Washington, D.C. – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today highlighted a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General report (OIG-07-23) that details design flaws and lax oversight with the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter (NSC).

The 418-foot ship is the cornerstone of Deepwater, the Coast Guard’s 20-year, $24 billion plan to modernize its fleet.  The report’s Executive Summary declares: “The NSC, as designed and constructed, will not meet performance specifications described in the original Deepwater contract.  Specifically, due to design deficiencies, the NSC’s structure provides insufficient fatigue strength … [which will] increase the cutter’s maintenance costs and reduce its service life.” 

As a result of these deficiencies, the NSC’s design will have to be modified “to support an operational profile of 170 to 180 days underway per year in the North Pacific region, lower than the 230-day performance standard required by the Deepwater contract,” which is a 22-26 percent reduction in output.

Even though technical experts from the Coast Guard voiced concerns about the design as far back as December 2002, the ships’ construction went full steam ahead.  “The NSC’s design and performance deficiencies are fundamentally the result of the Coast Guard’s failure to exercise technical oversight over the design and construction of its Deepwater assets,” the IG’s report concludes.

  “This example of wasteful government contracting is made worse by the fact that this ship is vital to national security,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “The Coast Guard must do a better job of oversight by enforcing the terms of its contracts before deep sixing more of our tax dollars.”

With a total of eight NSCs planned, the total cost of the first two ships in production has risen from an initial estimate of $517 million to approximately $775 million, which does not include future costs of correcting the current deficiencies.

Acquisition of the National Security Cutter: U.S. Coast Guard is available at www.dhs.gov.