Homeland agency faces expanded mission with costly, outdated fleet

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement division is drafting a comprehensive modernization plan to replace an aging and costly fleet while dealing with an expanded mission, its director said Friday.

More than two-thirds of the fleet for ICE's air and marine operations division needs to be replaced "almost immediately" to avoid obsolescence and to save money in operations, AMO Director Charles Stallworth said Friday. The division submitted a report on its Clear Skies modernization plan to Congress in March, but no funding request for it was included in the fiscal 2005 budget submission.

"The Clear Skies plan is one that focuses primarily on the recapitalization of what is an aging fleet," Stallworth said during a ceremony at Reagan National Airport in Washington to display the division's aircraft and boats. "Some of [the craft] have outlived what would be a published useful life twice over. And what that means is not that they're unsafe, but it means it costs a lot more to maintain them."

Stallworth declined to say how much the modernization plan might cost or which specific craft are in most need of upgrading. AMO operates a fleet of 133 aircraft, including UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, Astar helicopters, as well as C-210, C-12, and long-range P-3 Orion fixed-wing aircraft. The marine fleet includes 39-foot interceptor vessels, 33-foot Safe boats, various utility craft and larger ocean-going support and radar platform vessels.

Stallworth said AMO's fleet came from the legacy Customs Service, which was rolled into ICE when the Homeland Security Department formed in March 2003. He said the mission for AMO has expanded since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to include counterterrorism as well as patrols in the National Capital Region around Washington.

"While historically AMO focused on drug interdiction, we have found in this post-9/11 environment that other illegal shipments coming into the U.S. may present an equally dangerous and real threat," he said. "A boat or airplane carrying drugs or illegal immigrants can just as easily carry terrorists or weapons of mass destruction."

Stallworth downplayed a question about whether it was an oversight to expand AMO's mission with legacy equipment. "What are you going to do, start all over?" he said. "The reason we were put into ICE the way we were was because of the capabilities we have. They looked at the mission that we were doing and said these guys can do it."

And he differentiated AMO's modernization plan from that of the Coast Guard's, which is called Deepwater.

In 2002, the Coast Guard signed a $17 billion deal with Integrated Coast Guard Systems, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp., to renovate ships and aircraft, and to design, build and a maintain a new generation of equipment for the maritime security force over the next 20 years. The Coast Guard is evaluating what changes to make to Deepwater to reflect its expanded homeland security mission.

Stallworth said AMO only has about 1,000 employees and will likely control the modernization plan rather than contracting it out.

Stallworth noted that the division does not have a specific line item in its budget for procurement, but that the division can purchase capital equipment by using operations and maintenance funds. He said he hopes Congress will add a specific line item for procurement to AMO's budget in fiscal 2005.