Allen takes CG budget case to press

[unhappycamper]

Allen takes CG budget case to press
By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Feb 8, 2008 16:47:06 EST

The Coast Guard is facing unprecedented challenges in the variety of tasks it must take on and the antiquated equipment it uses to deal with them, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said Friday, continuing a public-relations initiative designed to get the service as much as it can of the $9.3 billion it requested Monday from Congress.

This time Allen made his case to the Washington, D.C., press corps, using a luncheon at the National Press Club to reiterate some common themes central to his bid for transforming the lifesaving service.

“Let us acknowledge up front that change is hard,” he said. The Coast Guard is buying $24 billion worth of new equipment, reshuffling its bureaucracy and undertaking an increasing workload — all while trying to meet its daily obligations. But that isn’t unprecedented, he said.

Allen described an acquisition program tasked with buying a next-generation fleet that encountered cost overruns and delivery delays, and quoted an internal report of one of the new ships that read, “never has a vessel left a port so badly qualified to encounter a sea."

But Allen wasn’t referring to Deepwater, the Coast Guard’s latest recapitalization portfolio. He was quoting from an 1845 report filed by the Revenue Marine, one of the Coast Guard’s ancestor agencies, written about that service’s slow transition from sail- to steam-powered ships. The example shows that acquisitions frustrations are nothing new, Allen said.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/02/coastugard_allen_speech_080208w/



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