The Coast Guard last Friday said that Bollinger Shipyards last month began cutting steel on the first of eight prototype modules for the service’s future polar security cutter (PSC), providing the shipbuilder with lessons on the processes and techniques it will use to produce the ship, which is slated to enter production in 2024.
A heavy polar icebreaker has not been built by a U.S. shipyard in nearly 50 years, which is one reason the first PSC is three to four years behind schedule. The first ship was originally to be delivered in the first half of 2024 but it appears increasingly likely the PSC will be completed in 2028 if there are no setbacks during construction.
Currently, the Coast Guard plans to have Bollinger build at least three PSCs.
“We’re relearning how to build this type of ship,” Coast Guard PSC Program Manager Capt. Eric Drey said in a statement.
The Coast Guard described the approach to building the PSC as “crawl-walk-run” to very that the processes that will be used in construction to ensure that the design is complete. This approach will entail unit readiness reviews, ensuring that engineering and computer aided design systems accurately transfer numerical control data to automated production machinery, and going slow on the early prototype module builds to maximize learning and apply lessons to production, engineering, and planning processes.
The prototype modules will take about four months each to complete. Bollinger will continue recruiting workers and training the workforce to ready for production of the first hull.
The steel alloy for the hull of the PSC will be 1.5-inches thick and remain flexible in extremely low temperatures. The steel is twice the thickness of typical ships, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said last month in a report on the PSC.
GAO also reported that the design of the PSC is not mature yet and warned that production readiness reviews planned for March 2024, the scheduled start of production, are overly optimistic and are years away unless the ship’s design maturity is completed faster than is usually the case.