CG gets fresh start with new ships, aircraft

[unhappycamper]

CG gets fresh start with new ships, aircraft
By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Mar 21, 2008 8:21:39 EDT

After a “rough couple of years” for Coast Guard acquisitions, the lifesaving service will “turn the corner” this year when it accepts the first of its advanced new ships and aircraft, a top acquisitions official said Thursday, and get into a balance that will let the service quickly replace its aging fleet.

Michael Tangora, deputy assistant commandant for Coast Guard acquisitions, said that the Coast Guard’s first C-130J and HC-144A search and rescue aircraft, on schedule to enter the fleet around summer, were so advanced that he joked they would take the “S” out of “SAR.”

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Tangora summarized what he thought were the origins of the Coast Guard’s acquisitions problems, which became infamous in early 2007 when the press and Congress lambasted the service over delays, waste and allegations of mismanagement in the Deepwater recapitalization portfolio.

During the entire decade of the 1990s, the Coast Guard’s acquisitions budget was just under $400 million, Tangora said, and during those 10 years of what he called “dead calm,” the service’s acquisition corps “atrophied.” By comparison, the first national security cutter, the Bertholf, could end up costing as much as $640 million.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks piled a slew of new missions onto the Coast Guard’s plate, and Congress in 2002 passed the Deepwater legislation that gave the service a $24 billion recapitalization portfolio, Coast Guard acquisitions became “a train wreck,” he said.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/03/navy_sas_cgacquisition_032008w/