BALTIMORE, MD, May 29, 2024 —
By now, we’ve all heard about the Commandant’s Force Alignment Initiative (FAI). The long and the short of it is that as a Service, we’ve got a lot to do – and not enough people to do it. There are a host of outstanding Mission Support professionals going above and beyond to make the changes necessary to recruit good people and provide the kinds of resources they need to keep them around once they get here.
But, what about the other parts of FAI? It feels like an uncomfortable subject but knowing that we can’t do the same with less, Coast Guard leadership has made careful decisions about how to adapt our operations and strategically reallocate personnel to mitigate risk.
When it comes to decommissioning or laying up a cutter, it isn’t just a matter of parking it somewhere and getting on with life. If a cutter is left at its homeport, there must be a skeleton crew to “babysit” it, which rather defeats the purpose of taking the cutter out of service in the first place – to reduce risk by shifting those personnel into other critical positions on active cutters.
There’s a whole process involved in decommissioning/laying up a cutter that’s keeping the team at the Coast Guard’s Surface Acquisitions Logistics Center (SALC) Cutter Transition Division (CTD) VERY busy.
The CTD team was set to decommission five cutters total this year. With the introduction of the FAI, nine more joined the list for lay-up (which, in practice, takes about the same level of effort as decommissioning). So, they got busy borrowing some space from their Army Corps of Engineers neighbors next door to the Coast Guard Yard and got to work.
So far, they’ve decommissioned or laid up three of the cutters on their list, with nine more planned for the remainder of 2024. Decommissioning activities include everything from preparing shipboard systems like engines, hydraulics, and refrigeration units for long-term storage, to painting over the ship’s recognizable Coast Guard racing stripe.
With this additional work has come a host of learning opportunities and adaptations. Normally, the SALC would “contract” the performance of many decommissioning activities to the Coast Guard Yard. Now, the CTD team itself executes several of those activities.
The CTD still relies on the Yard to handle the more invasive and specialized work that can’t be done pier-side or without contractor support, like installing remote alarm systems that monitor compartments for fires, smoke, or flooding while a ship is in lay-up and crews aren’t frequently onboard. The Yard also tackles fuel and oil tank cleaning, sewage disposal, and other tasks.
“We’ve also learned that we can make a lot of progress ahead of the cutter’s arrival at our waterfront facility by sending a CTD team to the homeport to help them prepare for the decommissioning activities,” said LT Christian Fields of the Cutter Transition Division. “Working alongside the crew, and offering our experience and expertise, we assist with things like preparing property reports, removing HAZMAT, and preparing for the invasive work that’s done after the cutter’s arrival in Baltimore.” The team estimates that this reduces the total time required to decommission a cutter by about a week.
SALC personnel are quick to note that decommissionings and lay-ups require carefully integrated partnerships to succeed. They partner with the Office of Cutter Forces (CG-751) for policy and cutter fleet capability decisions, as well as funding. The Surface Forces Logistics Center (SFLC), C5I Service Center (C5ISC), and Coast Guard Yard assist with defining the scope of work required to prep cutters for decommissioning, and execute the work. Servicing armories handle munitions offloads and the Coast Guard Historian joins in to preserve artifacts that might help tell the Coast Guard story in the future.
When you throw in the recent collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge and its impact on water-based access to the Coast Guard Yard, life has most certainly been a little hectic in Baltimore. Even so, the SALC team values the opportunity to provide this important service, especially during a time of such unprecedented challenge for the Coast Guard.
CAPT Joshua Fant, SALC’s Commanding Officer, put it this way: “It’s great to contribute. Mission Support is designed to support the fleet and the operators. If not for them, we wouldn’t have a job. If we can reduce their risk and improve their viability and ability to execute missions, then that’s awesome.”