My fleet chief just sent out a document to the fleet PO1's and up trying to stir up interest for those that want to volunteer to be on the first few crews I suppose. The document was called Concept of Operations for HDW class ships and it's available on the DIN.
It's a fascinating document over 60 pages in length detailing crewing requirements for command staff, equipment to be fitted on board, operations in detail of what it is envisioned to do and the cycle of ships for operation. They envision 4 on East and 2 on West coast and the east coast ones would operate for 120 days and the west coast ones would operate for 80 up North since it's harder to access the north on the west coast.
This would usually happen from early/mid summer till mid fall depending because of ice conditions. They also envision these ships being better platforms for OP Caribbe than the MCDV's because of the on board USGC LEDET teams and the facilities they have on-board for boarding teams and communications equipment.
They envision the ships operating on a 1/4 rotation because of the small crew with only doing 1/2 operations for short periods of time.
Hell the document even has the ships layout deck by deck. It's pretty cool to see how it is laid out and what not. I think this will be a fine vessel.
It's an unclass document only available on the DIN so if anyone wants me to link it to them after xmas leave you can send me a pm with your forces address and I"ll email you the link.
The only thing missing is the conceptual watch and station bill. I was curious as to see what the core crew make up would be from top to bottom.