CG patrol boat talks paused for DOJ probe - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

CG patrol boat talks paused for DOJ probe

The Coast Guard has backed away from negotiations with its main contractor over compensation for the botched conversion of eight patrol boats so that the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security can finish their own investigations of what happened, Coast Guard officials said Tuesday.

The Coast Guard told Integrated Coast Guard Systems in December that it wanted ICGS to pay $96.1 million for the eight patrol boats, which were upgraded so shoddily they had to be taken out of service in early 2007. The two sides had been in closed-door talks since then, but Rear Adm. Gary Blore, the Coast Guard’s head of acquisitions, said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters that the discussions have stopped.

“In light of the Department of Justice lead on the investigation, we are taking a step back from our contractual actions because we don’t want ... our administrative processes and the Department of Justice’s process to interfere with each other,” Blore said.

Blore said both sides had been getting ready for “alternative disputes analysis resolution,” but that hadn’t yet happened, nor will any more negotiations take place before the results of the DoJ and DHS investigations.

A spokeswoman for ICGS, a joint concern of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, would not comment.

Blore said the Coast Guard was continuing its own “vigorous naval engineering analysis” of the eight converted boats, which were upgraded and lengthened from 110 feet to 123 feet in 2006. But the boats’ hulls began cracking soon after they were delivered, and problems with their topside gear meant that the Coast Guard had to place them in mothballs.