Q. What is the Integrated Deepwater System Program?
A. The Integrated Deepwater System Program, often simply called "Deepwater" or "IDS," is the largest and most innovative acquisition in the Coast Guard's history. Deepwater is not just "new ships and aircraft," but an integrated, performance-based approach to upgrading existing assets while transitioning to newer, more capable platforms, with improved systems for Command, Control, Communications and Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (C4ISR) and innovative logistics support. It will replace and/or improve the capabilities of the Coast Guard's current deepwater fleet – providing the best mix of these assets to achieve the maximum operational effectiveness and minimizing total ownership cost.
The Coast Guard's current fleet of deepwater assets includes over 90 cutters and approximately 200 aircraft. These ships and aircraft are antiquated and technologically obsolete and require excessive maintenance. These assets perform missions both close to shore and far out to sea and exceed the normal operating capabilities of shore-based small boats. These missions typically involve either extended on-scene presence, long transit distances, or forward deployment requirements.
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Q. You describe the program as “performance-based.” What exactly does this mean?
A. The simplest way to explain this unique acquisition strategy is that Deepwater focuses on system-wide capabilities and not assets. The Coast Guard began the design process with the goal to acquire the capabilities required to execute the full range of Coast Guard deepwater missions.
Traditionally, acquisition programs have replaced a single type of asset - a type of cutter, for example, or class of helicopter - on a one for one basis. The Deepwater Program takes a different approach - a system-of-systems perspective. The Coast Guard is focusing on the overall required capabilities - the entire system’s capabilities and the life cycle costs, including people, equipment, infrastructure, and operations - rather than the individual assets.
Performance-based acquisitions are consistent with the Budget and Performance Integration initiative of the President’s Management Agenda. In simple terms, this initiative states that the Government should be results-oriented and should be guided by performance not by process.
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Q. How is the Coast Guard's acquisition approach for the Integrated Deepwater System transformational?
A. Rather than use the traditional acquisition model of a "one-for-one" asset replacement, the program’s Mission Needs Statement captures the Coast Guard's requirement for a systems solution for this recapitalization: "The goal of this effort is not to replace ships, aircraft, and sensors with more ships, aircraft, and sensors, but to provide the Coast Guard with the functional capabilities required to achieve mission success safely." This compelling emphasis on a focused "end in mind" obliged industry to view the Integrated Deepwater System in its entirety in order to develop an integrated strategic plan that ensured asset comparability and interoperability, while providing high levels of operational effectiveness and the most affordable solution for U.S. taxpayers.
The competing industry teams were provided with the performance specifications needed to achieve system-wide capabilities - the system end in mind. This approach allows industry to leverage state-of-the-market technologies and bring its innovation and industrial capacity to bear most effectively. Commercially available "state-of-the-market" and assets or systems that require minimal development will be the basic building blocks for Deepwater’s assets and components.
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Q. When and why was the Deepwater Program initiated?
A. The program originated approximately 10 years ago when the Coast Guard recognized that it needed a long-term strategy to recapitalize its inventory of aging cutters, aircraft, and supporting systems. In 1993, the Commandant’s Office of Operations formally acknowledged that a significant block obsolescence problem existed for the Service’s 93 Deepwater cutters and 206 aircraft.
Coast Guard cutters and aircraft perform a “community policing” function within the maritime domain. By serving as “cops on the beat,” Coast Guard crews identify anomalies and deter threats, but unfortunately current assets are routinely unavailable, lack the capabilities necessary to perform homeland security missions effectively, and are experiencing declining readiness due to obsolete and worn out equipment.
A Coast Guard evaluation determined that seven of the Coast Guard's nine classes of deepwater assets would reach the end of their planned service life over the next 15 years. As a comparison, with an average age of over 30 years, the Coast Guard’s fleet of High and Medium Endurance Cutters is older than all but two of 42 worldwide naval fleets of similar size and mission.
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Q. What is the significance of the Integrated Deepwater System Program in terms of maintaining Homeland Security, and what solutions does it offer?
A. The Integrated Deepwater System will significantly contribute to the Homeland Security mission by enabling the Coast Guard to push our borders out as part of a layered defense to meet America's threats and challenges before they reach our shores.
America’s maritime domain – nearly 3.4 million square miles of ocean and 95,000 miles of coastline – and 361 major ports are vitally important to our nation’s economic prosperity as well as U.S. national security. With ships carrying goods totaling 95 percent of U.S. foreign trade, maritime approaches to the U.S. homeland serve as a critical gateway to our country.
The Coast Guard’s new Maritime Homeland Security Strategy seeks to provide needed security improvements while preserving U.S. prosperity by minimizing disruptions or delays to sea-borne commerce and global trade. It is built on the main pillars of preventing terrorist attacks, reducing U.S. vulnerabilities to attack, and recovering from any attacks that might occur.
The Integrated Deepwater System will provide the Coast Guard with the necessary capabilities to implement this strategy forcefully and effectively. New and modernized cutters and aircraft—all linked with a more capable C4ISR system and supported by integrated logistics—will allow us to push America’s borders out to meet our threats and challenges well before they reach our shores. The Coast Guard will have the capability to detect, intercept, and interdict potential threats on the high seas, using a time-proven layered defense extending hundreds of miles to sea. Additionally, IDS assets will provide operational commanders with a great deal of flexibility to perform and balance all of their multi-mission responsibilities. A cutter conducting a fishery patrol operating well out to sea one day, for example, could easily be redirected to a major port in the United States the next day to provide a command-and-control presence for extended periods should the need arise.
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Q. Why is the Coast Guard focusing on offshore "deepwater" missions when the main concern should be "guarding the coast"?
A. The Coast Guard must perform its statutorily mandated missions in all maritime regions - inland, coastal, and the high seas. For this reason, its multi-mission aerial and surface platforms must be designed for a wide range of operating environments. Unlike Coast Guard operations in coastal and inland waterways, so-called "deepwater" missions typically require a long-term, continuous, on-scene presence at sea - often, as was demonstrated during Operation Iraqi Freedom, with overseas deployments lasting several months.
Coast Guard missions also demand the ability to operate in severe environments—from Arctic to tropical and equatorial climates—24 hours a day, every day, wherever the demands of national security require the Coast Guard's humanitarian, law-enforcement, marine environment, maritime safety, or military presence.
To “guard the coast” effectively, the Coast Guard must interdict the many threats to our nation as far as possible from America’s coastline. Allowing threats to reach our shores limits the options to counter that threat and exposes our nation and population centers to terrible consequences. Deepwater assets serve on the frontline of a “layered defense”… linked seamlessly with all partners in the Maritime Homeland Security arena.
Future IDS assets will be multi-mission capable as well, and will respond to all of the Coast Guard’s federally mandated Deepwater missions, both Homeland Security missions as well as Non-Homeland Security missions… including protection of living marine resources, drug interdiction, alien migrant interdiction, and search and rescue.
In the event of heightened risk or an imminent threat, major cutters and patrol boats can be shifted to strategic or threat-specific ports and, once there, Deepwater assets can provide command and control for port security activities.
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Q. What is the Coast Guard getting through the Integrated Deepwater System Program?
A. Eventually, the IDS will upgrade or replace the Coast Guard’s entire fleet of current deepwater surface and air assets. However, these assets are not being acquired on a one-for-one basis. At full implementation, the Integrated Deepwater System comprises three classes of new cutters and their associated small boats, a new fixed-wing manned aircraft fleet, a combination of new and upgraded helicopters, and both cutter-based and land-based unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). All of these highly capable assets will be linked with state-of-the-art Command, Control, Communications and Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems, and will be supported by an integrated logistics regime.
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Q. What difference will new and updated equipment make in terms of helping the Coast Guard address its role as a multi-mission force?
A. The average age of the Coast Guard’s current fleet of Deepwater assets is 30 years old, and the equipment on board these platforms is older than most of the assigned crews! This technology gap hinders operations, and our older cutters and aircraft drive up the cost of maintenance.
The Integrated Deepwater System introduces modern platforms and systems with greatly improved operational capabilities, lower maintenance requirements, and an improved focus on performance and life-cycle costs. The program uses an open systems architecture that will implement state-of-the-market technologies and allow the introduction of more capable technologies as they become available.
Deepwater’s approach of building a common Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) architecture into the design of ships and aircraft will lead to full systems interoperability across our fleet. Operational performance and readiness will improve dramatically when we enable Deepwater assets to work together to continue to perform their many federally mandated missions and remain flexible enough to respond to future and growing mission areas.
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Q. How do you propose to use information and communications technology to collect and manage surveillance and intelligence data?
A. The Integrated Deepwater System brings modern, technologically advanced resources and systems into the Coast Guard’s inventory. Deepwater assets are able to communicate and share information with each other as well as other Coast Guard assets, other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assets, the Navy, and federal, state, and local agencies. Improved C4ISR technologies will provide total interoperability as well as a Common Operating Picture to Deepwater assets and land-based Coast Guard units.
The Common Operating Picture will result from the exchange of information and data obtained from multiple sources. IDS capabilities will enable the Coast Guard to establish necessary linkages with our partners in the Department of Homeland Security and other federal, state and local agencies. It will be able to push and pull information, tailoring the Common Operating Picture to the individual commander at the Coast Guard district level or the group’s watch stander. Rapid and secure communications will provide timely and reliable intelligence to operating assets. This will allow operational commanders to have a better understanding of their operational area of responsibility along with the necessary planning and decision-support tools to leverage available forces most effectively.
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Q. Will an increased focus on information technology systems facilitate better coordination with other agencies such as the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service or the Navy?
A. Interoperability is a key element in the development of the Integrated Deepwater System. Not only is the Coast Guard focus on the need for a network centric system vice a platform centric system, the improved C4ISR capabilities will enable the Deepwater assets to be fully interoperable with each other, the U.S. Navy, other military services, our NATO allies, and federal, state, and local agencies. This interoperability will assist the Coast Guard as we strive to meet the goal of achieving Maritime Domain Awareness, the ability to determine who is in our maritime regions, determine what they are doing, what cargoes they are carrying, the makeup of the crew, and engage them as necessary.
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Q. What is the Navy's involvement in the development of the Integrated Deepwater System?
A. The Coast Guard and the Navy have a long history of coordination and cooperation, and the Integrated Deepwater System is a good example of how our services continue to work together. The Navy and Coast Guard have signed a National Fleet Policy Statement that outlines how the Services will attain greater efficiencies and effectiveness, and pursue complementary and interoperable approaches wherever appropriate. The Navy and Coast Guard participate together in joint operations, and the Coast Guard has worked with the Navy through the Navy/Coast Guard (NAVGARD) Board to implement National Fleet Policy objectives.
The National Fleet Policy states "While [the Coast Guard and the Navy] remain separate Services, we recognize that full cooperation and integration of our non-redundant and complementary capabilities must be achieved." Through the NAVGARD Board and other direct participation, the two sea services are working to ensure we maximize our ability to work together.
The Coast Guard must be able to continue to participate in joint operations, and to that end the Navy provided specific speed, armament, and other requirements to ensure interoperable capability for Deepwater’s National Security Cutter. In addition, the IDS is required to maintain simultaneous real time voice, video and data communications with the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, other federal agencies, state and local government, NATO, similar coalitions and potential partners, the maritime public, and private sector.
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Q. Are there any international sales opportunities for the Integrated Deepwater System?
A. There has been tremendous international interest in the Integrated Deepwater System. Nations have expressed interest in both existing and new Deepwater assets, either of which will improve their interoperability with American maritime forces, and foster coalition partnering. Because Deepwater represents a fully integrated system of systems, with air, sea, logistics and C4ISR assets, the program is attractive to many nations with maritime requirements similar to those of the U.S. Coast Guard.
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Q. Is the Program fully funded, and if not, what effect will Deepwater funding levels have on funding for other areas of the Coast Guard?
A. While Deepwater is an innovative, long-term acquisition project, it still faces the same budget realities as any other major systems acquisition of the Coast Guard or other agency. Each year the Coast Guard is required by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to include Deepwater at its full funding levels as part of the Coast Guard's Agency Capital Plan. When the Coast Guard receives less funding than we need, the service is forced to prioritize its efforts to meet our appropriations. The Deepwater contracting strategy was selected for its flexibility to adjust to budget fluctuations, technology refreshment, legislative mandates and mission evolution. It is impossible to predict exactly what appropriations the Coast Guard and the Deepwater Program will receive in the future, but the Coast Guard will continue to pursue full funding on an annual basis.
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Q. What involvement or impact does Deepwater have with the "Rescue 21" program?
A. Rescue 21 is the Coast Guard’s program to replace our outdated maritime distress and response communications system, and the Integrated Deepwater System is coordinating with Rescue 21 to ensure the communications systems are interoperable. Rescue 21 will allow the Coast Guard to operate more seamlessly with land-based operations, as well as federal, state, and local governments and 911 operators. Information from Rescue 21 will contribute to Deepwater's Common Operational Picture, and will be critical in coordinating operations in coastal areas. The system will help save more lives and allows the Coast Guard to better accomplish its other missions of law enforcement, prevention of terrorism and security threats, and reduction of damage to the marine environment.
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Q. What is the vision for the Coast Guard over the next ten years, and how will the Integrated Deepwater System contribute?
A. In the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard will continue to protect the American people and perform our many maritime missions while meeting our homeland security requirements. The Coast Guard will continue to be the lead federal maritime agency in homeland security. The Coast Guard will work to detect and deter terrorists, stop drugs from reaching the streets, rescue those in trouble, and prevent accidents through safety programs. We will protect our ports, harbors, waterways, maritime infrastructure, and fisheries resources that are all so important to the American economy. The Integrated Deepwater System is key to ensuring the men and women of the Coast Guard have the necessary tools to effectively and efficiently perform their essential missions. The Coast Guard will remain part of the intelligence community, a branch of the military, a law enforcement agency, a transportation safety and security agency, an emergency response agency and a local first responder.
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