USCG Debates Which Cutters to Decommission
By philip ewing
Published: 13 Nov 2009 12:27
The U.S. Coast Guard's aging fleet of high endurance cutters is in such bad shape that officials can't choose which ships to retire first as their replacements enter service.
Coast Guard officials took delivery Nov. 6 of their second national security cutter, the Waesche, and work is proceeding on the third, Stratton, said Capt. Bruce Baffer, head of the Coast Guard's surface acquisitions, but the service doesn't know yet which of its older ships to replace with the new ones.
"We have a number of schedules, but it seems to change about weekly," Baffer said. "It's hard to tell which ones are in worse shape."
In the past year, the Coast Guard has had to sideline two of its 378-foot high-endurance cutters, the Dallas and Gallatin, for major engineering work. Officials initially would have said those two ships should leave service first - to be replaced by the national security cutters Bertholf and Waesche - but now they don't want to lose the money they invested in repairing them, Baffer said.
The Coast Guard's four decade-old Hamilton-class cutters are disintegrating even as crews continue to drive them hard in missions at sea. When the Coast Guard makes its budget submission to Congress each year, Commandant Adm. Thad Allen includes photos that show the results of corrosion, fire and wear on ships that continue to operate at high tempos.
Another issue with retiring older cutters is that many Coast Guard homeports include at least two ships, and decommissioning one of them could unbalance local crews and families. Officials also need to weigh the local effects of decommissioning both ships in a homeport, or closing the port altogether, Baffer said. So for the present, as new Legend-class national security cutters enter service, they'll augment, rather than replace, the Hamiltons.
Baffer gave a presentation Nov. 12 at a Surface Navy Association event outside Washington.
There was no clear answer on another Coast Guard modernization question: As the NSCs enter the fleet with their bigger flight decks - roomier than those on a Navy destroyer - will the ships begin carrying the long-range HH-60J Jayhawk helicopters? Today, the Jayhawk fleet flies from land stations, and Coast Guard cutters carry smaller, shorter-ranged MH-65C Dolphins.
"That depends on who you ask," Baffer said. "The airdales say no."
The Coast Guard is upgrading its fleet of Jayhawks to an MH-60T variant at a rate of about eight per year, but there are no organized plans to begin fielding them at sea, Baffer said.
It would be complicated and expensive for Jayhawk pilots to stay qualified in landing on flight decks at sea, he said - especially since today there are so few national security cutters available on which they could practice. The Jayhawk is too big to land on the Coast Guard's Hamilton-class cutters, and it has become very rare for them to use the flight decks of the newer 270-foot ships in the fleet.
Also, Baffer said that in many places where the Coast Guard operates, such as the Caribbean, the helo has such long legs it can operate just as effectively from land bases.
"If the helo can fly so far away from the cutter that it can't catch up, why fly it off the ship?" Baffer said.
Still, he remembered fondly deploying with a Jayhawk aboard the 270-foot medium-endurance cutter Thetis, which made life easy for the ship's crew.
"It was great - you could launch them in the morning and pick them up six hours later."
