Page 39: of Marine News Magazine (June 2005)

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Deepwater Cutter

Achieves Milestone

The U.S. Coast Guard's 140-ft. fast- response cutter has reached a systems requirements milestone resulting in the ship being one step closer to construction commencement.

The fast-response cutter is being built by Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), a joint venture between Northrop

Grumman Corporation and Lockheed

Martin, under the Integrated Deepwater

System Program.

The purpose of the systems require- ments review was to present the ship con- cept to the Coast Guard and to confirm the customer requirements have been suffi- ciently developed, so the ICGS team can proceed to design development.

The new cutter has been developed to meet post-Sept. 11 mission requirements.

The new composite-hulled craft, to be manufactured at Northrop Grumman's

Gulfport, Miss., composites center, will have a 40-year hull-life.

The cutter will be interoperable with other Deepwater assets and will operate at 30+ knots, providing exceptional response and reaction capability. Typical missions will include near-shore fisheries patrol, migrant and drug interdiction, bar- rier patrols and augmenting patrols in areas of concern. "We are facing very aggressive sched- ule goals for this program," said Mike

Duthu, Northrop Grumman Fast-

Response Cutter program manager. "To meet specific homeland security defense needs, the program has been accelerated by nearly 10 years from what was origi- nally proposed at the time of contract award in June 2002. During the execution of each phase, we will have a Northrop

Grumman team continually planning, scoping and proposing the next phase to achieve program milestones."

The systems requirements review, held at Northrop Grumman Ship Systems sec- tor's shipyard in New Orleans, included demonstrations on the fast-response cut- ter's hull, mechanical and electrical design, the Command, Control, Commu- nications and Computers, Intelligence,

Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) suite and logistics support. ICGS also presented information on the ship's preliminary operational plans as an asset in the Integrated Deepwater System.

As a result of the systems requirements review process, the Fast-Response Cutter program now moves into the preliminary design phase, with the customer review scheduled for this August.

The Integrated Deepwater System is a critical multi-year, multi-billion dollar program to modernize and replace the

Coast Guard's aging ships and aircraft, and improve command and control and logistics systems. It is the largest recapi- talization effort in the history of the Coast

Guard.

June, 2005 • MarineNews 39

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The 140-ft. fast-response cutter is being built by Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS)

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