Coast Guard accepts preliminary delivery of national security cutter

The Coast Guard on Thursday took preliminary delivery of the first national security cutter, the Bertholf. The 418-foot ship is the first of eight planned cutters that are to be the centerpiece of the service's ambitious $25 billion modernization program known as Deepwater. Formal commissioning will take place in August.

The crew has begun familiarizing itself with the ship and expects to take it to sea in about 10 days for a weeklong voyage, said Capt. Pat Stadt, commanding officer of the Bertholf, in a phone interview with reporters from Pascagoula, Miss.

"It will be the first time the crew and I get to operate it as a Coast Guard cutter under way," Stadt said. "There's a bit of a learning curve. Even though we've operated the ship in a simulator, it's not the same as getting out there and driving it around."

During the next six weeks the crew will undergo a number of drills to be sure it can handle emergencies -- fire, flooding and other contingencies -- and will certify some aviation-related work that remains. In mid-June, the Bertholf will head up the East Coast and then down through the Panama Canal to Alameda, Calif., where it is to be commissioned on Aug. 4.

The ship's status is officially "in-commission special" meaning that contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. remains responsible for fixing a number of outstanding issues. While Coast Guard inspectors issued thousands of what are known as "trial cards" during acceptance trials -- essentially a tracking system indicating things large and small the contractor needs to address -- there were eight serious enough to affect performance. Those will be addressed this month, said Rear Adm. Gary Blore, assistant commandant for acquisition.

"None of the cards will be waived," Blore said. "They will all meet the specifications required in the contract. If they don't meet it today they will meet it by the end of the month."

There have been some concerns that the vessel will have difficulty achieving the engineering standards necessary for TEMPEST certification, a requirement for communications equipment to carry classified data. The Coast Guard has been conducting preliminary testing for about a year and expects to undergo a final 21-day instrumented test, conducted by a special Navy unit, several months from now.

"We will not operate any of the classified systems with classified information until [the cutter is] TEMPEST certified," Blore said. "We've made contingency plans. If Capt. Stadt needs to have classified communications we have stand-alone units we can put on board the vessel so he can have that capability."

Despite early concerns about the national security cutter program, Blore said it has performed well in comparison to other shipbuilding programs: "If you look at the Bertolf in terms of the number of starred cards, total number of trial cards and number of months until it will be worldwide mission deployable, this is well above average for a naval shipbuilding program -- in some cases outstanding, in some cases average."