Cutting boards and icebreakers have very little in common . . . except for the fact that it’s cheaper to buy one off the shelf than to build one out in the garage. A revelation, to be sure — but one that hadn’t made its way through the gelid chunks of oceanic slush that pass for brains in Congress until very recently. Thankfully, it seems that there’s now enough of an ice-bifurcation need for Congress to green-light purchasing a commercial ship ($150 million), the Aiviq, rather than wait around for the shipyards in Pascagoula, Miss., to roll out a next-generation icebreaker ($745 million). The first ship of a proposed fleet of eight icebreakers for the Coast Guard was originally slated to begin construction in 2021, with a 2024 delivery date. Three years later, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) finds itself with a dilapidated fleet and little movement in the production line while Russia regularly churns out nuclear-powered breakers. In true federal fashion, the Aiviq could have been purchased already in 2015, but the Coast Guard wanted bespoke equipment. Now they’ll take what they can get.

Joseph Trevithick reports for the Warzone:

The U.S. Coast Guard says it is planning to buy an existing commercial icebreaker to help support operations in the highly strategic Arctic region, a possibility that has been discussed since at least 2015. This comes as work on a new class of Polar Security Cutter heavy icebreakers for the Coast Guard has suffered substantial delays, with the first of those ships now potentially not set to be delivered until 2028. The service currently only has one operational heavy icebreaker, the USCGC Polar Star, which is becoming increasingly difficult to operate and maintain.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s main contracting office put out a public notice on March 1 about the service’s intent to purchase a “domestically produced, commercially available icebreaker” from shipbuilding and marine services company Offshore Service Vessels (which does business as Edison Chouest Offshore) via a sole-source contract. An updated version of the notice was posted earlier today. The stated “objective” of this acquisition is “to provide an operational surface asset capable of projecting U.S. presence in the Arctic.”

For comparison’s sake, the French shipping company built an ice-breaking luxury cruise ship (Le Commandant Charcot) to a higher specification than the future U.S. icebreakers (Polar Class 2; up to 3 meters of ice) for $430 million. What’s more, the keel was laid in December 2018, and the ship passed its sea trials in July 2021. Specialization is pretty wild — don’t let the guys at Capital Matters know. The Romanian shipyards the French employed produced a better ship for half the price in a third of the time (the USCG awarded the next-gen contract in 2019). I’m all for American shipyard development (one can’t say otherwise this close to Marinette), but the idea we can produce ships on schedule after having been out of the business for 50 years is insane. The Coast Guard is buying a half-helpful replacement a decade late while waiting for ships that probably won’t deliver until 2030 instead of going to shipyards that know how to build icebreakers and buying a readymade model. Navy and Coast Guard admirals aren’t without fault in these negotiations either, having wishlists that don’t comport with reality.

Better a decent ship today than the perfect ship never.