Coast Guard seeks $100M refund for “modernized” boats
The country is less secure, and the U.S. Coast
Guard is in worse shape now than when it began its $24 billion
“Deepwater” refurbishment plan years ago.
The country is less secure, and the U.S. Coast Guard is in worse shape now than when it began its $24 billion “Deepwater” refurbishment plan years ago, says the chairman of the congressional committee overseeing the maritime force.
One of the weaknesses caused by Deepwater is the loss of eight patrol boats due to a botched lengthening process. “When I went to see these ships that were supposed to be extended from 110 feet to 123 feet…I knew something was wrong,” says Rep. Elijah Cummings. “What you see is a lot of buckling in the floor,” he says.
After a cost of nearly $100 million, the boats will be decommissioned.
This question of conflict of interest is at the center of what [Retired Captain] Kevin Jarvis believes was fundamentally wrong with the way the Coast Guard handled Deepwater. Too big to be handled by the Coast Guard itself, the program was given to a joint venture of defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to manage. They then “contracted” the job out, mostly to their own companies.
“People say that this is like the fox watching the henhouse and it’s worse than that,” says Jarvis. “It’s where the government asked the fox to develop the security system for the henhouse, then told them ‘By the way, we’ll give you the security code to the system and we’ll tell you when we’re on vacation.’ It was… that bad,” he tells Steve Kroft [CBS].
You’ll be able to see more of this on 60 Minutes, Sunday evening. Not the actual patrol boats. The Coast Guard wouldn’t let them be filmed.
Defensetech.org has done a couple of good pieces on this fiasco - including links to the original YouTube video that broke the story.
Posted: Sat - May 19, 2007 at 07:21 AM