DEEPWATER.

DEEPWATER. Lotta stuff out on the problems with Deepwater, the Coast Guard's expensive modernization program. Shockingly enough, the program is over-budget and under-successful. Nadezhda at American Footprints has a good discussion, but also see this long article in the NYT. The Coast Guard has taken it on the chin in both the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, getting lots of responsibility without much prestige or increased funding. The Deepwater program was intended to recreate the fleet (by itself one of the largest navies of the world) but has fallen prey, according to many retired Coast Guard officials, to perverse incentives created by privatization of the acquisition process:

Insufficient oversight by the Coast Guard resulted in the service buying some equipment it did not want and ignoring repeated warnings from its own engineers that the boats and ships were poorly designed and perhaps unsafe, the agency acknowledged. The Deepwater program�s few Congressional skeptics were outmatched by lawmakers who became enthusiastic supporters, mobilized by an aggressive lobbying campaign financed by Lockheed and Northrop.And the contractors failed to fulfill their obligation to make sure the government got the best price, frequently steering work to their subsidiaries or business partners instead of competitors, according to government auditors and people affiliated with the program.

An aging fleet is a problem, especially for an organization focused on ongoing rather than intense operations, because increased age means more maintenance, more down time, and higher long term costs. However, ships that sink and UAVs that crash are also problematic...

--Robert Farley