Lockheed Martin has delivered unsafe and ineffective patrol boats to the U.S. Coast Guard, according to one former employee. Michael DeKort, an engineer with 12 years' experience at the firm, says the 123-foot boats -- part of the Coast Guard's $24-billion Deepwater modernization effort -- were delivered with a flawed camera system, inadequate radios and security gaps in the terminals that connect them to the military's global information network.

DeKort, who was laid off as a result of budget cuts this spring, went public with his allegations on the online video-sharing service YouTube in August. He approached Military.com with documentary evidence supporting his claims.

Lockheed Martin is the country's largest defense contractor, with $34 billion in revenue in 2004. It formed a partnership with Northrop Grumman to bid for the Deepwater contract. In addition to its Coast Guard work, the company manufactures F-16, F-22 and F-35 fighter jets and last week won a $4-billion contract to build NASA's Space Shuttle replacement. The company also works on the Navy's Aegis radar systems. DeKort had joined the company's Aegis team after being removed from another project over what he claims was a "personality conflict".

It was this team that, in 2002, got tapped by senior management for the patrol boat project, which involved modernization and 13-foot hull extensions on as many as 49 110-foot Island-class boats in order to make them better at tough post-9/11 missions alongside the Navy. DeKort says the selection of the Aegis team was beginning of the program's problems. Aegis engineers are software experts; the patrol boats required little software work.

"Aegis has nothing to do with most of what we were doing on these boats," DeKort says. "Most of the program's leaders came out of the software side, but the requirements for the 123s were mostly communications."

That mismatch resulted in a number of contractor failures stemming from bad management, according to DeKort. He says that, in winning the contract, leaders promised to meet deadlines that were impossible at costs that were optimistically low -- around $8 million per boat. "Very early on the team realized they had schedule and budget issues." The resulting pressure encouraged corner-cutting, DeKort claims.

He says he observed three serious failures that were not corrected before the first boat re-entered Coast Guard service in March 2004:

1) Project leaders left a blind spot in the boat's security system when they omitted one of five video cameras to save money. When DeKort raised this issue with team leaders, they said the solution was "to lock the window" in the blind spot and periodically "check for broken glass" such as an intruder might leave behind. "One more camera would have solved this at an expense of under $1,000," DeKort claims.

2) In installing a new Forward-Looking Infra-Red camera, the team used a cheap cable that wasn't weatherproof, meaning it might fail in rain or high seas, depriving the boat's crew of its "eyes in the dark". "I asked that we swap it out for one meant to survive the elements. Management refused to swap out the cable and said we would replace it when it fails. This cable is going to fail when the crew needs it most."

3) Perhaps most seriously, according to DeKort, the team used unshielded cables in the terminals that connect the boats to the military's secure internet. "Any foreign government monitoring these boats, from shore or from 'fishing boats', will be able to pick up all the communications from these boats. Since we have no shielded cables, these boats will emanate like an antenna. As the Coast Guard now has a requirement to be able to communicate with Department of Defense and several other agencies, this puts all of those agencies at severe risk."

"I have spent the past three years dealing with these issues," DeKort says, adding that whenever one manager blew him off, he'd go to the next higher. As a result of his complaints, "There have been three levels of ethics investigations and an investigation by cooperate legal," he reports. "While corporate legal maintains all of my issues are baseless, the Inspector General [of] the Department of Homeland Security has informed me recently that all of my allegations are indeed accurate, [that] the U.S. Coast Guard is undertaking a complete review."

The results of that review are pending. In the meantime, Coast Guard Inspector General Richard Skinner has released a report criticizing the service's handling of Deepwater electronics. "Due to limited oversight as well as unclear contract requirements, the agency cannot ensure that the contractor is making the best decisions towards accomplishing the Deepwater [Information Technology] goals."

Lockheed Martin spokesman Troy Scully says the Inspector General report addresses issues separate from those DeKort has raised, and adds that the company has made every effort to appease DeKort. The boats, Scully says, “pose no safety or security risk.” But he adds that, until ongoing investigations are completed, he cannot comment on specific problems related to the 123-foot boats.

The Coast Guard received eight converted boats through 2005 then abruptly halted work on the program, citing buckling in the boats' hull extensions and problems with their electronics suite. In August, the service cancelled the remaining 41 conversions and accelerated a new class of boats to replace the Island class beginning next year.

DeKort, now unemployed, says he wants a Congressional investigation. "The Coast Guard, and by proxy the public, has secured our services to supply a product that ensures the mission of the Coast Guard is paramount. Our actions have put that mission at risk."