US Coast Guard Gets GAO Praise, Extends ICGS Deepwater Contract to 2011

(click to view full) The US Coast Guard is currently operating vessels that date from the 1950s and 1960s, and a fleet-wide recapitalization is becoming an urgent priority given its new domestic security responsibilities. That effort is being handled as an integrated, multi-year $25 billion project called Deepwater that encompasses everything from long-range patrol aircraft and UAVs, to new communications and computing backbones, to new ship designs. In August 2005, “U.S. Coast Guard’s Deepwater Acquisition Plan In Deep Water?” covered the GAO’s critical scrutiny of Deepwater’s program structure. A week later, we noted Seapower Magazine’s Deepwater focus issue with a number of interesting and related articles. Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, is serving as the program’s overall system-of-systems integrator. After an extensive Coast Guard review of the joint venture’s performance during its first 42 months, and a positive follow-up report from the GAO in April 2006, the U.S. Coast Guard recently announced a 43-month award term extension of ICGS’ performance-based contract… The GAO’s positive report was a major milestone for the Deepwater program. Their April 2006 GAO report abstract (GAO-06-546) notes that: “The Coast Guard’s analytical methods were appropriate for determining […]