Conceived as an innovative approach to Coast Guard procurement, Deepwater's emphasis on interoperability of communications and data sharing also will provide the maritime domain awareness vital to homeland security.
Five years ago, the U.S. Coast Guard saw the coming bloc obsolescence of its operating assets. Its platforms and equipment were being outstripped by technology available on the commercial market, and its maritime security and safety, interdiction, and numerous other military, law-enforcement, and humanitarian missions were becoming more difficult to execute. The Coast Guard was at risk of falling behind in the technological race with smugglers, terrorists, and others who would do us harm.
The service had three choices.
- Live with declining capabilities and reduce its missions
- Replace core assets one-for-one, replicating the way the Coast Guard has operated for the past three decades
- Pursue integrated asset replacement capitalizing on network communications and capabilities to create a comprehensive modernization strategy
The Coast Guard chose the third path and has spent the past five years working on the Integrated Deepwater Systems (IDS) Program. An innovative approach to acquisition, IDS is a performance-based project designed to replace the ships, aircraft, and command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) and logistics systems that will perform the Coast Guard's primary missions for the next several decades, particularly in its "deepwater" operating areas (those that include extended on-scene presence, extreme weather and sea conditions, long distances to operating areas, or overseas deployment of forces). Concurrently, Deepwater Assets will provide a capable and essential presence and response capability in our coastal waters as we attend to the needs of homeland security.
Performance-Based Strategy
The Coast Guard's proposal process resulted in three competing industry teams working with the service to establish a new procurement model. At the heart of this model is a public-private partnership to assess mission requirements and performance objectives in solutions offered by industry. Sixty-six measures of effectiveness were identified in the request for proposals that spanned all deepwater mission areas.
The driving forces for the Deepwater approach were:
- Block obsolescence of major assets (nine classes reaching ends of service lives)
- Capability limitations of current assets, including lack of interoperability with the U.S. Navy and other military services and federal agencies
- Increasing logistical demands because of aging assets and technology
- Gaps in capability and increasing demand for Coast Guard services
- Budgetary realities that emphasized the need for a long-term, balanced acquisition effort
- Opportunity to capitalize on new approaches to C4ISR
- Opportunity to exploit relationships among multimission system components
Deepwater development had to balance two key factors: maximum operational effectiveness and minimum total cost of ownership. Other considerations were minimizing the risks of new technologies, tapping into the commercial technological revolutions, and an ability to meld legacy systems with new. Thus, although Deepwater is a new acquisition approach, it was not conceived in a vacuum. It is a well-conceived modernization plan for a force that has to operate around the clock. How the Coast Guard operates today and will need to operate tomorrow have been the baselines for all options.
Also important to Deepwater is its ability to work closely with the U.S. Navy's Information Technology 21 strategy, various network-centric warfare initiatives, and its next-generation family of warships program. Navy-Coast Guard cooperation is seen as critical to national and global missions. Working together, the services are committed to building "a National Fleet of multi-mission surface combatants, major cutters, patrol boats and aircraft to maximize our effectiveness across all naval and maritime missions."1 Obviously, the new Coast Guard National Security Cutter will carry combat systems provided by the Navy. The Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship and future Deepwater surface assets will have commonality yet to be fully defined. Both the DD(X) and IDS programs are working to identify intersections that will provide for enhanced capability for U.S. maritime forces.
In addition, it is critical to deal with threats to the U.S. homeland and to maritime security as far away from the United States as possible. This need has generated within the Coast Guard a strategic concept called "Pressing Out Our Borders" that envisages close planning with the Navy. It calls for a layered defense of surveillance, detection, identification, sorting, and interception and engagement of threats in four areas of approach to the United States:
- Overseas source departure zones
- Transoceanic route zones
- U.S. coastal route zones
- U.S. port zones
Operating at greater distance from U.S. shores, the Coast Guard and Navy can thwart threats that do materialize well before they can be in position to deliver an attack. This approach echoes comments by senior Navy leaders during the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review: "We prefer our crises and conflicts to be 'away games.'"
Deepwater Moves Forward
On 25 June, the Coast Guard awarded the Deepwater contract to Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), an equal partnership of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. With a total potential value throughout three decades of $17 billion, Deepwater is the largest recapitalization effort in the history of the Coast Guard. It could involve acquisition of up to 91 cutters, 35 fixed-wing aircraft, 34 helicopters, and 76 unmanned surveillance aircraft, and the upgrade of 49 exiting cutters and 93 helicopters, in addition to C4ISR systems.
Initial acquisition priorities will be the National Security Cutter, an extensive upgrade to the 110-foot patrol boat, and the new Maritime Patrol Aircraft. C4ISR improvements to legacy assets likewise are included in the first period of the contract. Data fusion and interoperability with other U.S. agencies are crucial as we strive to achieve maritime domain awareness.
But because of the public-private partnership associated with Deepwater and the nature of performance-based procurement, the mix of systems may change over time. The Coast Guard and ICGS will evaluate platforms and technical solutions against mission requirements and performance. If fewer helos than fixed-wing aircraft are required, or more cutters than aviation assets, or if an unmanned aerial vehicle would best serve the task in a given area, the program will be able to weigh such options.
Above all, the Deepwater program is an innovative modernization strategy that allows the Coast Guard and the prime contractors to determine tradeoffs between legacy and new systems. The service knew that legacy assets likely would continue in service initially, and upgrade or replacement was a key aspect of the overall approach. In no case, however, could the proposed IDS performance be less than that of the legacy system.
At the heart of the Deepwater approach is integrated command and control and an ability to use sensor data and other systems to provide for a C4ISR approach to maritime security. Integration is necessary for the Coast Guard rather than separate asset replacements precisely to enhance the effectiveness of both legacy and new components. The Coast Guard will work incrementally from the new foundation to integrate systems so that operational effectiveness is maximized as operational costs are minimized. This is a frugal but intelligent acquisition strategy, which allows the Coast Guard to adapt its various capabilities to changing missions during the next 30 years. Congress has been demanding of the Pentagon and the services an ability to take a "big picture" look at meeting the homeland and national security requirements of the United States. This is what the Coast Guard has done and will continue to do throughout the Deepwater process.
After 11 September
The September 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent need for enhanced port and maritime security have elevated the Coast Guard's significance in homeland defense. Before 9/11, IDS was a service's approach to procurement; after 9/11 it became an innovative approach to national security. As President George Bush noted on 24 June, "The Coast Guard's Deepwater (program] will award a multiyear contract to replace aging ships and aircraft, and improve communications and information sharing. The whole purpose is to push out our maritime borders, giving us more time to identify threats and more time to respond."
The proposed creation of a Department of Homeland Security reinforces the benefits of IDS. The purpose of the new department would be to "fuse and analyze intelligence and other information pertaining to threats to the homeland from multiple sources. . . . The Department would merge under one roof the capability to identify and assess current and future threats to the homeland, map those threats against our current vulnerabilities, issue timely warnings and immediately take or effect appropriate preventive and protective action." With its emphasis on interoperability of communications and data sharing, the IDS approach fits right in. A new commercial-off-the-shelf and Navy-compliant C4ISR system will net together the various assets of the Coast Guard to increase dramatically maritime domain awareness.
President Bush also has called for an active approach to dealing with the threat of terrorism. "Homeland defense and missile defense are part of a stronger security.... Yet the war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge." IDS will allow such an approach by "ensuring the Coast Guard has the capabilities it needs to stop threats to our homeland before they arrive and the effective response capability to deal with maritime security needs."
The Department of Homeland Security would enable the Coast Guard to better play this vital role.
Consider this scenario: If the Coast Guard stops a ship at sea for inspection and finds there are illegal immigrants on the ship, the Coast Guard relies on the [Immigration and Naturalization Service] to enforce U.S. immigration law and prevent their entry. If the Coast Guard finds potentially dangerous cargo, it relies on Customs to seize the dangerous cargo. Unfortunately, these organizations may not always share information with each other as rapidly as necessary. So instead of arresting potential terrorists and seizing dangerous cargo at sea, our current structure can allow these terrorists to enter our ports and potentially sneak into our society. The system might also allow the dangerous cargo to actually enter our ports and threaten American lives. Under the President's proposal, the ship, the potentially dangerous people, and the dangerous cargo would be seized at sea by one Department that has no question about either its mission or its authority to prevent them from reaching our shores.
The maritime domain awareness requirements of homeland security are at the heart of the Integrated Deepwater Systems Program. A new approach to acquisition to mix and match assets to meet mission performance and the national security challenge is a key contribution of Coast Guard thinking to the nation's future security.
Admiral Stillman is Program Executive Officer and Mr. Giddens is Deputy Program Executive Officer for the Integrated Deepwater Systems Program.