The Navy Times
Thursday February 22, 2007
 

Coast Guard to keep 3 Navy patrol boats

By Patricia Kime
Staff writer
  
At least three Navy patrol boats on loan to the Coast Guard
will continue flying the Coast Guard ensign for the next four
years, service officials said Feb. 8.

The Coast Guard will keep three of five Cyclone-class patrol
boats under its jurisdiction until a new ship class, called the
fast response cutter, is built under Coast Guard's Deepwater
modernization program, Commandant Adm. Thad Allen told
congressional lawmakers during an oversight hearing.

The Coast Guard was to return the ships to the Navy at the
end of fiscal 2008, according to a 2004 agreement between
the two services.

But the Coast Guard faces a shortage of operational hours
with its patrol boat fleet and is negotiating to keep the ships
to meet mission requirements, Allen said.

The PC-179s, as the Coast Guard calls them, each support
up to 2,500 operational hours per year for the Coast Guard.
The service has suffered a shortage in patrol boat hours since
at least 2003, when it began removing 110-foot patrol boats
from service for a modernization program.

The service had planned to overhaul its 49 110-foot patrol
boats, lengthening them to 123 feet by adding stern-launch
ramps, and overhauling their interiors, bridges and
communications suites.

The improvements would have added 700 hours per year
of operational capability per vessel; the 110-foot patrol
boats each support 1,800 operational hours per year, and
the 123-foot patrol boats were to provide 2,500 hours
per year.

But after eight of those boats were built, several developed
cracks in their hulls and others experienced problems with
their propeller shafts.

They were removed from service in November.

The Coast Guard stood to lose 25,000 hours - more than
a year - of operational capability if the Navy had recalled
all five PC-179s.

Three Coast Guard's five PC-179s are homeported in
Pascagoula, Miss., and two are stationed in San Diego.

Under the terms being worked out with the Navy, the Coast
Guard will return one San Diego-based boat and one
Pascagoula boat. It will then move its remaining San Diego-
based boat to Pascagoula, ensuring that three remain on
the Gulf Coast.

"Since we laid up the 123s, that is an area that certainly
would have the most acute need," explained Cmdr. Scott
Smith, the Coast Guard's legacy cutter facilities manager.

Under the original agreement, the coastal patrol boats were
commissioned as Coast Guard cutters, with the Navy
retaining ownership and paying for long-term maintenance
and depot management, while Coast Guard crews manned
and operated them.

The new agreement between the Coast Guard and the
Navy adds another chapter to the stormy history of the
Cyclone class.

The ships, first commissioned in 1993, were intended to
serve as special operations platforms for Navy SEALs.

However, U.S. Special Operations Command, which
owned the vessels after they were commissioned, found
them too unwieldy for stealth patrol missions.

SOCom decided to transfer the nearly brand-new ships
to the Coast Guard, and in 2000, the first ship in the class,
Cyclone, was donated to the service. But the Coast
Guard, which had been downsized and suffered budget
cuts in the 1990s, couldn't afford to operate the vessel.

Cyclone was stowed at the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore
until it was transferred to the Philippine navy in 2004.

SOCom planned to decommission the remaining
13 Cyclones, but after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks, the Coast Guard and Navy eyed them for
homeland security patrols. SOCom returned ownership
to the Navy, and they deployed with Coast Guard law
enforcement detachments on board for foreign and
domestic patrols.

In the past year, the Navy has renewed its interest in the
Cyclones for shallow-water gunboat operations. The
Navy operates four PC-179s in the Persian Gulf and four
out of a new riverine facility in Little Creek, Va.