The Navy now is so fond of the small warships that it plans to reclaim the five it loaned to the Coast Guard. And the Coast Guard would very much like to keep them.

The issue has created a bit of strain in the two sea services’ relationship, which since the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been perhaps as close as any time in their shared history. Ironically, it was those attacks and the resulting war on terrorism that changed the Navy’s attitude toward the patrol craft.

“While (it is) true that prior to 9/11, they were scheduled for decommission, foreign military sales or transfer to the Coast Guard, they now fill a critical capability in the prosecution of the global war on terrorism,” said Capt. Walter Towns, ships branch officer in the surface warfare office. “Additionally, the Navy employs these ships for theater security operations and maritime security operations.”

Conceived in the late 1980s, 16 of the 170-foot, 360-ton PCs were intended to replace the 17 outdated Mark III SEAL delivery craft operated by the Naval Special Warfare Command. Congress funded 13 in fiscal years 1990-91 and, despite delays in production and a lack of Navy interest, another in fiscal 1996. The final two ships were canceled.

Nine of them later were extended to 179 feet by the addition of a stern ramp to facilitate launching and recovering rigid hulled inflatable boats. With a normal crew of 27, the ships can hit speeds in excess of 35 knots and carry an impressive array of weapons.

But the PCs had barely gone into service in the mid-1990s when the Special Operations Command rejected them as too big for commando missions, and the regular surface Navy dismissed them as too small for any of its missions.

So the Navy started looking for ways to dispose of the little ships. In February 2000, it gave the first in the class, Cyclone, to the Coast Guard, which could not afford to operate it and gave it back.

Cyclone later was sold to the Philippine Navy and negotiations were started to sell the rest of the PCs to other allies.

But 9/11 and the threat of additional terrorists attack made homeland security, especially in the maritime domain, a higher priority. As a result, the ugly duckling PCs became swan-like beauties coveted by the Coast Guard and Navy.

In the past, the Coast Guard supported the Navy in America’s major wars. And in the so-called “wars” against drugs and illegal immigration, Coast Guard law enforcement teams often sailed aboard Navy warships.

But 9/11 brought a marked change in that pattern. The smoke was still rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon when then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark called then-Coast Guard Commandant Adm. James Loy to offer whatever support Loy needed for maritime security.

Part of that support was putting several PCs and their Navy crews under Coast Guard tactical control to help improve maritime security as part of Operation Noble Eagle, which involved the mobilization of reserve forces and included combat air patrols over Washington, D.C., and New York City, and intermittent patrols over other cities.

In August 2004, the services signed an agreement to transfer five PCs to the Coast Guard for four years, beginning in October, with the Navy providing $10 million annually for their maintenance.

The Coast Guard found the relatively new patrol craft a valuable augmentation for its severely stressed, aged fleet of patrol boats and cutters. Three of the operated PCs are stationed in Pascagoula, Miss., and two in San Diego, doing law-enforcement boardings of vessels entering U.S. ports, providing antiterrorism/force protection for Navy ships and escorting sensitive commercial ships in and out of port. They also are conducting search-and-rescue and law-enforcement operations in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard said.

The PCs became particularly useful because the Coast Guard had begun a program to extend and upgrade its 49 heavily tasked and aging 110-foot patrol craft until they could be replaced by new cutters under the Integrated Deepwater program.

Meanwhile, the Navy deployed five of its remaining PCs to the Persian Gulf in support of the war on terrorism and then Operation Iraqi Freedom.

And now the Navy says it “does not anticipate” extending the agreement with the Coast Guard and plans to assume custody of the five PCs on Oct. 1, 2008.

“The mission for the Patrol Coastal-class ships has changed dramatically as a result of 9/11,” Towns said in a statement provided by the Navy.

The five PCs deployed by the Navy “are conducting critical operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Arabian Gulf, protecting critical offshore oil infrastructure, theater security cooperation operations” and other critical missions, he said.

The other three under Navy control are being used to train the crews that rotate on the deployed PCs every 180 days, Towns added.

“There is no doubt from the Navy’s perspective that PCs will be a critical asset for the foreseeable future and that the Navy has a requirement for all 13 ships,” he said.

Although the Navy should have the first of its Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) by the end of 2008, Towns said the LCS and other Navy combatants “are not suited to perform PC missions. … Neither the LCS hull or any of its mission packages are a replacement for PCs.”

In a statement on its website, the Coast Guard said the PCs were “filling a vital niche until the service’s next generation of cutters is commissioned” under the Deepwater project.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. Joseph Nimmich, assistant commandant for policy and planning, said in an interview prior to a May House Transportation Committee hearing that the future of the five PCs “is not a dispute” between the Navy and his service.

“There is an agreement to return the ships in [fiscal year] ’08,” Nimmich said. “As long as the Navy needs them, they will go back.”

But, he added, “if in ’08 the Navy finds it no longer needs them, the Coast Guard will continue to operate them.”

Meanwhile, the problems with the 110-foot patrol boats have worsened. Bought as a short-term asset, the oldest ships already are six years past their expected service life of 15 years and many have been found to be in unexpectedly poor material condition.

Because of the poor condition of the 110s, and major delays and a 50-percent jump in the cost of planned upgrades, the modernization effort was stopped after only eight were altered. Instead, the Coast Guard decided to accelerate purchase of the new 140-foot Fast Response Cutters, planned as part of Deepwater, by 11 years to 2008.