(The Center Square) — Passage of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” this summer has provided a jolt to the U.S. Coast Guard‘s shipbuilding program as it seeks to replace most of its aging fleet.
The service’s most important shipbuilding program, the Heritage class Offshore Patrol Cutter, is years behind schedule and its cost has ballooned from $12.5 billion in 2012 to $17.6 billion by 2022. The “Big Beautiful Bill” provides $4.3 billion for OPC procurement.
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Austal USA, located in Mobile, Ala., announced on Wednesday that it had received a $273 million option for the second of 11 possible OPCs, the future USCGC Icarus. Its first OPC, the future USCGC Pickering, is already under construction along with six other ships and if all of the contract options are taken up, it could be worth $3.3 billion.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security cancelled a contract last month with Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City, Fla. for the third and fourth OPCs. The department says it still plans to build 25 of the ships, which will replace medium endurance cutters that, in some cases, date from the mid-1960s.
The first ship, the Argus, was due to be commissioned by June 2023 but the department says it will now be completed by the end of 2026 at the earliest. It was launched in October 2023. The second OPC was supposed to be delivered by April 2024, but no delivery date has been revealed.
The 360-foot ships are a step below the service’s largest white hulls, the National Security Cutters, and will be used for maritime law enforcement, fisheries, drug and migrant interdiction, search and rescue and other core Coast Guard missions.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” appropriated $4.3 billion for icebreaker procurement, along with $3.5 billion for a smaller, yet-to-be awarded Arctic Security Cutter icebreaker and $816 million for light and other medium icebreakers.
Bollinger’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. announced this week will lead a partnership with several international shipyards with decades of experience building icebreaking ships in Finland and Canada to design and construct a new class of smaller icebreakers than the three-ship Polar Security Cutter class.
The shipyard said the strategic partnership would transfer knowledge, technology and experience from Finland’s Rauma Shipyards and two builders in Canada, Seaspan Shipyards and Aker Arctic, to Bollinger.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” fully funded the oft-delayed Polar Security Cutters, the first heavy icebreakers built in the U.S. in 50 years. The Coast Guard authorized full production of the heavy icebreakers in May. It’s a critical program since the service is down to one heavy icebreaker built in the 1970s and one medium icebreaker commissioned in the 1990s.
Bollinger Shipyards, which builds the Sentinel class fast response cutter at its yard in Lockport, La., announced last week that it is in negotiation for 10 more of the cutters that would bring the program to 77 ships after $1 billion was outlaid in the “Big Beautiful Bill.” The plan was initially 71 ships and $1 billion was appropriated in House Resolution 1 for continued procurement of the FRCs.
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The FRC is 154 feet long, more than 44 feet longer than the cutters it replaced. Since these cutters have a 10,200 nautical mile range at 14 knots and can deploy for up to 60 days, these cutters have been deployed for longer-range patrols. FRCs based in Guam are deploying to New Guinea and Australia, something that the 110-foot cutters they replaced were unable to do.
These ships are used for law enforcement, search and rescue and other missions.