USCGC Ingham (WPG-35) en-route to her home as a museum ship at the Truman Annex pier in Key West, FL
When you ask a Coast Guard Sailor to name a historical
Cutter, they will most likely give you a name like “Spencer”, “Ingham”, or
“Taney". There is a very good reason that the Coast Guard’s Treasury Class was,
and is, easily the most effective cutter design we have had to date. For a class of cutters that only numbered a
total of 7 ships, they had a profound impact on the on the service for a period
of fifty years. The cutter class exemplified the adaptability of the service
and I think for very good reason we need to review what made them successful in
the medium endurance cutter role, when we look to choose a vessel design to fulfill
the medium endurance cutter role it once filled.
Treasury Class (WPG)
USCGC Spencer (WPG-36) on convoy escort patrol in the North Atlantic
The Treasury class was designed based on an existing USN
design that was proven and even shared the same engineering spaces to improve
standardization and cost-effectiveness. The
Coast Guard’s further reasons to choose this vessel class, was its long range
and relatively high speed vessels which aided it in its high-seas search and
rescue, and high-seas narcotics interdiction roles, beyond a strictly national
defense mission. What truly made these cutters so effective though, was there
adaptability. This adaptability was served it well in the course of its fifty
years in service, with the addition of systems like sonar, radar, HF/DF, a
multitude of weapons systems, and even addition of aviation assets like Grumman
Seaplanes. This adaptability can be credited
to necessity of the Second World War, or an oversized hull for its original
mission, but I think it is something even more simple then that. In my readings
over the years I can see a drastic change in how we developed weapons systems
over the last sixty years, and this mindset even found its way to shipbuilding.
Ships and aircraft now are designed around a specific weapons system to be delivered;
examples of this are the F-14 Tomcat with the Phoenix missile or the A-10
Warthog with the Vulcan canon, ships of 60+ years ago where designed for
durability, sea keeping, and performance first, ordnance and other systems came
secondary.
SIGMA Class Corvettes
The KRI Diponegoro conducting seatrials of off the Netherlands.
I think there are currently an immense amount of designs available
on the market now that would meet the requirements OPC and they range from the
very well proven German MEKO design to BAE Systems OPV design. I think there is
one vessel that stands out strongly for consideration for the offshore patrol
cutter, or the Maritime Security Cutter Medium (WMSM), and that is DAMEN’s
SIGMA (Ship Integrated Geometrical Modularity Approach). The reason I think this
exemplifies the requirements of the WMSM is its approach is towards versatility
and not towards a specific weapons or sensor system. You see the extreme adaptability
that the class was based on with its versatility to act as more a constabulary vessel
for the Indonesians and a similar design more heavily focused on combat
operations for the Moroccans. The Indonesians and Moroccans have both asked
for, and purchased a frigate based on the SIGMA concept.
So why do I chose the SIGMA over so
many other designs, or even an organically designed cutter. I do it from what I
have visually gathered in touring some northern European navies ships. The
German Navy Sachsen class, the Danish Absalon class, the Norwegian Fridtjof
Nansen class, and the Dutch SIGMA class are all designed with multi-mission modularity
in mind. The Europeans cannot afford the mindset that the American shipbuilding
holds, of designing a hull to a specific mission. They do not have the budget
or the manning to be able support all those sole purpose vessels. The European mindset,
of multi-mission capable vessels is what the whole SIGMA class is based on and
could only benefit the USCG in the future.
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