Military Officer - June 2008 - (Page 56)

through another kind of storm, simultaneously working to right the beleaguered Deepwater program for modernizing cutters, small boats, and aircraft; reorganizing the Coast Guard command structure to better meet maritime security threats; and rebalancing its people and assets to address new mission priorities. I A Coast Guard Academy graduate, Allen holds two master’s degrees, one in public administration and one in management science, from the George Washington University, Washington, D.C., and the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively. I Allen’s past assignments have included command of the Atlantic Area and the 7th district headquartered in Miami. He has been the Coast Guard’s top budget and plans ofﬁcer and also has served aboard three cutters during his 37-year career. I The following interview with contributing editor Tom Philpott has been edited for length and, in some cases, clarity. The Coast Guard is trying to modernize cutters, aircraft, and patrol craft — all at the same time — totaling 20 major acquisition programs. Is this a sign of neglect over a lot of years? No one has asked me that to date. I talk with my staff about it from time to time. How did we get to here? I don’t think it was acts of omission, necessarily. Looking from the outside in you’re saying, ‘Every piece of the Coast Guard is moving right now.’ It appears frenzied, chaotic. But I concluded before I was even interviewed by [Homeland Security] 56 MILITARY OFFICER JUNE 2008 wanted to do a major acquisition, it became a referendum on the service. You mean, “Is this really worth doing for the Coast Guard?” Yes. We could not start Deepwater, [the Coast Guard’s 20-year recapitalization program to modernize ships, aircraft, and patrol boats] until we did a roles and missions study. Until now, we did not have a way to approach acquisition on a recurring, sustained basis. Each time we had to buy a new class of cutter or aircraft it was a spike and not contained in an annual procurement base with a steady cash ﬂow. It was an anomaly. I was budget director when we wanted to begin Deepwater. We didn’t have career paths for acquisition experts like you can ﬁnd in [Navy] system commands. How old are cutters and aircraft? When I came into the Coast Guard in 1971, we were deploying newly constructed 378-foot and 210-foot cutters to replace cutters that survived World War II and were designed by people who came in when we were the Revenue Cutter Service. Today, two-thirds of those “new” cutters are approaching 40 years old. Our aircraft are newer. We have the same problems as everyone with C-130s getting old [and] having structural issues. And we’re going to have to deal with having two different ﬁxed-wing platforms — C-130Hs and C-130Js. The C-130Js are enormously expensive. We have six, [which is] a result of budget earmarks. They have a separate logistics tail we’re going to have to come to grips with. Deepwater has taken a lot of criticism. As commandant, what did you find the program needed? From 2002 to 2005, as chief of staff, I watched our acquisition organization and the Deepwater program ofﬁce try to execute a lead systems integrator Secretary [Michael] Chertoff that not only could we do this, we had to do it. Otherwise, I was concerned we would be setting the organization up for an operational failure. We need a more ﬂexible, agile, change-centric Coast Guard that thinks differently about itself and its environment and can incrementally adapt rather than wait until we have an overwhelming cause for action. What caused so many platforms to need to be upgraded now? Every time [in the past] when we

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Military Officer - June 2008

Military Officer - June 2008 Contents MOAA Online From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire MOAA Member Services Washington Scene Chapters in Action Financial Forum Ask the Doctor MOAA Scholarship Donors Cover Story: Mission to Modernize World War Web Playing to Win Fitness in Numbers Fighting Infection Pages of History Faces of MOAA Information Exchange Member Books Advertising Index MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - June 2008

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