A bad week...Coast Guard cancels Northrop and Lockheed's Deepwater contract

How is this for action? One month after an independent Department of Defense assessment concluded that the Coast Guard’s contracts with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin for the new Deepwater fast cutter “should be reexamined without the presumption in mind that those two companies should take the lead,” the military announced that it was cancelling its contracts with the two companies. Instead, the Coast Guard’s own acquisition branch will handle the project. Aerospace Daily and Defense Report called the decision “a high-profile rebuke” to the joint effort, known as Integrated Coast Guard Systems. Defense News argued that it “could herald a new era of independence for the U.S. Coast Guard and its chief commercial contractors.”

According to Admiral Gary Blore, the service will soon solicit proposals for a proven patrol boat design that would require “minimal modifications” to meet Coast Guard needs. A bold idea, perhaps, but there are reasons to doubt whether the Coast Guard has the capability to take on the management of such a complicated endeavor. The Coast Guard, DHS recently reported, lacks the “appropriate workforce, business processes, and management controls for executing a major acquisition program … The Coast Guard is still trying to come from behind and create the organization needed to manage the program.”

In other Deepwater-related news, the Coast Guard formally opened its new Deepwater shipboard operations training facility at Coast Guard Training Center Petaluma. The $26 million facility was equipped by Lockheed Martin with state-of-the-art simulators, radars and electronics equipment to train Coast Guard crews assigned to cutter operations.