Fleet Improvement Committee Report

UNOLS Annual Meeting

September 2002

NSF

Fleet replacement activities are ramping up to a very active condition. The following is a very brief report. For more information go to www.unols.org and go to the FIC section.

Science Mission Requirements

When the renewal process started a few years ago we decided to improve the process of developing SMR’s. The goal was to make the product more useful to those who will design the ship. This was done by forming groups that included not only users but a few people who understand the real constraints of ship construction and operation: we wanted to keep a dose of reality in the process from the beginning.

This summer we have had SMR workshops for both Oceanic and Regional class research ships. Both reports are available on line and will be summarized. The next step in the process is to make sure we have a good review of the SMR and then proceed on to the next stage.

FOFC and Ship Construction

Parallel and in concert with FIC efforts federal program managers are working to determine the mechanisms that will be used to fund and build the ships. This process is working quite well. An important aspect of this is that the FOFC effort has an impact on constraints to the future ship size. Those constraints were included in the SMR process this summer.

Kilo Moana Review

FIC is developing a special assessment tool for the evaluating the capability of the new SWATH vessel just now going operational in Hawaii. Our concern was that bad news tends to travel faster than good and we wanted a fair and fast assessment of its true capabilities. A questionnaire has been developed for scientists serving on the Kilo that is more . Additionally we are talking with those scientists to obtain a better understanding of the capabilities. Finally we hope to see articles in EOS and other general publications.

Other Vessels

FIC has participated to varying degrees in the development of the Alaska Regional Research Vessel, the Cape Henlopen and, just now, the refit of the Ewing.

Quality of Service

Observatories

FIC Goals

• Continue to move forward with Fleet Renewal Implementation in concert with NSF and the Navy.
• Provide suitable material (SMRs, white papers) to NSF, Navy, NOPP, other agencies and the community.
• Continue to urge agencies to develop capitalization plans.
• Keep the community involved via letters to EOS etc.