U.S. Coast Guard Chooses New Patrol Boat (NSI News Source Info) October 1, 2008: The $88 million contract announced Sept. 26 is for the design and construction of the first Sentinel-class patrol boat. (Coast Guard)
The winner: Bollinger Shipyards, with a proven design from Dutch shipbuilder and ship designer Damen.
"It's imperative that we get this program under way," Adm. Thad Allen, commandant of the Coast Guard, told reporters gathered Sept. 29 at service headquarters in Washington.
The $88 million contract announced Sept. 26 is for the design and construction of the first Sentinel-class patrol boat.
The firm fixed-price contract includes six option periods which, if exercised, would add up to 34 new cutters at an ultimate price of $1.5 billion. The average unit price of the new ships, once the program kicks into production, should be $45 million to $50 million, said Rear Adm. Gary Blore, the Coast Guard's top acquisition official.
The service has a need for 58 new Fast Response Cutters (FRC) to replace the aging 110-foot Island class cutters that have reached the end of their service lives. The FRC is the smallest of three new cutter types envisioned under the Deepwater program to upgrade the Coast Guard's ships, aircraft and systems.
The first of the largest new ships, the National Security Cutter, entered service in August, while construction of the medium-sized cutters has yet to begin. For budget reasons the service had wanted to put off buying new FRC patrol boats for some years and as a stopgap measure rebuild the Island class to become 123-footers, but the conversions failed and the modernization program was halted at eight ships.
Coast Guard engineers also balked at Northrop Grumman's proposal to build a new class of patrol boats using composite construction techniques, and in the spring of 2007 the service announced it was "taking back" management of the patrol boat program to produce an "FRC-B" alternative to the original plan. The FRC-B would come from an existing patrol boat design, and the service began a worldwide search for an acceptable ship.
"This marks a new era in how we do acquisitions," Allen declared of the service's effort to eliminate middlemen. "This is a cradle-to-grave Coast Guard program."
Earlier this year, the service winnowed down proposals from six shipbuilders to a final list of three, from which "Bollinger had by far the best proposal," Blore said.
Citing federal regulations, the service would not reveal what companies submitted competing proposals, but industry sources said the other two finalists were General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Marinette Marine.
The choice of Bollinger continues a long-standing relationship between the Louisiana shipbuilder and the Coast Guard.
"We're very pleased," Bollinger CEO officer Donald "Boysie" Bollinger told Defense News on Sept. 30. "We have built every patrol boat they own."
While Bollinger also carried out the failed 123-foot conversions, Bollinger said the new contract showed the service still had faith in the shipbuilder.
"We searched all the patrol boats around the world and came up with that design as best fitting the Coast Guard requirements," Bollinger said.
Bollinger said the shipyard would deliver a new cutter every eight weeks starting with the fifth hull.
The Sentinels will be built at the company's shipyard in Lockport, La., Bollinger said - the same yard that built the 110-footers in the 1980s and now is finishing up the last of 73 87-footers for the Coast Guard and Navy.
Bollinger also had planned to build its Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) at Lockport if the Navy awards prime contractor Lockheed Martin enough new LCS contracts. While that hasn't yet happened, Bollinger said the new Coast Guard contract means the company now will build the LCS at its shipyard in Amelia, La., west of Lockport and closer to the Gulf of Mexico.
Features of the New Ships
The 153-and-a-half foot-long Sentinels are based on the Damen 4708 design for the South African Coast Guard's three Lilian Ngoyi-class patrol boats. Those ships were built at Cape Town and entered service in 2004 and 2005.
Similar craft include Jamaica's three Cornwall-class and three Leonard C. Banfield-class patrol boats for Barbados, all built in Damen's Gorinchem shipyard in the Netherlands, and Britain's four Seeker-class patrol vessels for the Revenue and Customs Maritime Branch.
The Sentinel design, Blore said, features a pilot house with 360-degree all-around visibility set near-amidships to minimize motion. The craft will be fitted with active fin stabilizers and a bow thruster, and Bollinger added a stern ramp with the same 12-degree angle found on the 87-footers. The ramp can accommodate rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIBs) up to 7.9 meters in length, but Blore noted the choice of an RHIB for the craft has yet to be made.
The Damen design's controllable-pitch propellers were changed to fixed-pitch on the U.S. version, eliminating some complexity and saving weight without giving up much maneuverability.
Coast Guard officials liked the large mess area, able to hold the vessel's entire 22-person crew at the same time, as well as the cozy berthing arrangements, where the largest berthing space has 4 bunks.
The Sentinels will be armed by an automatic, stabilized, remotely operated 25mm chain gun mounted far forward and four crew-served .50-caliber machine guns. The craft will be powered by two 20-cylinder, 4,300 kilowatt MTU diesel engines providing a top speed of 28 knots - better than the 23.8-knot-speed of the South African patrol boats, but short, Blore noted, of the 30-knot requirement the Coast Guard had wanted.
Only one other requirement isn't met by the Sentinels - they don't have the limited chemical-biological-radiological protection of the original Fast Response Cutter requirement, Blore said.
The ships will be able to stay at sea for at least five days and be underway for 2,500 hours per year.
Coast Guard officials have not yet traveled to South Africa to see the 4708 parent craft for themselves, but said that with the contract award they "probably" would talk with the South African Coast Guard about the ships' concept of operations, and visit Damen to discuss potential design modifications.
Having chosen a new patrol boat, Coast Guard officials are eager to see the new ship in action. The service will be evaluating the design once it enters service, and could re-compete the remainder of the total of 58 new patrol boats that are needed.
"We may look at a different patrol boat a few years from now if it doesn't meet all our criteria," Blore added.
UH-60L BLACK HAWK Helicopter
"All future wars or conflicts will demand the Special Forces to play an increasingly dominant role at all levels of war, be it strategic, operational or tactical. Therefore, the bringing out of this Special Forces doctrine has been most timely and apt," said the official release of the Indian Defence Ministry.
India's special forces will be trained to fight behind enemy lines and be instrumental in the Rapid Action Force formation enabling the Navy to fight littoral warfare.
The Indian Rapid Action forces, some of whom are being trained by Israel at unknown locations, will be armed with advanced weaponry and integrated through C4I systems.
"The doctrine emphasizes the need for providing timely, wholesome and accurate intelligence, fire support by attack helicopters, naval gunfire, artillery, precision-guided munitions and rockets for the successful conduct of special operations," the Defence Ministry release said. "The doctrine also highlights the importance of various aspects of joint training to achieve greater cohesion and the understanding necessary for conducting joint special operations."
