House heaps bipartisan blame on Coast Guard for delays in cutters for Arctic

Maritime News
41

Then you call the Air Force or Navy.

42

This sounds great in theory, but in practice - on the LCSs and the FORD class it has been a disaster. Both have loads of COTS equipment that is now 8, 10 years old or more that is breaking and there is no place to get parts. A good number of those COTS suppliers are now closed and there is no way to easily get parts.

43

Yet it works for everyone else.

My concerns are increased cost and limited vendor/equipment availability.

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44

Ironically, that is exactly what has happened because of COTS usage.

Take air compressors for instance. When every ship used a MilSpec compressor, they were pretty consistent across the Navy and parts like filters were fairly interchangeable. That’s not happening now. Now the 10 Nimitz carriers have different compressors than the 1.5 Ford class ships. Many of the vendors for LCS equipment have closed shop and no one else has filled the gap, so there is nothing to buy off the shelf without modifying systems to accommodate it.

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45

It is interesting to hear how that has happened after a relatively short time. Were those COTS equipment purchased from reputable and established manufacturers who just happened to exit the market (COVID, perhaps?) or, as sometimes happens, from the lowest cost technically compliant bidder who then couldn’t stay in business?

I recently worked on a project where the design service life was considerably longer than that of a typical commercial ship. While much of the equipment will be replaced over the lifetime of the ship, the client also put considerable effort into weeding out vendors that are less likely to “survive” or otherwise provide long-term support or spares for “out-of-production” equipment.

Still, the are some benefits you can only get through milspec-level specification and standardization, as long as you’re willing to pay the premium.

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46

I don’t know the details on individual suppliers, but based on my experience with gov’t contracting, they went with lowest bidder. Throw in the fact that the suppliers were likely recommended by their Congressman not by their customer reviews and you have a recipe for disaster.