods. The delivery date for the base year's first boat davit system is anticipated to be within March 2014.
Supporting FEMA Exercise Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has been awarded a prime contract by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide exercise design and control support services to the FEMA National Exercise Division (NED) to enrich the National Exercise Program (NEP). The single-award, cost-plus fixed-fee contract has a oneyear base period of performance, four one-year options, and a total contract value of approximately $39 million, if all options are exercised. The NEP base plan is the foundation for FEMA’s collective effort to assess and evaluate national preparedness across the homeland security enterprise. Under the contract, SAIC will provide exercise design and control support services to the NED, including Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program compliant support to the federal interagency and whole community at the national, www.CGF-kmi.com
state, territorial, tribal and local levels over the course of the NEP two-year cycle. “We look forward to providing design and control support services to the National Exercise Division to enrich the National Exercise Program and enhance the nation’s collective capacity to confront threats and hazards,” said JT Grumski, SAIC senior vice president and business unit general manager. “This win demonstrates SAIC’s understanding of the National Exercise Program mission for examining preparedness and measuring the readiness of the United States across the entire homeland security enterprise through a progressive cycle of all hazard exercises,” said Michael Simms, SAIC senior vice president. “It reflects both the strength of our exercise design and control capabilities as well as our commitment to enhancing the nation’s preparedness.”
Acoustic Hailer The U.S. Navy has selected the SoundCommander SC5600 acoustic hailing device (AHD) from IMLCORP for its pier protection program at the Norfolk Naval Station, Norfolk, Va. The Navy will use the loudspeaker system, with its power and high-clarity voice capability, to warn off approaching unauthorized vessels with warning tones and verbal warnings and instructions. “We are pleased to ‘re-enlist with the U.S. Navy for this pier protection project,” said Stefan Pollack, founder and CEO of IMLCORP. “We have many of our predecessor-model AHDs on Navy ships at sea around the world as part of an earlier protection program. SoundCommander loudspeaker systems have also been installed on a number of U.S. Coast Guard vessels.” The SC5600 system is a high-power directional loudspeaker system and acoustic hailing device with a maximum range of up to 2,000 meters. It consists of a powerful amplifier/control module with its own internal battery backup system that is also able to operate on external 120-230VAC, or 12-24VDC sources. It includes a compact six-loudspeaker array (44 pounds) in an integral, ruggedized-aluminum housing for highly focused sound. The unique six-speaker array can be reconfigured for side-by-side deployment or for wide area coverage to meet any long-range or large-area tactical military or public safety sound coverage need. The SC5600 can be equipped with pan-and-tilt for improved sound direction and rock guards to protect the speakers from flying debris.
CGF 4.4 | 3
•
Keeping the Edge Replacing and upgrading Coast Guard assets to meet expanding missions.
The United States has depended on the Coast Guard to save lives, protect natural resources and secure its maritime environment for more than 220 years. However, aging cutters, boats, aircraft and computer systems are challenging the Coast Guard’s ability to execute its traditional missions and adapt to new threats in the ever-changing maritime environment. Many cutters and aircraft have exceeded their planned service lives, requiring additional resources to repair and maintain them so that they are ready to respond to the needs of the nation. The Coast Guard is acquiring new assets and upgrading legacy platforms, mission systems and facilities to recapitalize its air, surface and communications capabilities to ensure that the service remains “always ready,” even under the most challenging situations and in the most demanding of environments. The Coast Guard’s Acquisition Directorate (CG-9) manages an almost $1.5 billion annual investment portfolio representing more than $30 billion in major and nonmajor acquisition projects and logistics support within three domains: surface; aviation; and command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR). An overview and update on the status of the projects in these domains follows. 4 | CGF 4.4
SURFACE PROJECTS jNational Security Cutter The Legend-class national security cutters (NSC) will replace the Coast Guard’s 12 aging 378-foot high endurance cutters, which have been in service since the 1960s. The NSCs are the service’s largest and most technologically-advanced white hull cutters and will serve as the flagships of the surface force. The NSCs are designed to execute the most challenging Coast Guard missions, including law enforcement, search and rescue, and homeland security, with its capability to maintain extended on-scene presence in harsh and remote maritime
environments. The NSC’s operational requirements include a maximum sustained speed of 28 knots; a range of 12,000 nautical miles; an endurance of 60-90 days; and the capacity to accommodate 148 people aboard. The first three NSCs—Bertholf, Waesche and Stratton—have been commissioned and are fully operational. All are homeported in Alameda, Calif. The fourth and fifth NSCs, Hamilton and James, are under construction, with deliveries scheduled for 2014 and 2015, respectively. Additionally, the Coast Guard has awarded a contract to acquire long lead time materials for the sixth NSC.
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kOffshore Patrol Cutter
undergo this refurbishment work at the Coast Guard Yard, Curtis Bay, Md., overseen by the Legacy Sustainment Support Unit. As of November 2012, 12 of 19 270-foot WMECs have completed their MEP availabilities; the remaining 13 should be completed by the end of 2014. All 14 of the 21-foot WMECs have completed MEP. The last of 17 WPBs completed MEP in July 2012.
The offshore patrol cutter (OPC) will recapitalize the Coast Guard’s fleet of medium endurance cutters (WMEC). In contrast with the legacy medium endurance cutters, the OPC’s requirements include increased range and endurance; larger flight decks; state-ofthe-market command and control electronics; air and surface search radars and target classification sensors; the ability to accommodate aircraft and small boats; and green technologies to reduce environmental impact while underway. Following extended market research and industry engagement activities, the Coast Guard released a request for proposals, September 25, 2012. The Coast Guard expects responses for the full and open competition by January 10, 2013. The Coast Guard will pursue a phased strategy for acquiring the OPC, with preliminary and contract design (P&CD) followed by detailed design and construction. The Coast Guard plans to award as many as three contracts for an 18-month P&CD effort, which will be followed by the competitive selection of a single design for detailed design and construction of as many as 10 OPCs. The Coast Guard plans to acquire 25 OPCs. The OPC project is the largest shipbuilding project the Coast Guard has ever undertaken, in terms of total dollar amount and scope.
The Coast Guard has accepted delivery of three Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutters (FRCs), which now are commissioned and in service. The 154-foot FRCs recapitalize the legacy fleet of 110-foot Island-class WPBs. Like their predecessors, the FRCs will conduct a variety of Coast Guard missions, including port, waterway and coastal security; fishery patrols; search and rescue; and national defense. FRCs have a top speed of more than 28 knots, a crew of 22, are capable of operating independently for five days at sea, and can be underway for 2,500 hours per year. The Coast Guard plans to acquire 58 Sentinel-class cutters, each named for a Coast Guard enlisted hero. At the Port of Miami, the Service commissioned the first FRC, Bernard C. Webber, April 14, 2012, and the second FRC, Richard Etheridge, on August 3. The Coast Guard commissioned the third FRC, William Flores, into service at Tampa, Fla., November 3.
lMission Effectiveness Project
nResponse Boat-Medium
The Mission Effectiveness Project (MEP) is designed to maintain and enhance operational effectiveness and affordability of the legacy WMEC and WPB fleets until the OPCs and fast response cutters arrive in numbers. MEC provides some new equipment and repairs to increase the service lives and performance of the 270-foot Famous-class WMECs and the 210-foot Reliance-class WMECs. Another round of MEP availabilities targeted the 110-foot Island-class patrol boats (WPB). MEP availabilities replace obsolete and increasingly unsupportable systems, improve reliability and reduce future maintenance costs on these important workhorses of the Coast Guard ’s fleet. MEP availabilities renew the cutters’ decks, living quarters and engineering systems; replace tanks, piping and electrical wiring; replace hull plating on 210-foot WMECs and 110-foot WPBs; and replace other items, such as refrigerators and air conditioning units, to improve habitability. Cutters
The response boat-medium (RB-M) recapitalizes the service’s 41-foot and non-standard utility boats. The RBM is the centerpiece of the Coast Guard’s recapitalized shorebased response forces. The 45-foot RB-M is equipped with state-of-the-art marine technology, including waterjet propulsion and integrated electronics that allow greater control from the pilot house. The RB-M delivers boat crews more rapidly and with greater agility to rescue target locations, as well as providing boat crews with a sophisticated electronic command and control suite able to track and intercept targets in all weather conditions. The RB-M also is a safer platform than the boats it replaces, having been designed to decrease crew fatigue on extended patrols. The Coast Guard plans to acquire 166 RB-M. Today, more than 100 RB-M have been delivered to stations around the country. The service is delivering at least 30 boats per year, which is more than one boat every two weeks.
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mFast Response Cutter
oCoastal Patrol Boat The 87-foot Marine Protector-class coastal patrol boats (CPBs) replaced the aging fleet of 82-foot Point-class cutters. More stable than their predecessors, the CPBs feature improved sea-keeping capability, upgraded crew accommodation, and design features that make them safer and more efficient to operate. For example, the Marine Protectorclass have a stern launch and recovery system and are able to deploy a diesel-powered, water jet-propelled cutter boat to intercept targets and extend the host CPB’s reach. Other improvements include a larger pilot house equipped with an integrated bridge system, including an electronic chart display, which helps crews plot courses to targets detected by the CPB’s surface search radar. When the project concluded in 2009, the Coast Guard had acquired 73 CPBs.
pCutter Boats: Over-the-Horizon IV, and Long Range Interceptor II The cutter boats project includes the 26-foot over the horizon IV (OTH-IV) and the 35-foot long range interceptor II (LRIII). The project will supply each NSC with two OTH-IVs and one LRI-II, as well as delivering cutter boats for other Coast Guard platforms, including the Sentinel-class FRC. The new cutter boats, able to sprint at 38-42 knots, will extend the mission reach and their host cutters, interdicting go-fast targets and delivering Coast Guard boarding teams. The OTH-IV, with accommodation for five, including a crew of three and a twomember boarding team, is designed to intercept and inspect vessels of interest during counter-drug patrols. The Coast Guard used an innovative acquisition strategy for the OTH-IV, selecting the winner from a “boatoff” of four competing designs. The Coast Guard may procure 101 OTH-IVs, including additional boats for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Navy. The powerful LRI-II, driven by twin marine diesel engines and water jet propulsors, will mount high speed chases against fast-moving targets far from the host cutter. Each LRI can accommodate 15 persons. An improved command, control and communications suite helps the boat crews stay in contact with their cutter, Coast Guard aircraft and other assets during operations, particularly migrant interdiction. The Coast Guard plans to procure 10 LRI-II. CGF 4.4 | 5
qResponse Boat-Small The Coast Guard developed the response boat-small (RB-S) to provide additional maritime safety and security platforms after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The first 25-foot Defender-class RB-S arrived in May 2002, and the service acquired approximately 300. These now are reaching the end of their expected 10-year service lives, prompting the Coast Guard to begin a new procurement, designated RB-S II. The Coast Guard plans to procure as many as 500 RBS-II to replace the Defenderclass and will provide as many as 20 boats to CBP and 10 to the Navy. To date, the Coast Guard has ordered 64 RB-S II and the lead hulls have been placed into service at Coast Guard small boat stations on the East Coast.
AVIATION PROJECTS jHC-130H/J Long Range Surveillance Aircraft The modernization and recapitalization of the Coast Guard’s long range surveillance (LRS) aircraft will enable aircrews to perform maritime patrols more effectively. The Coast Guard currently has 23 HC-130H Hercules and six HC-130J Super Hercules LRS, which fly search and rescue, transport, and law enforcement missions. The Coast Guard’s HC-130Js are equipped with a state-of-the-market surface search radar, electro-optical/infrared sensor, and a mission operator station installed on the flight deck. The Coast Guard accepted a sixth HC-130J in May 2010. In 2012, the service ordered three more Super Hercules for delivery in 2016. Since their introduction in fiscal year 2008, the HC-130Js have saved lives, supported Coast Guard mobility and interdicted aliens and smugglers. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard is procuring a series of improvements for the 23 HC130Hs. All have now received new avionics and a new surface search radar system. And to extend the service lives of these important aircraft to 2027, some HC-130Hs will receive new center wing boxes, a crucial component that joins the wings to the planes’ fuselage.
kHC-144A Medium Range Surveillance Aircraft The HC-144A Ocean Sentry medium range surveillance plane is the Coast Guard’s new fixed-wing maritime patrol aircraft (MPA). Powered by fuel efficient turbo-prop engines, the Ocean Sentry is a more suitable 6 | CGF 4.4
MPA platform than its predecessor, the fast turbo-fan powered HU-25 Guardian. The HC-144A is able to remain on station for 10 hours, flying at lower speeds across a wider search area, crucial in lifesaving operations. The Ocean Sentry also is a reconfigurable platform, with a roll-on/roll-off mission system pallet that includes a suite of specialized electronic surveillance and communication equipment that allows MPA aircrews to tie into Coast Guard and joint force classified tactical networks. The aircraft’s rear ramp allows the cargo bay to be configured for several missions, including maritime patrol, medical evacuation and transport missions. The Coast Guard plans to acquire 36 Ocean Sentries. To enhance pilot training for the new aircraft and its mission systems, the Coast Guard will equip Aviation Training Center (ATC), Mobile, Ala., with a sophisticated simulator.
lH-60 Medium Range Recovery Helicopter The Coast Guard’s medium range recovery helicopter, the H-60 Jayhawk, has been a workhorse of Coast Guard aviation. First introduced in the 1990s, the aging aircraft require a complex overhaul to address critical maintenance issues. Once upgraded at Aviation Logistics Center (ALC), Elizabeth City, N.C., the MH-60Js will continue flying through 2027. The upgrade replaces worn components and systems on the helicopters and adds new mission equipment that enhance capability and reduce operating costs. The Coast Guard has equipped all 42 Jayhawks with airborne use of force capabilities (including ballistic armor, weapons mounts and other modifications). The service is completing other segments of the MH-60T upgrade, including new avionics, a new electro-optic/infrared sensor system and other improvements to enable aircrews to locate, identify and track targets, day or night in all weather.
mH-65 Short Range Recovery Helicopter The Coast Guard’s short range recovery helicopter, the HH-65 Dolphin, first entered service in 1984. These aircraft are mainstays of Coast Guard cutter aviation, as well as serving at air stations across the country. A project to upgrade these aircraft at the ALC extends their service lives through 2027. In the first phase of the upgrade, the Coast Guard replaced the HH-65s’ engines,
which provided 40 percent more power. Next, the service equipped the helicopters with new electro-optical and infrared sensor systems, as well as airborne use of force kits, and re-designated the aircraft MH-65C. The Coast Guard now is improving all 100 Dolphins to the MH-65D standard, adding cockpit avionics, such as flat panel displays, an embedded GPS and inertial navigation system, etc. In the final phase of the upgrade, the Coast Guard will install the common avionics architecture system cockpit equipment, similar to that being installed aboard the MH-60T. When complete, the Dolphins will be re-designated MH-65E.
C4ISR PROJECTS jC4ISR C4ISR equipment is an important component of the mission capability delivered with all of the Coast Guard’s recapitalized cutters, boats and aircraft. C4ISR equipment and networks help the Coast Guard collect, process, share and act on information that may be crucial to the success or failure of a mission. The C4ISR acquisition project helps Coast Guard and inter-agency decision-makers build in their command centers a realistic common operational picture of the working environment. The information derived from C4ISR equipment helps Coast Guard units work more effectively with one another and partners in other services, to save lives, enforce U.S. laws and provide maritime homeland security.
kRescue 21 Rescue 21 is the Coast Guard’s advanced command, control and communications system created to assist mariners in distress and save lives and property at sea. As the maritime version of 911, Rescue 21 helps first responders communicate and work together during maritime emergencies. The Rescue 21 system extends communication range to 20 nautical miles from shore and also provides direction-finding capability to direct rescue assets along accurate lines of bearing to targets in distress. The system also helps identify hoax calls that unnecessarily divert assets and people from real emergencies. Rescue 21 is the first part of the Coast Guard’s recapitalization of its maritime communications infrastructure at its sector command centers. The Interagency Operations Center project and Nationwide Automatic Identification System will build www.CGF-kmi.com
upon and incorporate Rescue 21’s capabilities to improve America’s maritime safety and security. Rescue 21 now is operational along the entire Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts of the continental United States as well as along the shores of the Great Lakes, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Marianas Islands, covering approximately 41,871 miles of coastline.
lNationwide Automatic Identification System (NAIS) NAIS enables the Coast Guard to identify, track and communicate with marine vessels using the automatic identification system, which is the global standard for maritime communications using digital VHF technology to continually transmit and receive voiceless data, including vessel location, course and speed. When combined with other government information and sensors, the Coast Guard obtains a holistic view of the arriving ship’s crew, cargo and routing. Equipped with a comprehensive view of traffic on the nation’s waterways, NAIS helps decision-makers respond to safety and security risks. Since September 2007, the Coast Guard has had an interim NAIS capability in 58 ports to receive data out to 24 nautical miles from shore. The NAIS system currently receives 64 million AIS messages per day from approximately 7,900 unique vessels in 58 ports and 11 coastal areas. The system is eventually expected to transmit messages out to 24 nautical miles and receive messages from up to 50 nautical miles from shore.
mInteragency Operations Centers (IOC) The Security and Accountability for Every Port (SAFE Port) Act of 2006 mandated the U.S. Department of Homeland Security establish interagency operations centers to better plan, coordinate and execute maritime security operations among interagency partners in key ports. On behalf of DHS, the IOC project is working to enhance multi-agency maritime security responses. Physical collocation is not necessary for IOCs. Rather, the important element is the ability to share situational awareness through collaborative use of multi-agency inputs. The IOC framework enables port agencies to conduct and apply risk-based www.CGF-kmi.com
operational planning for improved operational effectiveness. IOCs share targeting, intelligence and scheduling information to improve domain and situational awareness, uncover gaps in planned and ongoing operations, and reduce duplication of effort. A primary enabler of the IOC project is WatchKeeper software, an information sharing and management system. WatchKeeper provides a common operating picture to achieve increased situational awareness as well as visibility of the port schedules for merchant traffic. WatchKeeper facilitates coordination with other DHS components and federal, state and local port partners to plan, schedule and execute port security operations. The Coast Guard is deploying WatchKeeper as a technology demonstration at 17 sites across the U.S. and plans to deploy the system to 35 locations by 2014.
ACQUISITION LOGISTICS The acquisition logistics program guides Coast Guard in planning and preparing for the delivery and support of new assets, including surface and aviation platforms, and C4ISR systems. Acquisition logistics helps Coast Guard logisticians developed support plans for new assets delivered to the operational community. Working closely with the Coast Guard’s technical authorities—the Human Resources Directorate (CG-1); the Logistics & Engineering Directorate (CG-4); and the Command, Control, Communications, and Computers & Information Technology Directorate (CG-6)—the program also assists in the implementation of logistics policy, and supports the Coast Guard’s investments in major systems acquisition facilities.
The APO is currently focused on providing logistics support plans for critical Coast Guard acquisition projects, including the national security cutter, offshore patrol cutter, response boat-medium, response boat-small and the fast response cutter.
kMajor Acquisition Systems Infrastructure (MASI) As asset delivery schedules and operational requirements require, the Coast Guard’s MASI funding ensures that the necessary facilities and infrastructure are in place to support new platforms and missions systems when they arrive in the field. Before delivery, the MASI team works closely with Coast Guard acquisition and logistics professionals to identify the infrastructure needs and prioritize investments in new facilities and facility upgrades to accommodate the boats, cutters, aircraft and mission systems procured by CG-9. MASI projects include: •
•
•
•
•
jAsset Project Office (APO) Located at the Coast Guard Yard, Baltimore, the APO’s mission is to plan, manage and execute the delivery and transition of newly acquired assets to operational service in the field. The APO integrates major new asset product lines into the Coast Guard’s logistics and service centers. The APO manages the development of integrated logistics support plans and products; defines resource requirements for staffing product lines and associated billets; trains, develops and directs prospective product lines; and provides logistics subject matter expertise to acquisition projects.
•
Construction of the HC-144A hangar at Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod, Mass. Modifications of piers, support facilities and shore power systems to support six FRCs each at Miami; Key West, Fla.; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Conducting engineering studies and analyses for future-year facilities projects to support planning and budgeting for new vessel homeports Construction of facilities for maritime patrol aircraft and mission system pallet maintenance training at Aviation Technical Training Center, Elizabeth City, N.C. Construction of the HC-144A hangar for depot-level maintenance at the ALC Modifications to support RB-Ms at Coast Guard boat stations nationwide
Previously completed MASI projects include the HC-144A hangar and simulator building at ATC, Mobile, Ala.; the NSC Command-and-Control Training Building at Training Center Petaluma, Calif., and upgrades to NSC piers at Alameda, Calif. O For more information, contact CGF Editor Jeff McKaughan at jeffm@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.cgf-kmi.com.
CGF 4.4 | 7
Training for the Worst Mission rehearsal and training prepares the Coast guard for worst-case scenarios—like Sandy. By Steve Hirsh, CGF Correspondent
Winds roared at 70 knots. The blackness of night was punctuated only by repeated bolts of lightning. And the Coast Guard search and rescue helicopter was poised for a ditching. . . . Oil was spilling out of the partially submerged tanker. The currents were moving the contaminants slowly south. But what if the rapidly developing wind and waves shifted north toward a popular and crowded beach? . . . The caller threatened to detonate a dirty bomb in a shipping container onboard a freighter in or near the port. The Coast Guard, port police, city fire and other local, state and federal agencies were all scrambling to respond. And they all needed to be working the same game plan. . . . Three very different incidents. All Coast Guard missions. And all, luckily, are simulations. . . . Those 70-knot winds were not part of Superstorm Sandy. The wind and lightning flashes, as well as thick fog, swelling waves and the sounds of helos and firefights are among the simulated special effects that select Coast Guard
8 | CGF 4.4
and/or operates its modular egress traincrews will encounter at the underwater ing simulator (METS) models for the modular egress training (UMET) pool in Navy, Marines, Air Force, Army and the Elizabeth City, N.C. Dedication ceremocombined Special Forces Command. nies for the $27 million center and the The boat unit holds up adjoining Rescue Swimmer to four people at a time. Training Facility were held The helo dunker can be in October. configured to simulate “We looked at Navy the interior of any Coast aquatic training facilities, we Guard helicopter in curlooked at Army, Air Force, rent use, holding up to and determined that we six people. Between the would use the best features two modules, the new in all of them to make a Aviation Technical Trainstate-of-the-art world-class ing Center (ATTC) will training facility for ASTs Master Chief Lewis Hart train up to 4,000 rescu[aviation survival techniers per year. Coast Guard cians],” said Rating Training training and safety leadMaster Chief Lewis Hart. ers must first determine But the E-City center protocols and training goes a step further. It also frequencies for water features the first boat dunker forces. That, according module for any military serto Hart, is expected by vice training center, anyMarch or April. where. “For the boat dunker, “As far as everybody there is no training modknows, we’ve got the only one ule,” Hart said. “We’re in the world,” Hart said. “Our Patrick Allen pioneering it. We have to boat forces people have never write all the policies and had any kind of requirement establish the procedures for dunker training. But the for evacuating people and Coast Guard recognized that safe operation of this boat they need real-life training module.” as well as the aviators. After The goal of the new all, we turn boats over occaE-City dunker is to ensure sionally, too.” the survivability of Coast The dunker modules Guard crewmembers in were built for the Coast emergency situations. Guard by Rhode IslandSurvival rate from actual based Survival Systems, Gabe Batstone ditching or roll-overs which also designs, builds
www.CGF-kmi.com
improves by 70 percent for someone who’s recently undergone training, Hart noted. Other Coast Guard simulation tools protect both the responders and the public. “Seconds matter when responding to emergencies—a split second can mean the difference between life and death,” observed Patrick Allen, business development lead for maritime training at Lockheed Martin Global Training and Logistics. “Simulation provides a vehicle to prepare Coast Guard personnel for decisive action in high-pressure situations. Realistic simulations can help them understand the variables that occur during crises and allow them to experience the effects of their decisions in a safe environment. In fact, simulation provides more realistic training scenarios than live training in many cases, since replicating disasters can be difficult or impossible in the real world.” Lockheed Martin designed RediEX simulation programs to train Homeland Security and Defense Department personnel to plan for, prevent, respond and recover from terrorist-related activities and natural disasters, Allen said. RediEX improves interagency and intra-agency coordination during a crisis event by allowing multiple agencies to work simultaneously within a secure online or local area network environment to create, operate, facilitate and review all data generated throughout training exercises. Since its first deployment in 2008, RediEX technology has supported more than 30 exercises through a joint TSA-Coast Guard program called PortSTEP and several other exercises for the National Guard. Indeed, the act of Congress which created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 also charged DHS with promoting “revolutionary changes in technologies” to advance training, testing and deployment to address national vulnerabilities. Lockheed Martin and ABS Consulting are each identifying new protocols, systems and technologies to increase the nation’s preparedness and response to natural and man-made disasters through an improved real-time analysis communications environment. The research, at a combined cost of nearly $10 million, is designed to enhance simulation systems to protect critical infrastructure and key national resources. www.CGF-kmi.com
For large-scale national communications and infrastructure, just as with small-scale emergency plans and training, experts note that new generations of responders learn especially well from simulation in a format they know from everyday gaming and entertainment: 3-D. And as Gabe Batstone, chief executive officer of the simulation software and solutions company Ngrain, noted, new 3-D technology also looks good for an agency’s bottom line. “The use of 3-D simulation is faster, cheaper and more effective than traditional methods,” Batstone said. “It’s also about demographics. It’s about who is it that you’re trying to transfer this information to, and how can you give it to them in the way that’s going to best help them to get the job done.” On-scene responders, for instance, can use a laptop to model wind conditions and see for themselves what changing winds and currents will likely do to oil spilled at sea. The technology can let an on-scene Coast Guard commander recommend and set an efficient response plan faster and more accurately than before. The same technology that lets responders look into the future also can be used to improve current and aging gear and procedures. Ngrain, for instance, provided the U.S. Coast Guard with interactive 3-D equipment simulations to support maintenance training for the workhorse Honda 225 outboard engine. “The engines are out of warranty, so they’re no longer able to get the OEM to maintain those engines,” Batstone said. “That task is going to go over to bluesuiters. A virtual task trainer is the best, most efficient way to show these guys how to do the maintenance and also to provide job-aides in the field. “There’s going to be a lot of life extensions of equipment in austere times,” he added. “With 3-D simulations, they’re able to shorten the amount of time it takes to communicate that knowledge, usually by at least 30 percent. So if a course used to take five days, now they can do it in three. If it used to take three, now it takes one.” Three-dimensional training can be done easily and efficiently at a distance, over the Internet. And, Batstone said, not only do students learn faster
with interactive 3-D simulations, they also test better. “The warfighters, the students and the Coast Guard cadets score higher. So if they used to get an 85 grade, now they get a 95. We just received a case study back from the U.S. Army in Fort Benning. On a particular master gunner course, they’ve gotten down to zero failures. No one has to go back through the course a second time. It’s not that they changed the standard or made it easier; all they did was blend in interactive 3-D.” Whether through on-site and command software, high-tech interagency modeling, improved training courses and manuals or new boat and helicopter dunker trainers, simulation is increasingly the wave of the future—and the present. “We see an immediate need to apply technologies and simulations that enhance the level of preparedness and emergency response at local, state and federal levels,” said Lockheed’s Allen. “Casualty projections, hospital bedcount reports and data communications among geographically dispersed responders are increasingly important features required during exercise planning.” With advanced technologies for modeling and tracking events such as transportation, radiation spread and flooding, Allen said, simulation is helping the Coast Guard prepare for hazards from hurricanes and earthquakes to chemical and oil spills and even nuclear safety. And as Ngrain’s Batstone noted, “At the end of the day, this is about doing the job better at a lower cost. And technology tools, when used correctly, are the way to do that.” Back in Elizabeth City, where leading-edge military training systems are cranking up the wind and waves as a boat crew is tossed safely into the drink, simulation is clearly part of the Coast Guard’s current and long-range plan. “We plan on this facility being our centerpiece of training for the next 50 years,” said Hart. O
For more information, contact CGF Editor Jeff McKaughan at jeffm@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.cgf-kmi.com.
CGF 4.4 | 9
Coast Guard C4ISR
Sails Ahead The maritime agency is buying and fielding new
systems to improve its ability to gather and share mission-critical information. By Marc Selinger, CGF Correspondent C4ISR isn’t just for the Department of Defense. The Coast Guard, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is instituting a host of new C4ISR capabilities for aircraft, ships and coastal-distress and vessel-tracking systems. Service officials said these new technologies are making it easier to collect and process vital information, thereby enhancing situational awareness for such missions as search and rescue, maritime law enforcement and environmental protection. Earlier C4ISR upgrade efforts fell under the massive Deepwater equipment modernization program, which ran aground due to cost, schedule and performance problems. Captain John Wood, C4ISR program manager in the Coast Guard’s acquisition directorate, told Coast Guard Forum that current C4ISR projects incorporate lessons learned from Deepwater. “Experience gained under the former Deepwater construct has taught us to emphasize affordability in our designs and to attempt to stay away from proprietary software,” Wood said. “With new, cuttingedge technologies emerging frequently, we have to be able to find, use and integrate these technologies into our systems quickly and economically if we want to maintain dominance over the U.S. maritime environment. We are also implementing software best practices when configuring commercial software products to automate business functions, enhance security, and make information readily available to operators.” The Coast Guard is equipping its new national security cutters (NSCs) with a Lockheed Martin multi-sensor suite, including air and surface search radar, infrared cameras, and identification-friend-or-foe systems. One terminal, the keyboard integrated terminal equipment made by L-3 Communications allows data to be shared over a wide variety of communications systems. The NSC’s next-generation C4ISR system, Tactical Seawatch, which is scheduled to roll out in 2013, will tie the ship’s tactical sensors into the command-and-control system. The weapons have their own fire-control radar to track targets and currently operate through a control system that is separate from the ship’s overall command-andcontrol system. The third NSC was commissioned in March 2012 and the fourth and fifth cutters are in production at Ingalls Shipyards in Pascagoula, Miss. A contract award for the sixth NSC is expected in 2013. The Coast Guard plans to buy a total of eight vessels. Vice Admiral John Currier, the Coast Guard’s vice commandant, told the House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation subcommittee in May 2012 that the NSC’s C4ISR is proving integral to Coast Guard operations, providing real-time tactical intelligence and information-sharing. In 2011, for instance, the first two NSCs seized 2,200 kilograms of illegal drugs with a street value of about $85 million, Currier testified. 10 | CGF 4.4
The Coast Guard is installing its only three-dimensional radar, the EADS North America TRS-3D, on its new 418-foot NSCs, which are replacing 1960s-era high endurance cutters. Aaron Johnson, business development director for EADS N.A.’s Defense Electronics and Systems business, said the radar’s antenna is lightweight enough to be placed at a relatively high elevation on the ship, providing an advantageous line-of-sight view. The TRS-3D also has the potential to become the multi-mode radar for the offshore patrol cutter (OPC), which will replace the Coast Guard’s aging fleet of 210-foot and 270-foot medium endurance cutters. The Coast Guard plans to award three OPC design contracts to shipyards in fiscal year 2013 and narrow the field to one design in FY16. The radar selection will be made separately, Johnson said. The Coast Guard plans to buy 25 OPCs, with the first delivered in 2020. The Coast Guard is also replacing Capt. John Wood its aging 110-foot Island-class patrol boats with the 154-foot fast response cutter (FRC). L-3 provides the C4ISR system, which includes an integrated bridge and navigation control system, alarms and announcing systems and an integrated and automated internal/external voice communications system. L-3 has delivered the first 10 systems to FRC prime contractor Bollinger Shipyards, said Bob MontBob Montgomery gomery, L-3’s director of homeland security programs. Bollinger, in turn, has delivered the first three ships to the Coast Guard and was expected at press time to deliver the fourth in November 2012. The Coast Guard plans to buy up to 58 FRCs. “The first three FRCs are commissioned and at sea, performing critical missions throughout the Caribbean,” Montgomery said. “The Bollinger/L-3 team plans to deliver a new ship every quarter for the next several years, with the potential to ramp up to six ships per year in 2015.” All new and legacy cutters are receiving new command-andcontrol capabilities through the Seawatch program, which provides electronic navigation, radar integration and a common operating picture. Seawatch uses the DoD’s Global Command and Control System, which provides the common operating picture, Wood said. www.CGF-kmi.com
The Coast Guard is replacing its aging HU-25 maritime patrol aircraft with the EADS North America HC-144A Ocean Sentry. The new fixed-wing turboprop, also known as the medium range surveillance aircraft, is equipped with a glass cockpit, the Telephonics APS-143 multi-mode search radar and FLIR Systems’ Star SAFIRE III sensor system, plus communications equipment that can share information with other aircraft, ships and shore commands. A Lockheed Martinbuilt mission system pallet with two operator stations ties the onboard sensors together. EADS N.A. delivered the 14th HC-144A to the Coast Guard in July 2012 and expects to deliver the final three on order over the next two years, said Tom Wade, the company’s HC-144A program director. The Coast Guard hopes to eventually buy a total of 36 aircraft. The HC-144A can stay in the air up to 11 hours, more than double the endurance of the HU-25, Wade said. “Greater endurance allows the aircrew to remain on-scene longer, support other assets and track targets for longer periods of time,” Wood said. Telephonics announced in July 2012 that its APS-143 radar, which is used on aircraft in more than 25 countries, has performed maritime surveillance missions for more than 2 million hours. The company said the radar provides high-resolution imaging and quickly and accurately identifies targets while avoiding detection. FLIR’s Star SAFIRE III is designed for such applications as search and rescue, reconnaissance, border and coastal patrol, and target identification. The multi-sensor system is equipped with a thermal imager and a long-range, electro-optical day camera housed in a gyrostabilized gimbal. The Coast Guard also uses the Star SAFIRE III on its HC-130Js and national security cutters. The HC-144A’s C4ISR system has been credited with detecting several major drug smuggling activities, including a boat off the Dominican Republic’s coast that led to the seizure of $29 million worth of cocaine in August 2012. The Coast Guard also continues to acquire new HC-130Js. In September 2012, it awarded Lockheed Martin a contract for three more aircraft, which will grow the fleet to nine. The HC-130J’s bellymounted radar provides a 360-degree sweep of the ocean surface below, said Joe Buss, Coast Guard Systems program director for Lockheed Martin Mission Systems & Sensors. In February 2012 off New Jersey’s coast, an HC-130J’s C4ISR system gathered evidence that led to the conviction of scallopers illegally fishing in an area that was closed. The airplane’s technology “opened up a tremendous intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability,” said Lieutenant Gregory Rehlender, the law enforcement and living marine resources division chief at Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C. The Coast Guard does not plan to equip its helicopter fleet with a similar C4ISR configuration at this time due to crew, aircraft and funding constraints, Wood said. The service is exploring the possibility of acquiring unmanned aircraft to extend the surveillance horizon of its national security cutters. In August 2012, a Boeing-Insitu ScanEagle equipped with several sensors underwent a two-week demonstration aboard the NSC Stratton about 150 miles off the Pacific coast. An assessment of unmanned aircraft capabilities in a real operational scenario is planned for 2013. Coast Guard unmanned aircraft procurement “will emphasize commonality with existing DHS and DoD programs while ensuring the projects are technologically and production mature,” Wood said. To replace its 1970s-vintage National Distress and Response System, which locates mariners making distress calls, the Coast Guard www.CGF-kmi.com
and prime contractor General Dynamics C4 Systems have built Rescue 21, a network of more than 250 communications towers along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts and the shores of the Great Lakes, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Guam. Compared to its predecessor, Rescue 21 can more accurately identify the location of callers in distress, significantly reducing search time. In a 2010 report, the Government Accountability Office wrote that the program faced “unanticipated challenges,” including tower availability and technical problems. Bill Ross, vice president of federal systems and cyber solutions for General Dynamics C4 Systems, said the Coast Guard and General Dynamics have worked together to resolve those issues. “The success of the deployment phase and ongoing operations can be seen in the processing of tens of thousands of search and rescue cases,” Ross said. “In addition, the system’s directionfinding capability has helped the Coast Guard use its boats, helicopters, personnel and other assets more efficiently, including the identification of land-based hoax calls.” In the spring of 2012, the Coast Guard awarded General Dynamics a four-year contract worth up to $176 million to sustain Rescue 21. At a July 2012 hearing of the House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation subcommittee, Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), the panel’s chairman, expressed concern that the Coast Guard’s vessel-tracking systems are duplicative and are not integrated to provide a common operating picture. For instance, he said most large vessels are required to carry automatic identification system (AIS) transponders in addition to a long range identification and tracking (LRIT) system to track their movements. “I remain skeptical as to whether the Coast Guard has ever looked at these systems in totality to determine whether they are providing the data in an efficient manner,” LoBiondo said. “Each system was designed for a specific mission goal and developed independently of each other.” Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger, deputy commandant for operations, responded that “a certain amount of redundancy improves the health of a system” by providing complementary capabilities that can also back each other up. AIS is mainly a line-of-sight system, while LRIT is a satellite-based system. Neffenger also told the panel that the Coast Guard currently receives a “fairly comprehensive picture” through DoD and is creating its own capability by evolving its new web-based WatchKeeper information management tool. The Coast Guard has delivered WatchKeeper to 21 of 35 ports and intends to install the remainder by the end of fiscal year 2014. “I don’t think our common operational picture is as fully integrated as I’d like to see it in the future,” Neffenger testified. “I think it’s much better than it’s ever been and it’s providing our operational commanders with a much more complete picture of what’s happening in their individual port environments or geographic regions than they had before. The challenge is going to be in integrating the various individual types of sensors and feeds that each port has and in determining what best to put into that and also to bring into the picture more of our local port partners.” O For more information, contact CGF Editor Jeff McKaughan at jeffm@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.cgf-kmi.com.
CGF 4.4 | 11
ON THE HORIZON
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
Integrated Surveillance and Monitoring Network
Coast Guard to Assist in Costa Concordia Investigation
Emergency services providers and local law enforcement agencies in Delaware County, Pa., can now detect threats to critical infrastructure with the activation of the Boeing Watchstander integrated security solutions network along the Delaware River near Philadelphia. “Boeing Watchstander allows us to fully integrate land and maritime awareness with emergency response to ensure our key resources are secured, monitored and protected,” said Delaware County Council Chairman Tom McGarrigle. “There are more than 10 critical resources in this area that need the top-level security that Watchstander provides, including refineries that supply almost 80 percent of the petroleum needs for the northeastern United States.” Using an advanced suite of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors and systems, Watchstander enables information sharing and provides real-time situational awareness for local, state and regional law enforcement personnel and first responders. “Boeing draws on its extensive security experience and longstanding expertise in C4ISR in the design and implementation of the Watchstander system,” said Mike Hettmann, director of ISR and Force Protection for Boeing Electronic & Mission Systems. “We’re proud to partner with the Delaware County Council, the Delaware County Office of Emergency Services and other regional stakeholders to address critical infrastructure protection challenges with innovative and affordable solutions that can be adapted to a variety of environments.” Focused on a 14-mile stretch of the Delaware River that includes the Commodore Barry Bridge, Marcus Hook and Hog Island, Watchstander will provide 24-hour surveillance, detection, identification and recognition. Under the $4.4 million contract, Boeing is responsible for the design, procurement, installation, integration, testing and maintenance of the system, as well as training law enforcement and emergency services personnel in its use.
The U.S. Coast Guard, joined by the National Transportation Safety Board, will be part of an Italian-led marine casualty investigation into the January 2012 grounding and partial sinking of the cruise ship Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy. The incident left 32 people dead, including two Americans. Evidence, timeline, analysis, conclusion(s), recommendations and a draft report are to be formalized over the next few months of the investigation. The Coast Guard places the highest priority on the safety of passenger vessels, including those domestic and foreign vessels that embark passengers in the United States and embark U.S. passengers worldwide, ensuring they are in compliance with applicable international and domestic safety standards. The Coast Guard routinely participates in casualty investigations, even those taking place overseas, and leads efforts at the International Maritime Organization to improve maritime safety, security and environmental protection standards. Coast Guard and NTSB participation in the marine casualty investigation is consistent with generally accepted international marine casualty investigation practices and with Coast Guard statutory authority in 46 U.S.C. 6101(g) and 6301.
12 | CGF 4.4
Full Motion Video on UAV Charles River Analytics, a developer of intelligent systems solutions, has announced Compact Aerial Video Exploitation (CAVE), a follow-on contract for the Office of Naval Research (ONR). CAVE is an integrated hardware/software system designed to process highresolution video data at full video-rate onboard a small unmanned aerial vehicle. Charles River will be joined in this effort by Singular Computing, who will provide technology to co-develop an image tracker that operates almost two orders of magnitude faster and consumes less than 2 percent of the power of a traditional solution based on a generalpurpose central processing unit. Results can yield a ~6400x improvement in speed and power overall, which can be gamechanging where small UAVs—operating under significant size, weight and power constraints—are used to collect aerial imagery for military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Ross Eaton, senior scientist at Charles River, explained, “Consider a situation in which a small unit commander believes there may be armed hostiles over a hill. Instead of sending his troops over to investigate, he could send a small UAV to collect imagery and keep his troops out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, small UAVs collect poor quality images due to motion blur and poor image tracking, putting significant workload on the operator to understand what he’s seeing in a timely fashion. By the time he’s deciphered the blurry pixels, a truck full of armed hostiles are already approaching with their weapons ready.” CAVE employs Singular Computing’s computing hardware architecture offering several orders of magnitude greater efficiency over conventional processors. Charles River’s VisionKit library of vision components provides the capability for image analysis and classification.
www.CGF-kmi.com
U.S. COAST GUARD | BUDGET
Budget
FY11
FY12
FY13
Operating Expenses
6,907,458
6,755,254
6,791,178
Environmental Compliance and Restoration
12,593
13,500
13,162
Reserve Training
132,849
134,278
132,554
Acquisition, Construction and Improvements
2,101,580
1,463,968
1,192,309
Research, Development, Test and Evaluation
20,536
27,779
19,728
Medicare-Eligible Retiree Health Care Fund Contribution
265,321
261,871
169,977
Subtotal Discretionary
9,440,337
8,656,650
8,318,908
Retired Pay
1,320,689
1,440,157
1,430,942
Boat Safety
134,433
113,199
116,221
Maritime Oil Spill Program
259,465
101,000
100,500
Gift Fund
1,535
80
80
Subtotal Mandatory
1,716,122
1,654,436
1,647,743
Selected Key Capital Investment and Construction Initiatives FY13 (dollars in thousands) I. Vessels & Critical Infrastructure 1. Survey and Design - Vessels and Boats
$2,500
2. National Security Cutter (NSC)
$683,000
3. Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC)
$30,000
4. Fast Response Cutter (FRC)
$139,000
5. Cutter Boats
$4,000
6. Medium Endurance Cutter Sustainment (MEP)
$13,000
7. Polar Icebreaker
$8,000
Subtotal - Vessels
$879,500
II. Aircraft 1. Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) HC-144
$43,000
2. HH-65 Conversion and Sustainment Project
$31,500
Subtotal - Aircraft
$74,500
III. Other 1. Program Oversight and Management
$25,000
2. System Engineering and Integration (SEI)
$2,500
3. C4ISR
$40,500
4. CG Logistics Information Management System (CG-LIMS)
$2,500
5. Nationwide Automatic Identification System (NAIS)
$6,000
Subtotal - Other
$76,500
IV. Shore & Aids to Navigation 1. Air Station Barber's Point Rinse Rack
$5,000
2. Cold Bay Hangar
$5,000
3. Sitkinak, AK Refueling Site Recapitalization
$1,100
4. Station New York Boat Ramp
$1,900
5. Shore Infrastructure Survey and Design
$1,000
7. Major Acquisition Systems Infrastructure
$49,411
8. Minor AC&I Shore Construction Projects
$5,000
Subtotal - Shore & Aids to Navigation
$69,411
HEADQUARTERS
Adm. Robert J. Papp, 24th Coast Guard Commandant
Vice Adm. John Currier, 28th Coast Guard Vice Commandant
Terri Dickerson, Director Civil Rights Directorate, CG-00H
William E. Tarry, Jr., Deputy Asst. Commandant, Intelligence & Criminal Investigations
F.R. "Joe" Call III, Strategic Advisor CG-2
Rear Adm. Stephen P. Metruck, Asst. Commandant for Resources & CFO; CG-8
Martin Rajk, Deputy Asst. Commandant for Resources, CG-8D
Rear Adm. John Korn, Asst. Commandant for Acquisition, CG-9
Claire Grady, Sr. Procurement Executive & Head of Contracting Activity, CG-91
Rear Adm. Cari B. Thomas, Director of Response Policy
Dana Goward, Director Marine Transportation Systems Management, GG-5PW
Rear Adm. Steven E. Jeffrey Orner, Deputy Day, Director of Reserve Asst. Commandant for and Military Personnel Engineering & Logistics. Policy CG-4D
Gary C. Rasicot, Director of Global Maritime Operations Threat Response (MOTR) Coordination Center, CG-5G
Jeffrey Lantz, Director Commercial Regulations and Standards, CG-5PS
MCPO Michael P. Leavitt, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard
FIELD ACTIVITIES
Vice Adm. Robert Parker, Commander Atlantic Area
Rear Adm. Keith Taylor, 13th Coast Guard District Commander
Rear Adm. Kevin Cook, Rear Adm. John Welch, Atlantic Area Deputy LANTERA Senior Commander Reserve Officer Pacific
Rear Adm. Charles Ray, 14th Coast Guard District Commander
Vice Adm. Paul Zukunft, Pacific Area Commander
Rear Adm. Tom Ostebo, Rear Adm. Sandra L. 17th Coast Guard Stosz, Superintendent, District Commander Coast Guard Academy
Rear Adm. Joseph Castillo, Deputy Pacific Area Commander
Rear Adm. Stephen E. Mehling, Commander, Forces Command (FORCECOM)
Rear Adm. Steven D. Poulin, Director for Governmental & Public Affairs
Ellen EnglemanConners, Deputy Director, Governmental and Public Affairs
Vice Adm. Manson K. Brown, Deputy Commandant for Mission Support
Rear Adm. Daniel Neptun, Asst. Commandant for Human Resources CG-1
Rear Adm. Joseph A. Servidio, Asst. Commandant for Prevention Policy, CG-5P
Rear Adm. Maura Dollymore, Director of Health, Safety, and Work Life, CG-11
Rear Adm. Frederick J. Kenney, Judge Advocate General
Calvin Lederer, Deputy Rear Adm. Christopher Judge Advocate General J. Tomney, Asst. & Deputy Chief Counsel, Commandant for CG-094D Criminal Investigations
Curtis Odom, Director Rear Adm. Ronald Rabago, Rear Adm. Robert Day, Personnel Management Asst. Commandant for Assistant Commandant Directorate, CG-12 Engineering and Logistics, for C4IT CG-4
Michael Tangora, Deputy Rear Adm. Bruce D. Giao Phan, Deputy Director Rodney A. Grandon, Chief Acquisitions Baffer, Director of Acquisitions Programs & Chief Procurement Law Officer, Dir. Acquisition Acquisition Programs and Deputy Program Executive Counsel and Chief Trial Services, CG-92 Program Executive Officer Officer, CG-93D Counsel
Vice Adm. Peter V. Neffenger, Deputy Commandant for Operations
Kirsten Madison, Director International Affairs & Foreign Policy Adviser, CG-DCO-I
Rear Adm. Mark E. Butt, Asst. Commandant for Capability
Mark Powell, Director C4IT Service Center
Rear Adm. David R. Callahan, Commander Personnel Service Center
Craig Bennett, Director National Pollution Funds Center
Capt. Gary P. Weeden, Chaplain of the Coast Guard
Rear Adm. Daniel May, Commander Personnel Service Center
Rear Adm. Daniel B. Abel, Commander 1st Coast Guard District Commander
Rear Adm. Steven Ratti, 5th District Commander
Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, 7th Coast Guard District Commander
Rear Adm. Roy Nash, 8th Coast Guard District Commander
Rear Adm. Michael R. Parks, 9th Coast Guard District Commander
Rear Adm. Karl L. Schultz, 11th Coast Guard District Commander
Rear Adm. Richard Gromlich, Director of Operational Logistics
Rear Adm. Fred Midgette, Military Advisor to S-1 DHS
Rear Adm. Charles Michel, Commander, JIATF South
Rear Adm. James Rendon, Director, JIATF West
Rear Adm. Marshall B. Jeff Conklin, Cyber Lytle III, J6 Director, C4 Command PRECOMDET, Systems and CIO of the Team Lead U.S. Cyber Command
U.S. COAST GUARD | CONTACTS
Headquarters CG-00 Commandant 202-372-4411 CG-09 Vice Commandant 202-372-4422 CG-00A Chaplain of the Coast Guard 202-372-4434 CG-00B Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard 202-372-4433 CG-00H Director, Office of Civil Rights 202-372-4500 CG-00J Chief Administrative Law Judge 202-372-4440
CG-092 Director of Governmental and Public Affairs 202-372-4600
CG-DCO-I Director, International Affairs & Foreign Policy Adviser 202-372-4450
CG-8 Assistant Commandant for Resources 202-372-3470
CG-0931 Office of Performance Mgmt. & Decision Support 202-372-4562
CG-4 Assistant Commandant for Engineering and Logistics Directorate 202-475-5554
CG-9 Assistant Commandant for Acquisition 202-475-3000
CG-094 Judge Advocate General 202-372-3726 CG-1 Assistant Commandant for Human Resources 202-475-5000
CG-5 Assistant Commandant for Marine Safety, Security & Stewardship 202-372-1001
CG-2 Assistant Commandant for Intelligence & Criminal Investigations 202-372-2700
CG-6 Assistant Commandant for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Information Technology (C4&IT) 202-475-3500
CG-DCO Deputy Commandant for Operations 202-372-2000
CG-7 Assistant Commandant for Capabilities 202-372-2020
CG-9 Director, Shore Infrastructure Logistics Center Detachment 202-372-4064 HSC Commanding Officer, Headquarters Support Command and Headquarters Staff 202-372-4000 GMSA Global Maritime Situational Awareness 202-372-3055
District Command Centers District One Command Center 617-223-8555/56/57/58/59 (Maine, Mass., Vt., N.H., R.I., Conn., Eastern N.Y., & North East N.J.) District Five Command Center 757-398-6390 (Southern NJ, Eastern Pa., Md., Va., N.C.)
District Seven Command Center 305-415-6800 (Fla., Ga., S.C.)
District Eleven Command Center 510-437-3701 (Calif., Nev., Ariz., Utah)
District Eight Command Center 504-589-6225 (Miss., Tenn., Ohio River Watersheds)
District Thirteen Command Center 206-220-7001 (Wash.,Ore., Idaho, Mont.)
District Nine Command Center 216-902-6118/6117 (Great Lakes)
District Fourteen Command Center 808-535-3333 (Hawaii & Guam/Pacific Ocean) District Seventeen Command Center 907-463-2000 (Alaska)
Local Sector/Group Commands Sector Anchorage Command Center 907-229-8203 Anchorage, Alaska Sector Juneau Command Center (South East Alaska) 907-463-2000 Juneau, Alaska Sector Mobile Command Center 251-441-6215/6211 Mobile, Ala. Sector Los Angeles-Long Beach Command Center 310-521-3801 Los Angeles, Calif. Sector San Diego Command Center 619-278-7030 San Diego, Calif. Sector San Francisco Command Center 415-399-3530 San Francisco, Calif. Sector Long Island Command Center 203-468-4401/4402/03/04 New Haven, Conn. Sector Jacksonville Command Center 904-564-7511/7512 Jacksonville, Fla. Sector Key West Command Center 305-292-8727 Key West, Fla.
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Sector Miami Command Center 305-535-4472/4473/8701 Miami, Fla. Sector St. Petersburg Command Center 727-824-7506 St. Petersburg, Fla. Sector Guam Command Center 671-339-6100 Guam Sector Honolulu Command Center 808-842-2600 Honolulu, Hawaii Sector Ohio Valley Command Center 502-779-5422 Louisville, Ky. Sector New Orleans Command Center 504-846-6160 New Orleans, La. Sector Boston Command Center 617-223-5757 Boston, Mass. Sector Northern New England Command Center 207-767-0303 (N of N.H./Mass., Border) Portland, Maine
Sector Sault Ste Marie Command Center 906-635-3233 Sault Ste Marie, Mich. Sector Upper Mississippi River Command Center 314-269-2332/2463 (N of St Louis) St. Louis, Mo. Sector North Carolina Command Center 252-247-4572 Atlantic Beach, N.C. Sector Buffalo Command Center 716-843-9525 Buffalo, N.Y. Sector New York Command Center 718-354-4353/4193 New York, N.Y. Group/Air Station Astoria 503-861-6211 Astoria, Ore. Group/Air Station North Bend 541-756-9210 North Bend, Ore.
Sector Southeastern New England Command Center 508-457-3211 (R.I. and Cape Cod) Providence, R.I. Sector Charleston Command Center 843-724-7616 Charleston, S.C. Sector Lower Mississippi Command Center 901-521-4824 (S of Memphis) Memphis, Tenn. Sector Corpus Christi Command Center 361-939-6393/6349 Corpus Christi, Texas Sector Houston-Galveston Command Center 713-671-5133 Houston, Texas Sector Hampton Roads Command Center 757-668-5555 (x2) 757-638-6635 Hampton Roads, Va.
Sector Portland Command Center 503-240-9311 Portland, Ore.
Sector Seattle Command Center (Puget Sound) 206-217-6002 Seattle, Wash.
Sector Baltimore Command Center 410-576-2525/2693 Baltimore, Md.
Sector Delaware Bay Command Center 215-271-4960 Philadelphia, Pa.
Group/Air Station Port Angeles 360-417-5840 Port Angeles, Wash.
Sector Detroit Command Center 313-568-9560/9559 Detroit, Mich.
Sector San Juan Command Center 787-289-2041 San Juan, Puerto Rico
Sector Lake Michigan Command Center 414-747-7182 Milwaukee, Wis.
www.CGF-kmi.com
ON THE HORIZON
Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
Tactical Comms
New Sniffer Yaacov Shoham, CEO of IDenta Corp., has announced that the company has finished the prototype of the new IDenta Sniffer and has received a provisional patent for the device. For the past few weeks, the prototype has been demonstrated before different homeland security agencies in Israel, among other countries including the U.K., France and Kenya. “The reaction from the different agencies was very positive, actually from one of the Israeli organizations we have already received an order for seven devices,” said Shoham. “We are developing a special marketing program with marketing materials for the new device to be used in the different markets and countries.” The company expects to start to deliver the new Sniffer in the first quarter of 2013 and will include various detectors for illicit drugs, precursor and explosives. The device has been designed to be very user friendly, with very high reliability and gives immediate on-the-spot results. It will be able to collect suspected substances from any possible surface: table, clothes, hand, car, luggage, etc. It has no limitations. IDenta is forecasting to sell approximately 10,000 Sniffer between 2013 and 2015. Each Sniffer with the different detectors included will cost between $4,000 and $5,000. The new Sniffer will be effective in use in airports, ports, borders, by customs, any police and intelligence agency, highway patrol, Coast Guard, military, etc.
Invisio Communications recently launched the Invisio V60, a new advanced tactical communication and hearing protection system for modern military forces. With Invisio V60, the user gets a very light, compact and flexible communication system with built-in hearing protection and full 360 degree situational awareness. The system provides crystalclear communication even in the most extreme and noisy conditions. On today’s military battlefield, efficient communication is essential for reducing risk for the soldier and ensuring mission success. Invisio V60 provides full radio functionality, clear communication and hearing protection for a variety of mission scenarios, for both mounted and dismounted soldiers. “Invisio V60 is designed to meet the demanding requirements that modern military forces have on tactical communication systems,” said Lars Højgård Hansen, CEO of Invisio Communications. “We have put a lot of effort into reducing size and weight while increasing performance and flexibility in terms of functionality and connectivity. We have also simplified the
interface to include only what the soldier needs and nothing else.” The features of the V60 stem from the company’s technical know-how and market knowledge from delivering many thousands of proven mission critical communication systems to demanding users worldwide. With Invisio V60, users get a highly flexible, lightweight system and a compact form factor. The unit is 50 percent smaller and lighter compared to most competitive products on the market. The simplicity and low weight is a big advantage for today’s soldiers, who often face a significant burden, both cognitively and physically.
Coast Guard’s PROTECT Recognized The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) has awarded the Daniel H. Wagner Prize by CPMS, the association’s Practice Section, to the U.S. Coast Guard and its research partner, the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering. The winners used analytics and operations research to ramp up protection of America’s ports and waterways from unpredictable terrorist attack. “A Deployed Quantal Response Based Patrol Planning System for the US Coast Guard” is by Bo An, Fernando Ordonez, Milind Tambe, Eric Shieh, Rong Yang of the University of Southern California; and Craig Baldwin, Joseph DiRenzo, Ben Maule, Garrett Meyer, and Kathryn Moretti of the United States Coast Guard. Every day the U.S. Coast Guard faces challenges of evolving asymmetric threats in the Maritime Global Commons and also
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within the ports and waterways that make up the United States Maritime Transportation System. “This research addresses a nationally important problem, the modeling of which is quite complex,” said Allen Butler, the competition’s committee chair. “The team has provided a superior solution using innovative mathematical approaches, including a response model to allow for potentially irrational behavior on the part of the adversaries. They deserve praise for the impact of this work and the originality of their methodology.” The objective of this work was to develop and deploy a decision support system, known as PROTECT (Port Resilience Operational/ Tactical Enforcement to Combat Terrorism), to aid the Coast Guard in its mission. The system is based on an attacker-defender game model of the interaction between Coast Guard patrols and attackers.
Given the finite patrolling resources, an optimal use of limited resources takes into account the relative importance of the different targets protected and the presence of adversaries that can observe security measures before deciding to attack. Recent research and applications have used what are known as Stackelberg Security Games to model the interaction between a security provider and attackers. The optimal defensive strategies to these games are mixed strategies over the different patrolling actions, making the optimal decisions unpredictable to the attacker while taking into account the relative importance of the different targets and the strategic behavior of the attackers. PROTECT has been successfully deployed in the port of Boston and is currently undergoing testing at the port of New York, with the potential for nationwide deployment.
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Mission Guardian
Q& A
Balancing Technology and Budget to Ensure Mission Readiness Rear Admiral Mark E. Butt Assistant Commandant for Capability United States Coast Guard As the Assistant Commandant for Capability (CG-7), Rear Admiral Mark E. Butt is responsible for identifying and providing service-wide capabilities, competencies and capacity; and for developing standards for staffing, training, equipping, sustaining, maintaining and employing Coast Guard forces to meet mission requirements. Butt previously served as director of the Mission Support Integration Office (DCMS-5), where he was responsible for strategic planning, integration, business transformation and continuous process improvement across the 17,000 member Coast Guard Deputy Commandant for Mission Support organization. Prior to reporting to Coast Guard headquarters, he transformed fleet logistics in the largest reorganization in Coast Guard history for all U.S. Coast Guard surface forces, including over 200 cutters and over 1,800 boats, as commanding officer of the Surface Forces Logistics Center. On his watch, maintenance costs decreased 20 percent and small boat downtime waiting for parts to arrive decreased 57 percent. Under his leadership, the new product line organization delivered unprecedented support for the Haiti earthquake response and Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He also ensured the center passed a comprehensive check of its $72 million parts inventory, enabling a clean audit of operating materials and supplies for the first time in recent history. In January 2009 Butt became the first commanding officer of the asset project office in Baltimore, Md., with responsibility for delivering new capability to field operating units that meet operational requirements with the proper equipment, training and field-level support infrastructure for sustainment over the asset’s life cycle at a desirable cost. As chief of the Office of Aeronautical Engineering at Coast Guard headquarters, he managed all aspects of the support program for the Coast Guard’s aviation fleet of over 200 aircraft. In this role, he developed and deployed the upgraded HH-65C helicopter and supported all Coast Guard aviation units affecting air rescues day-to-day and more than 12,500 during Hurricane Katrina. Butt’s operational tours include the dual role of commander of Group Humboldt Bay and commanding officer of Air Station Humboldt Bay, where he was responsible for all Coast Guard missions on 250 miles of remote, rugged Northern California coastline stretching south from Oregon. He also served as commanding officer Air Station Detroit, Mich., executive officer, HH65 product line division chief, and HH-65B project engineer at the USCG Aviation Repair and Supply Center in Elizabeth City, N.C. Upon graduating from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in May 1982, Butt served as operations officer aboard USCGC Sundew in Duluth, Minn. He reported for flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola in 1984 and was designated Coast Guard Aviator No. 2397. He 18 | CGF 4.4
had operational tours flying the HH-65A at Air Stations Borinquen, Puerto Rico, Astoria, Ore., and Port Angeles, Wash. A native of Hartley, Iowa, Butt holds a Master of Science in aeronautical structures from Purdue University. His military awards include the Legion of Merit (two awards), Meritorious Service Medals (three awards), the Air Medal, Coast Guard Commendation Medal (two awards), Coast Guard Achievement Medal (two awards), and the Humanitarian Service Medal. Q: Focusing on the homeland security aspects of Coast Guard duties, what are the challenges you face with port security as more cargo comes from more destinations, and what tools would make that task more efficient? A: What’s going on right now is that we’re working really well with the international community. Trying to stop stuff coming in at the ports with all the traffic we have is like playing soccer with just a goalie; that’s not the way you play. We’re working in the international community, with the standards being used in those ports for their security, before the shipments leave for the United States. We’re moving to a standard convention on what the security standards for everything should be. We have a very good working relationship with the European Union ports and we’ve sent people over to look at their security standards. www.CGF-kmi.com
We have verified that their security processes are effective, so cargo coming in from those ports doesn’t need to have the attention of something coming in from areas of the world that do not have this same level of security. Everyone has virtually the same problem and the key is to focus on developing a single standard to the point where we can trust everybody’s work. If we don’t move in this direction then we’re just building more port security. We need to do partnerships with other countries and focus on where the threat is. Q: Looking at the budget you have now for fiscal year 2013, what do you see as the funding levels you’re going to get and what capabilities is that going to allow you to continue with? What is your focus going to be on, with probably increasing areas of responsibility but keeping your traditional capabilities ready? A: Over the last few years, our near shore and coastal assets have been pretty well funded. We have the response boat-medium, we’ve completed the 87-foot coastal patrol boat acquisition, and we’ve started the recapitalization of the response boat-small. So the inshore fleet is pretty well set, with improved capabilities and a greater number of boats than what we had a decade ago. The offshore mission right now is where we’re hurting. To do the offshore mission people have to understand that what we’re really talking about is battling transnational crime organizations [TCOs]. To fight that type of threat on the high seas takes three legs, like a stool. You need to have intel. Since 9/11 with the intel agencies working together, our intel has improved. Then, once you have intel, you have to be able to send aircraft out to be able to go find the bad guys, and that needs to be in balance. The third is that you need the end game, which is the offshore cutters with small boat and helicopter interdiction capability. Right now, we have an unbalanced stool in that with the old offshore cutters, I don’t have enough end game to go do what my other capabilities give us the ability to do. That’s why we’re focusing so much on the national security cutter [NSC], and then the follow-on with the offshore patrol cutter to replace the medium endurance cutters. I have an aircraft gap over where we need to do our job, but that leg right now is much larger than being able to do end game type efforts. So we’re trying to balance getting the cutters into play and retiring some of the older ones so that we can do the job offshore. The challenge is most of the American public doesn’t see the offshore part, and so they like to see the boats running through New York harbor, running in front of the Statue of Liberty, but the actual going out and doing the drug fighting, the migrant interdiction and similar work, doesn’t get as good of a view, and so fighting for the resources to replace our 50- and 60-year-old cutters is the challenge right now with this budget environment. Q: Despite the high sustainment and maintenance costs on the older cutters, has there been any real consideration of keeping some of them on to fill capability gaps? A: Our high endurance cutters [HECs]—the 378s—were built in the mid-60s. The turbines on those cutters are the same type of turbines that were in the Boeing 707 of the early ’60s, late ’50s. So ask yourself when’s the last time you’ve seen the Boeing 707 flying with the original engines. It shows you some of the support issues we have with that type of gear. www.CGF-kmi.com
Then you have the 210s, which were also built around that time. The Fairbanks Morse engines on the medium endurance cutters are the same engines that were in World War II submarines. All of the ships went through a service life extension project [SLEP] in the 1990s. To go and try and do another one [SLEP] just doesn’t make economic sense. They’re going to be way too expensive to run. Plus, the technology doesn’t match up. What we’re finding with the 378s, if you go into the standard references like Jane’s Fighting Ships and you look at the numbers, it gives you about a 10-12,000 mile range on them. That’s if they go out and burn all the fuel. Compare that to the NSC and you won’t see that much of a difference between the two in the range, but here’s the difference: The HEC was designed without ballasting tanks, so as they run out of fuel, if you start getting into any sea state, you have to put seawater into the fuel tanks that are empty to ballast the ship down and keep it stable. When that cutter returns to port you have to go and pump out that ballast water and scrub those tanks. That’s a cost. What happens when operating the high endurance cutters is as soon as they get down to around 70 percent fuel, they’re starting to think about refueling those ships, because they don’t want to do the ballasting. That means an HEC never comes back into port with less than half its fuel, unless it’s an extreme SAR [search and rescue] case. The national security cutter, on the other hand, was built with dedicated ballast tanks. So when they go out, they’re ballasting to offset the fuel burn all the time. Those ships are coming back with low fuel levels, and the CO [commanding officer] has been comfortable doing it. There’s also a cost avoidance in that when we buy fuel down in places like Panama it’s expensive, we’re able to do the whole cruise, come back home and refuel using DoD contracts. There are just so many things that come into play when you’re talking about the new ships that with the old ones you’ll never be able to build in by the way of the original design. It makes life better all the way across for the people involved with supporting those ships and the people operating the ships. There’s just no comparison. We tend to look at the NSC as just being a replacement for the HEC, but it’s a three generation jump. Q: How much more elasticity does the Coast Guard have in its current mission with its current equipment and when the new equipment comes online? Can the Coast Guard do much more with what it has right now, or is it really restricted by what its capabilities are? A: What we have to do right now, because everything is used multimission across our 11 mission sets, is we have to balance risk. So we’re able to push to whatever the top national priorities are and on down, it’s just that we can do less of it now. A good example was during Deepwater Horizon, when we were moving all the buoy tenders down to the Gulf to skim oil: We were doing less aids to navigation work in Alaska, less of the nav aids were maintained. Right now, with the push to recover the aids to navigation [ATON] that were damaged as part of Hurricane Sandy, some of the ATON work down in the 7th district isn’t getting done. We can balance risk still, and we have enough flexibility to balance to the higher priorities, but some of the important, but lower priority mission activities aren’t getting done at the same time. Q: Are ships assigned to districts, or are they always assigned to headquarters and pushed out to districts based mission need? CGF 4.4 | 19
A: The way our force is done on the ship side is anything larger than a patrol boat with a “white hull” they’re assigned to the areas. The areas do the scheduling and then send them out to either a district for a district mission or we send them to JIATF [Joint Interagency Task Force] South and they’ll work there, or we’ll give them to a COCOM [combatant command] for an out of hemisphere deployment to support DoD. So the area commanders do the distribution of the ships and set the schedule for the bigger ones. Buoy tenders and other “black hulls” work for the district commander, but they can be tasked out to another district to manage the highest risk. Patrol boats normally, with some exceptions, work for the sector commanders. In a couple of the districts they actually work for the districts—in both D-11 and D-7, where we do the counter drug missions, they tend to work for the district commander because you would overwhelm any one sector with the bigger burden. Again, we try to stay flexible to respond to the highest risk. All of the small boats work for the sector. Q: Can you lend me your insights into the priorities and major initiatives for the next 12-24 months? A: We have three ongoing programs with the major cutters right now. We have the National Security Cutter program; we have three delivered, two being built and one with long-lead time materials ordered, for six so far. The program of record for that is that we need eight, so we’re in ongoing discussions right now about finishing out that program of record. It’s my highest priority. Another ongoing program is our fast response cutter. That’s our Sentinel class, 154-foot patrol boat. The fourth one was just preliminarily accepted, so we’ve received three. The fourth along with the first three will be heading to Miami. The FRC program is 58 total. We’ll be getting between four and six per year; these ships will be replacing the 110s. Then the other major program that’s coming up that dovetails in to the NSC program is the off-shore patrol cutter, which is designed to replace the 50-year-old 210-foot cutters as well as the 30-year-old 270-foot cutters over time. We just put the RFP on the street for that. The key part for that one is we’re going to select three designs and then evaluate those designs against each other, then go down to one builder. We’ll start seeing those ships in the 2020 timeframe; that will be when that first cutter gets launched. That’s the programs for the surface fleet recapitalization. We get that, that would go and give us the surface fleet tools we need offshore, especially as the Navy rebalances to the Pacific. Q: With the announced pivot to the Pacific, is the Coast Guard part of that shift? A: We would shift that way if requested by the COCOM. We had early engagement with the planners but at this point, we are not involved with any of the actual rebalancing. If you consider the DoD and their forward-deployed responsibilities as one of two intersecting circles with the Coast Guard and its missions as the other circle, you want to have some overlap between those two circles. This is especially true when it comes to the mission and whether it calls for the hard power of the Navy or the soft power of the Coast Guard. As DoD rebalances to the Western Pacific, they’re going to have fewer ships available for down off of South America in the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean for dealing with drugs and such, so think of those 20 | CGF 4.4
circles kind of pulling apart a little bit. There will be a lot less overlap. The key is not to produce a seam, but there will be less overlap as they push and forward deploy, which means we’re going to have to schedule more cutters to backfill. Q: Going back to the fast response cutters, you mentioned 58; is the contract for one builder to do all 58 or at some point will they be re-bid? A: There’s a re-bid in the plan. We bought the data rights for it so we can specifically do that and offer it up at a later time. Q: Let’s talk about training for the aviation fleet services. How would you characterize the Coast Guard’s use of simulators and distance learning to keep training skills up and at an efficient level? A: The aviation side of the house has used simulators for a long time, since I’ve been in and well before that. In fact, with part of the H-65 program, we just added a second simulator down at our training center in Mobile so that we can push more people through the training cycle. For all of the aircraft types, we have at least one simulator either ordered or in place down at Mobile. That’s been a key piece of our training program on the aviation side for a long time. Surface, we’re not quite there when it comes to simulation. Where we’re having a tough time is with the way the budgets are, getting the ships and getting the training devices all at the same time. Because we have higher and other competing priorities, the training devices aren’t happening right now as we try to get new assets out there doing Coast Guard missions. So that’s one of the things where from the capability side, I would love to have the simulators and I think it would give our crews much more proficiency, especially in the area of responding to emergencies aboard ship. When you’re out doing the mission, you don’t get a chance to practice that a whole lot, but it’s something that when you need it, you need it. That’s exactly what simulators are great for. Q: Let’s talk about the Coast Guard capabilities for a disaster such as Deepwater Horizon—what are the lessons learned? What’s changed as far as the response and capabilities the Coast Guard has for that? A: Remember, going into Deepwater Horizon, the really big marine pollution event prior to that was the spill up in Prince William Sound. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990, OPA 90, was the framework for spill response that the nation used up to Deepwater Horizon. The one key difference between what happened in Alaska in 1990 and Deepwater Horizon was with all the spills we’ve had, we’ve always known how much oil there was. Deepwater Horizon comes on, and you have a spill of an unknown amount—a really big spill of an unknown amount—continuing to flow. The key in the OPA 90 response was that the responsible party was tasked with doing the initial response, and the Coast Guard would monitor them to make sure they had everything in place to respond. What we found with Deepwater Horizon was we had a spill that quickly overwhelmed any one responsible party’s ability to respond to the spill. That hadn’t been envisioned before. So we’re taking the lessons learned from that to go to more of a national response type framework. We’d always envisioned one captain of the port overseeing the responsible party. The Deepwater Horizon spill was so large that there was no single ability for a captain of the port to oversee the response. A tangible example was with booms. We needed booms to try to keep the oil off the beaches. So here’s the conundrum: Since in each www.CGF-kmi.com
area, the captains of the port are responsible if there’s oil operations going, whether its transfers or drilling or whatever, in their area, do you take boom from Puget Sound down to the Gulf and now take the risk up in Puget Sound too? Or do you wait for more boom to be manufactured for down in the Gulf and keep the reserve up in Puget Sound? That’s a dialogue we have yet to have as a nation on the outcome. That’s just one of several, because the whole thing envisioned by OPA 90 was more contained than what we had with Deepwater Horizon. Hopefully, we won’t have another Deepwater Horizon, because that is an extremely complicated response. Q: You talk about the port captains. Can they say no if they thought the risk was too great? A: That’s the conundrum on this, as the law clearly says they can say no. Q: Let’s turn to unmanned systems, both maritime and aviation. Does the Coast Guard have a road map that outlines its goals for both the mission and size of its unmanned fleet? A: In the original Deepwater recapitalization plan, we did. But since then, when the Coast Guard took over, we’re reevaluating the unmanned systems. What we’re finding is there are a couple of things that come into play: While DoD has used them very effectively, our problem is we have to fly in the national airspace. The DoD has a lot of restricted airspace that they can do their training in. Coast Guard has none of that. We have to coordinate that with DoD, so we’re going on a much smaller scale. Right now, we have a joint program with Customs and Border Protection where we’re flying Predator-type aircraft—they’re actually Guardians, the difference is the surface-search radar on them—down in Florida and Texas on a scheduled basis and evaluating the results. We also are testing small UASs. I’m talking about a 44-pound size, where we’re flying them off the NSCs. They don’t currently carry radar, but they do have other capabilities that can transmit a picture back. We’re working with them right now to see how they can contribute to the picture as we work through it. Right now, the technology challenge for us is the airspace. The technology basically outpaces the airspace rules. How do you see and avoid manned aircraft in national airspace with an unmanned aircraft? This is the basic conundrum. Congress has told the FAA to move out smartly on it; we don’t want to get out ahead of that effort. That may be way too expensive for what we can support. The other interesting thing when it comes to unmanned aircraft systems technology right now is they don’t do well in bad weather. That can be a problem for our mission set. But that’s today—aviation in the 1920s didn’t do well in bad weather, so this will eventually be solved. That’s why we need to keep in touch, but we don’t want to get ahead of the state of the industry. We just don’t have the budget to do that. We’re staying observant right now, testing, trying to put our concept of operations together and then going from there. What’s interesting is in the original layout we were looking at having a Fire Scout-type vertical takeoff capability off the national security cutters. With the small UASs that are coming out, and what capability that the national security cutter has from its own sensors, we may not need that big of a UAS with the radar for it to be able to help the NSC do its job. Even if I had a program of record and a plan for the UASs two years ago, I can tell you it would have looked different today, because the technology is changing so fast. www.CGF-kmi.com
Q: The Coast Guard for years has held an innovation expo, where it brings industry together for an opportunity to see collectively in a big room a lot of big things they could possibly use. The event was canceled this year; who knows what will happen in the future. How do you stay in touch with industry to see what capabilities they have when you lose a venue like that? And do you see venues like that as having a purpose or a value to the Coast Guard? A: We have a bigger innovation program and the expo is just one component of a big program. We keep a database of ideas that people bring in and take a look at it. There’s a whole process for bringing in innovation and actually operationalizing it. That’s all in play through the innovation program; the expo is just one piece of that. I can tell you, in today’s budget environment, with the way industry needs to get out and market to keep money flowing, we don’t have any issues with industry getting good ideas in front of us. My whole day could be filled with folks coming in and showing me what all the new stuff can do for us. They’re also showing our operational folks. I don’t think there’s any drop-off just because we didn’t have the expo this year. The expo’s just a point of time. Perhaps we may have them on either a biennial or triennial basis. It’s balancing the budget, cost versus potential gains. But folks are coming with all the ideas—and the technology is changing so fast in a lot of areas, that having that one innovation show is one snapshot in time of a whole lot of good stuff going on. Q: Is there anything you’d like to add about the people within your organization, or where the capabilities of the Coast Guard can go in the future? A: The key part right now is in this budget environment, we’re trying to balance current ops, keeping the level of service to the country—to the taxpayer—as well as trying to recapitalize and get some of this newer capability into place. That’s a balancing act and it’s in tension. There’s a top line of money, and when you have a top line of money, you have to balance it too. The challenge is everyone will have an opinion on what that balance should be, and everyone is right, and everyone is wrong, and that’s the tension. There’s going to be a lot of folks saying it should be one way and others saying it should be the other way. That’s our challenge: determining what that tension should be. We’ve got good folks working it here at headquarters. One of the things we’re doing that I’m really proud of is we stood up a modeling section that’s been in place for three or four years. We’re doing some analysis of what the fleet state should be. Even right now, regarding Hurricane Sandy damage, we’re doing modeling and simulation to understand what the SAR response state of the Coast Guard is with that damage as compared to pre-Sandy so we have an understanding going into the winter of what the risk is for our forces lay down and how that will go. We’ve never had that level of capability before. Being able to understand the laydown will inform the mission support side of the CG how to set repair priorities based on where our vulnerabilities are. So we’re doing that kind of stuff when it comes to building a future fleet. That’s why I have very strong opinions on why we need to get that future fleet, because I’ve seen what the modeling shows are able to do—and that’s what this nation needs. That’s one of the exciting things that keeps me coming to work every morning. It used to be going out and actually rescuing people—now I get to plan for that, and give the folks who aren’t even in the Coast Guard yet the tools they need to do the job five and 10 years from now. O CGF 4.4 | 21
Whether looking to enhance a Coast Guard career or to utilize the practical experience of serving in the Coast Guard beyond your service, criminal justice offers great opportunities. By Heather Baldwin CGF Correspondent
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For members of the Coast Guard seeking to advance their professional growth, a college degree is often the logical next step. The mission of the Coast Guard and many of its jobs lend themselves naturally to a criminal justice (CJ) degree, and the programs reviewed below make it easy to earn that degree, regardless of your mission status. They generously apply military training and experience toward completion of the degree. All offer online classes, enabling students to complete the degree from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. Many offer significant financial breaks for the military. And each program has aspects that make it unique
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and appealing to different segments of the Coast Guard population. If you have been thinking about pursing a criminal justice degree, the following programs make it easier than ever.
Build Transferable Credit Hours The U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Law Enforcement Academy (MLEA) was established in November 2004 at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Charleston, S.C., to prepare Coast Guard personnel to perform as maritime law enforcement officers. It offers 11 resident courses, each of which can be applied toward college credit. For instance, the American Council on Education (ACE) recommends eight college credits for the MLEA’s five-week basic boarding officer course—two hours in law enforcement practicum, three in criminal investigation and three in criminal evidence and procedures. In 2010, the MLEA established a partnership with 10 universities across the United States to maximize the college credit MLEA students receive toward a particular degree program. Dubbed the MLE Degree Plan Initiative, the program seeks to shorten the path between MLEA courses and a degree in criminal justice or homeland security, the two areas of study that align best with the MLEA curriculum. “We chose 10 universities who are members of SOCCOAST,” or the Servicemembers Opportunity College–Coast Guard, said Lieutenant Brett Gary, basic law enforcement school chief. These schools, he added, already have adjusted their programs to the unique requirements of Coast Guard life, including deployments, non-standard working hours and remote duty locations. The MLEA website includes a page (www. uscg.mil/mlea/volEd.asp) where students can click on a college and see how many credits apply at that college based on their rate in the Coast Guard. www.CGF-kmi.com
Every student who comes through an MLEA course now receives a brochure explaining how many credits their course can earn them and listing links to partner university sites to learn more. As of late October, Gary said, 2,752 students had come through MLEA courses in 2012, or nearly 7 percent of the Coast Guard. He added the program does not yet track the number of students who go on to apply MLEA credits to a degree at partner colleges.
Robust Online Program
In addition to the criminal justice degree, the school offers a minor in homeland security. All the courses count toward the CJ degree, but give students an added area of expertise. The school also is adding a law and society (L&S) degree. “The background in law and society is rhetoric,” explained Diana Gruendler, senior lecturer in Penn State’s Department of English and L&S lead faculty member. “We offer courses in political science, history, communications, English, criminology, public policy—everything we think students need to be successful in the area of law. We are a cross discipline, allowing students to gain skillsets and knowledge they need to be a probLt. Brett Gary lem solver, critical thinker and task manager.” The application period for L&S begins in the spring for May 2013.
Penn State Harrisburg, an undergraduate college and graduate school of The Pennsylvania State University, offers the only online criminal justice program certified by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, said Shaun Gabbidon, distinguished professor of criminal jusFlexible and tice and program coordiFrequent Classes nator for the Bachelor of Science in criminal justice. University of Maryland The academy sets rigorous University College (UMUC) standards for a clear mishas been working with the Shaun Gabbidon sion, a clear set of courses, military since 1948 and a clear set of objectives for offering online classes for the courses, methodologies more than 10 years. Along and more, Gabbidon noted. the way, the school has Penn State Harrisburg has learned that flexibility is met every requirement. key to working with active All CJ courses are duty service personnel, taught by the same facwho often work unusual ulty that teach the courses schedules and who can be in residence. “You’re not deployed on a moment’s getting a separate online notice. faculty,” said Gabbidon. “UMUC online learning Diana Gruendler “All our full-time faculty is geared toward the adult are Ph.D.s and publish.” learner who needs to have Moreover, the school’s online programs flexibility in their learning schedule,” are highly sophisticated. Professional explained Pat Bradley, academic director designers helped professors weave video, of UMUC’s criminal justice and investigadiscussion forums, interactive elements tive forensics program. “The courses are and more to create a robust virtual designed and conducted in full expectalearning environment. “You could be tion that folks from all around the world in a course with someone from another will be coming in and doing different country telling you about what they are work at different times of day and differexperiencing. It’s truly international, ent days of the week.” Students can finish with students learning about different the entire criminal justice degree online. people and systems and how they work,” UMUC designed each class to run Gabbidon said. eight weeks in length, instead of the
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more typical 12-16 weeks in most college courses. “We determined students want to get in, complete a class as quickly as possible and move on to the next class. We found we could help them do that by scheduling in eight-week increments.” Classes begin every three to four weeks so students who miss enrollment are never more than a month away from the start of a new semester, enabling them to start when they are ready. In addition, UMUC offers a textbook service that will deliver textbooks anywhere in the world quickly. Military students who have finished at least two-thirds of a course and then get deployed can take an incomplete and are granted several months to finish. “We often have someone in week six or seven and they’ll be deployed and won’t be able to turn in a report or final project because they are out of communications,” Bradley said. “We can say, ‘No problem. Turn it in when you get on station.’ We do this all the time with soldiers going to Afghanistan.”
Design Your Own Degree For more than 40 years, SUNY Empire State College has provided students with the opportunity to study based on their personal and professional goals. Forget set-in-stone college degrees—students at Empire can customize their degrees to achieve specific objectives and design a concentration in any of 12 broad areas of study. “Criminal justice and homeland security students can design their concentrations to be as unique or traditional as needed. At the same time, we meet the specific needs of Coast Guard members who are working full time while they pursue an associate or bachelor’s degree,” said Robert Baker, acting area coordinator for criminal justice and homeland security programs at Empire State College’s Center for Distance Learning. In addition to flexible degree and course options, the college maximizes the award of college-level credit toward a degree through transfers from Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges and other regionally accredited colleges, as well as from ACE credit recommendations and other credit earned from prior personal and/or professional experiences. “SUNY Empire State College is committed to enabling Coast Guard members 24 | CGF 4.4
to earn a high quality State University of New York degree while balancing family and military commitments and providing the opportunity to continue their studies without interruption, whether deployed or on base,” said Baker. “From start to finish, Empire State College faculty mentors guide Coast Guard members, providing them with the guidance and flexibility needed to study anytime, anywhere.”
Relevant, Current, Accelerated Curriculum
“Number one in online student engagement.” In addition, the school is one of the Coast Guard’s Top 25 schools, as reported in the DoD Worldwide Education Symposium. “This means that our format fits the lifestyle of Coast Guard members. With our student population nearing 30 percent military, many classmates will probably be military members, too,” Woolford said. About 26 percent of criminal justice program students are military. Bellevue University’s online classes make it easy for busy working adults to fit earning a degree into their schedules.
Bellevue University accepts all recommended credit listed on Coast Guard Blending Theory with Institute transcripts toward a bachePractice lor’s degree. The university provides an upfront evaluation for its students and The criminal justice program at helps them select the proper major as Thomas Edison State College (TESC) is part of an ongoing advising process to designed to combine the theory behind ‘roadmap’ their education, all with the criminal justice principles with real-world goal of maximizing credit transfer to application and practice, said Susan Davhelp students complete their degrees as enport, dean of the Heavin School of Arts quickly as possible. and Sciences at TESC. “All our students Bellevue has aligned with multiple are adults and many are already workcivilian law enforcement agencies such ing in the field of criminal justice,” she as the National Sheriff’s pointed out. “Many of them Association, the Internaare missing the theoretical tional Association of Chiefs concepts and our program of Police and the Federal gives them the opportunity Bureau of Investigation. to understand that theory,” These partnerships enable as well as apply their experithe school to “keep our ences to augment learning ears to the ground on curin the classroom. rent education needs in More than half of TESC the public safety sector,” students are active duty milsaid Willie Woolford (Masitary. There also is a signifiRobert Baker ter Sergeant, USAF Ret.), cant population of police, assistant director, military firefighters and other stuprograms at Bellevue. “We dents who either are already continually evaluate our in the criminal justice/law programs to ensure they enforcement/public service are ... innovative, flexible profession or who want to to current situations and join the profession. All are adapt to military specifics.” distance learners. For example, one program In addition to a robust developed at the request of CJ program, in 2009 TESC the Coast Guard is called launched a new degree, America Unguarded. This the Bachelor of Science Susan Davenport nine semester-hour course in homeland security and provides basics for boardemergency preparedness. ing officers and other Coast Guard law Davenport said a high number of Coast enforcement personnel. All classes and Guard members have been drawn to this degrees are designed to explore in-depth program either as a separate degree or to case studies and apply principles to real fill elective requirements in their crimilife. nal justice degree. A recent US News & World Report study TESC has a generous transfer credit ranked Bellevue University’s programs as policy that honors military service and www.CGF-kmi.com
education. To receive a degree, only 24 of the 120 credits required for a bachelor’s degree need to be earned through TESC; the rest can be transferred in from other schools and from military training and experience. TESC also offers prior learning assessments for students who feel they have knowledge in a course they are required to take. If students can document their experience and demonstrate their knowledge, credit will be given for it. All courses are offered at a distance. Semesters are 12 weeks long and start every month.
Bringing the Classroom to the Cutter
matter has enough overlap. Subjects taught on cutters have ranged from English and Spanish to chemistry and law enforcement. “The command is always very supportive and provides the opportunity for students to attend classes,” said Matthew Schwartz, director of military education at Vincennes. “We usually offer a morning and an evening section of the class so there are two opportunities to have face-to-face time with the instructor. Plus, since the instructor is berthed on the ship, they are readily available to help with homework and answer questions.” Since launching the program in 2007, Schwartz said 1,461 students have started a course on a cutter with an 85 percent onboard completion rate—far exceeding that of the national average.
Founded in 1801 by President William Henry Harrison, Vincennes University offers one of the oldest law enforcement programs in the United States. Students can earn an associate’s degree in law Generous Scholarships enforcement or a B.S. in homeland secuand Financial Support rity and public safety. Vincennes has a very low residency Strayer University tailors its courses requirement: students need just six credit for working adults, including servicehours—two classes—from Vincennes to members, by offering classes that meet earn a degree from the at night or on weekends, school; the rest of the credcombining classroom and its can be transferred in online instruction, and from other schools and encouraging a student-cenfrom military classes and tered focus among faculty experience. Classes are 100 and staff members. In addipercent online as well as tion, Strayer encourages held at 42 military instalmilitary students to attend lations in the U.S. Costs by providing financial supare low—classes are just port for military students. $186 per credit hour and “Beyond the military’s Matthew Schwartz the school provides texttuition assistance program books on loan to eliminate and other educational out-of-pocket costs. resources, military scholarVincennes instruction ships for active duty memisn’t restricted to land—it bers at Strayer University often brings instruction to cover 100 percent of underCoast Guard cutters. The graduate tuition costs university works with comand nearly all of graduate manders ahead of deploytuition costs,” said Michael ments to determine what Midura, national milicoursework is needed, tary manager for Strayer. then provides the right “Strayer University is also a Michael Midura instructor to fill those proud member of the SOCneeds. Professors are typiCOAST Degree Network for cally onboard for 10 weeks and provide easy credit transferability among member eight weeks of instruction, or 45 contact institutions.” hours. At a minimum, students will be Its course content is equally appealable to complete one course during the ing. Strayer’s criminal justice program, deployment, although sometimes two like all its programs, offers real-world courses can be provided if the subject knowledge and skill-building that can www.CGF-kmi.com
be immediately applied in the workplace, said Midura. In criminal justice courses, for instance, students learn how police, courts, corrections and the Department of Homeland Security work to prevent and control crime on a local, national and international scale, as well as how to advance their careers within that system. While general education courses help develop communication, critical thinking and quantitative reasoning skills, core criminal justice courses explore criminal theory, law, ethics and procedure, and examine the roles and operations of law enforcement, the courts and corrections in preventing and responding to adult and juvenile crime. Strayer University offers CJ degree concentrations in criminal justice administration, homeland security and emergency management, homeland security technology and computer security and forensics. The school also offers an associate degree program in criminal justice.
Serving the United States Coast Guard by providing flexible and portable programming to Guardians serving world-wide. Vincennes University Military Education Program
www.vinu.edu/military 800.468.7480 www.facebook.com/VUMilitary Vincennes University is a member of Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges and accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
CGF 4.4 | 25
Quick, Eight-Week Classes
Finally, the courses are highly portable, even for deploying military personnel. “If you can get even five minutes online, you can drop your assignments in the drop-box and you’re done,” said Casey.
Acknowledging the busy lives of adult learners and the unpredictable schedules of military students, the University of Oklahoma (OU) condensed its 16-week classes into eight-week classes. “If you know you’re in port for eight weeks, you Courses Applicable can knock out two classes,” said Daniel to Coast Guard Work Casey, assistant military coordinator at OU’s College of Liberal Studies and a At American Public University System former Coast Guard servicemember. “We (APUS), the criminal justice curriculum, chose to do this after research into adult offered entirely online, is very similar learners showed that committing to 16 to traditional brick and mortar schools. weeks is very difficult. They have lives Depending on a student’s degree path, and families and committing to eight he or she will take a variety of courses to weeks is much easier.” help better prepare them to In a traditional prowork in the criminal justice gram, students might field. Some of these courses take four classes simulinclude research methods, taneously in a 16-week criminal justice ethics and period. In the eightcriminology. In addition, the week condensed track, CJ department offers elecstudents can take two tives directly applicable to classes at a time, each for the work of the average Coast eight weeks. “That way if Guard servicemember. These you get deployed, you courses include drugs, justice Daniel Casey might sit out an eightand society, organized crime, week rotation but then criminal intelligence, forenyou can pop back in for sics, negotiation crisis and the next eight weeks,” hostage, and drug cartels and Casey said. the narcotics threat. To further simplify “An online degree with the program, Casey said APUS allows the Coast Guardsthe class structure is man to obtain a college degree the same for all online while serving their country. courses. “If you sit When they complete their serthrough one class you’ve vice, they can hit the ground sat through every class,” running by having the necVincent Giordano he explained. “When essary education to obtain a you log in, you see the job in the criminal justice coursework laid out for field,” said Vincent Giordano, the full eight weeks. program director of criminal Every two weeks your justice, APUS. coursework is due. If you Giordano pointed out that know you’ll be deployed the criminal justice degree in week eight, you can program is designed to be just finish the work flexible to accommodate the ahead of time.” OU also schedules of those serving in allows military-related the Coast Guard and other withdrawals. If less than services. “The student can Dr. David Persky 50 percent of a serviceenroll in one or two classes member’s coursework is if they are extremely busy, or complete and he or she gets deployed, OU they can take three or four if they feel will refund tuition money. If more than comfortable to take on the task,” he said. 50 percent of the coursework is done, The flexible structure of the classes students can opt to take an incomplete enables students to complete work durand the professor will allow up to one ing nontraditional hours, anywhere on year to finish the course. the globe. All that’s needed to attend 26 | CGF 4.4
class and complete work is a computer and access to the Internet. Still, APUS understands that military students are often deployed to locations with unreliable Internet access. When this happens, students need only contact their professors and the professors will work with them to give them the necessary time to complete the assignment.
Faculty Who Have ‘Been There, Done That’ Saint Leo University is a partner with the Coast Guard’s Maritime Law Enforcement Academy, maximizing the number of credits students can apply to a Saint Leo criminal justice degree. Saint Leo offers several degrees in the field, including an associate in criminal justice, a bachelor’s in criminal justice and a bachelor’s in criminal justice with a specialization in homeland security. Like several other university programs, Saint Leo offers six eight-week terms throughout the calendar year. It offers classes online, select courses on CD-Rom for students without reliable Internet access, classes on its campus in Saint Leo, Fla., and centers in seven states where students can attend classes in person. Roughly 50 percent of its center-based students are military, said Dr. David Persky, chair of the criminal justice department at Saint Leo. “One thing about our program that makes it unique is it’s a program geared to practitioners,” Persky said. “Most of our faculty have been in the field. We have a retired DEA agent with a Ph.D., a retired FBI agent, a retired police captain, and a 30-year veteran of the law enforcement profession who is a renowned criminal justice author.” He added that with such a loaded faculty, Saint Leo take a more practical, rather than theoretical approach to criminal justice education. Active duty military students interested in pursuing a degree from Saint Leo get a significant tuition break, paying $239 per credit hour—less than the tuition assistance cap of $250 per credit hour. O For more information, contact CGF Editor Jeff McKaughan at jeffm@kmimediagroup.com or search our online archives for related stories at www.cgf-kmi.com.
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NEXTISSUE
February 2013 Vol. 5, Issue 1
Cover and In-Depth Interview
Adm. Robert Papp Commandant
FEATURES
Oil Spill Management From detection, containment, mitigation and eradication, management of an oil spill takes a concerted effort.
Port Security Ranging from criminal activity to threats at a national level, U.S. ports represent a vulnerable point requiring special attention.
Propulsion Systems Whether a small inflatable or a large icebreaker, the rightsized propulsion system moves it along.
Special Section C4ISR Whether the mission is drug interdiction or search and rescue, C4ISR is the key component to success.
In Focus: Icebreakers Serving both a commercial and humanitarian mission, Coast Guard icebreakers also have a national security mission patrolling a region that few can go.
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Insertion Order Deadline: January 25, 2013 • Ad Materials Deadline: February 1, 2013 www.CGF-kmi.com
CGF 4.4 | 27
INDUSTRY INTERVIEW
U.S. Coast Guard Forum
Bob Montgomery Director for Homeland Security Programs L-3 Communication Systems - East Bob Montgomery is director for Homeland Security Programs at L-3 Communication Systems-East. His responsibilities include complete business management for the systems architecture, design, development, production, and integration for communications capabilities for all new surface ships and shore-based command centers across various programs, which range from the U.S. Coast Guard to the state and local emergency operation centers. Q: What types of systems are you providing for the Coast Guard, and what platforms are they on? A: L-3 provides the integrated communications systems and overall C4ISR integration for new surface ships, which include the national security cutter [NSC] and the fast response cutter [FRC]. At the core of these systems are the L-3 MarCom Integrated Communications System and the L-3 Symphony Automated Communications Manager. We also integrate the Coast Guard’s “SeaWatch” command and control system on the FRC. Q: What other military and government customers use this technology? A: L-3’s integrated technology is featured on a number of U.S. Navy platforms including LPD-17 Class amphibious ships, Virginia Class submarines, and Aegis cruisers and destroyers. Internationally, L-3’s communication systems are on the Royal Australian Navy’s LHDs, Egyptian Navy fast missile craft, Royal New Zealand Navy ANZAC frigates and other platforms. Most recently, L-3 CS-East was selected as communications system supplier on Textron’s team for the U.S. Navy’s ship-to-shore connector program. Q: What unique benefits does your company provide its customers in comparison to other companies in your field? 28 | CGF 4.4
A: L-3 has been supplying maritime communications solutions for over 40 years. That experience has led us to develop MarCom and Symphony, which form the core technology used to implement a complete integrated solution. The technology is vendor agnostic, which allows us to provide the best solution to each customer based on their requirements. Our solutions provide major benefits for our customer stakeholders, including shipbuilder efficiency, crew reduction, and streamlined training and logistics. Another benefit we provide our customers is our secure communications and information assurance expertise, which allows us to address TEMPEST, certification and accreditation, NVR, and ABS requirements into our solutions upfront, reducing risk early in the program. Q: What is the status of your current Coast Guard programs? A: L-3 has delivered the first 11 C4ISR systems to Bollinger Shipyards for the FRC program, all ahead of schedule. Bollinger has delivered the first four ships to date. The Bollinger/L-3 team plans to deliver a new ship every quarter for the next several years, with the potential to ramp up to six ships per year in 2015. L-3 has received additional work on the program since the start, including all the electronics installation on the ships, which includes antenna installation and
integration on the mast through video camera and speaker installations below deck. L-3 also provides C4ISR training to each crew prior to them going on the ship, enabling the crew to become fully operational much faster when taking ownership of the ship. The Coast Guard feels the C4ISR system on the FRC adds formidable operational advantages, and in some respects surpasses other major cutters currently at sea. The Coast Guard calls the FRC a “game-changer,” with the impressive C4ISR suite fully integrating with the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security’s tactical voice, data and networking systems. L-3 provides the integrated communications for the national security cutter, with four systems delivered to date, and the fifth system in production. The first three NSCs are commissioned and at sea, performing critical missions throughout the world. L-3 also provides the MarCom Integrated Communications System for the USCG command center in Miami. We have also delivered an additional eight MarCom systems to the USCG to support future command center upgrades. Q: What future programs and opportunities is L-3 working on? A: L-3 is working extremely hard on the offshore patrol cutter [OPC] acquisition program, the largest acquisition in Coast Guard history. We are working with a number of shipyards in becoming their C4ISR teammate, highlighting the commonality benefits and streamlined logistics provided by the FRC and NSC platforms. We are the ideal C4ISR partner for the shipyards due to our experience as the only company that has integrated the USCG SeaWatch command and control system, currently on the FRC and specified on the OPC, as well as our experience and performance in TEMPEST, information assurance, and ABS requirements. O www.CGF-kmi.com
P R O V I D I N G “ G A M E - C H A N G I N G ” C 4I S R S Y S T E M S TO THE U.S. COAST GUARD
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard. Use of this photo does not constitute endorsement by the USCG.
L-3’s C4ISR Systems Are Flexible, Scalable and Built to Meet All Present and Future U.S. Coast Guard Missions. L-3 is proud to provide the Coast Guard with integrated C 4ISR systems that deliver formidable operational advantages and are scalable to meet any size platform within its new cutter fleet. Designed for a broad range of missions, these cutters will feature the L-3 Symphony TM and MarCom® integrated and automated interior/exterior communications systems, as well as the Coast Guard’s SEAWATCH C 2 system on the Fast Response Cutter, allowing full integration with DoD and DHS tactical voice, data and networking systems. To learn more, please visit our website at www.L-3com.com/marcom. Communication Systems-East
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