The Coast Guard is still working with the shipbuilder on an updated schedule and new cost estimates for its first new heavy polar icebreaker, but it will be at least until 2028 before that ship is built, the service’s top officer said on Thursday.
The current schedule for the polar security cutter (PSC) is for the first ship to be delivered in 2026 but the Coast Guard has been cautioning that delivery could slip into 2027. The original schedule called for the first PSC to deliver in the first half of 2024 and the contract included incentives for delivery in late 2023.
But it looks as if further delays are ahead.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan said that Bollinger Shipyards is expected to begin building the PSC in early 2024 and that it will be “at least a four-year project to build that ship. And I understand that puts Deep Freeze 2028 potentially at risk.”
The contractor has done some test welding, she said.
Operation Deep Freeze is the Coast Guard’s annual icebreaking mission to a U.S. science base in Antarctica, enabling resupply of the otherwise ice-locked outpost.
The Coast Guard is working with Bollinger on accelerating the detailed design phase, definitizing the schedule, and any “implications” related to new cost estimates, Fagan told the Senate Commerce Committee’s panel on Oceans, Fisheries, Climate Change and Manufacturing.
Construction of the first PSC was originally slated to begin in 2021 by the original contractor, Halter Marine, which in April 2019 received a potential $1.9 billion contract for the detailed design and construction of up to three ships. In 2021, the Coast Guard awarded Halter a contract to build the second PSC.
Bollinger acquired Halter in November 2022.
The Coast Guard currently operates two polar icebreakers. The Polar Star, a heavy icebreaker, performs in Operation Deep Freeze every winter. The Healy, a medium icebreaker, conducts scientific and other missions in the Arctic each summer and fall.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), the ranking member on the committee, asked for and received a commitment from Fagan for updates every six months on the status of the PSC and the Coast Guard’s Great Lakes Icebreaker program.
Fagan also said that the first offshore patrol cutter, the ARGUS, will be launched by the end of 2023, which will mean a year delay in delivering the medium-endurance cutter. Last fall, the Coast Guard disclosed that the main drive shafts for the first two OPCs had an improper fit and had to be removed, threatening the schedule.
Fagan said the shaft issue delayed ARGUS by “several weeks.” The ship is expected to be delivered about a year from now, she said.
The Government Accountability Office in June reported that the first four OPCs have been delayed 18 months due to effects of Hurricane Michael in 2018 on contractor Eastern Shipbuilding Group’s facilities in Florida coupled with Coast Guard policy choice to overlap design and construction work on the vessels.
Eastern Shipbuilding is building the first four OPCs. The Coast Guard recompeted the program for the next 11 ships, a contract won by Austal. Eastern Shipbuilding is challenging the award in federal court. The service eventually plans to acquire 25 OPCs.