Congress next week will decide whether it wants to pour more money into a border security wall than the Trump administration requested or fund construction of America’s first new heavy polar icebreaker in more than 40 years, Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), the ranking member on a House panel that oversees policymaking for the Coast Guard, said on Thursday.
The Senate appropriated $750 million in fiscal year 2019 for the Coast Guard’s Polar Security Cutter while the House recommended slashing the program in favor of upping spending on the border wall to around $5 billion versus the roughly $1.6 billion requested. The Senate agreed to the requested amount for the wall.
Even though his administration requested $1.6 billion for physical barriers on the southern border, President Donald Trump has threatened a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security if Congress doesn’t provide $5 billion. DHS, along with another half-dozen or so other departments and agencies are operating under a continuing resolution that expires Dec. 7. Without an FY ’19 budget in place for these agencies by then, DHS will furlough certain employees, operate under some restrictions, and funding for ongoing contracts will slow.
Garamendi is the ranking member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Coast Guard subcommittee, and is expected to chair the panel when Democrats assume control of the House in January. The committee hosted hearing that examined the acquisition program for the icebreaker.
“The money is there,” for the Polar Security Cutter, he said. “The question is where are we going to spend it?”
Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), chairman of the Coast Guard subcommittee, asked Rear Adm. Michael Haycock, the Coast Guard’s acquisition chief, what more Congress can do to help the service be “on time, on budget” to meet the service’s needs.
“The most important thing that would be of great assistance for us going forward is getting the funding in fiscal year ’19 that we’ve requested for the polar icebreaker,” Haycock replied. The $750 million is needed to meet the aggressive schedule for the first ship, which is expected to go under contract for detail design and construction in the third quarter of FY ’19.
If the icebreaker funding doesn’t come on time, it puts the schedules for the lead and follow-on ships at risk, Haycock said.
Rep. Lucille Royal-Allard (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee and the likely chair of the panel come January, opposes the large increases in the House funding bill for a border security wall at the expense of the Polar Security Cutter and other homeland security priorities.
The Coast Guard plans to buy three heavy polar icebreakers and eventually, three medium polar icebreakers, to replace an existing fleet of one aging heavy icebreaker and one medium icebreaker. Five companies—Bollinger Shipyards, General Dynamics [GD], a U.S. division of Italy’s Fincantieri, Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII], and VT Halter Marine, which is the U.S.-based shipbuilding division of Singapore’s ST Engineering, have completed design studies for a new heavy icebreaker and have submitted bids to complete design and build the Polar Security Cutters.
In addition to jeopardizing the schedule, if Congress doesn’t fund the first icebreaker soon, “it sends a signal” to the nation and industry that the government is “serious” about national security in the polar region and in committed to building the new fleet, Haycock said. Excluding the funding in the budget will mean the “nation is second guessing itself and is not serious about security in the Arctic regions and that we’re not serious about building these ships.”
In September, the Government Accountability Office released a report outlining four key risk areas to the program around design, technology, cost and schedule. Marie Mak, director of Contracting and National Security Acquisitions at GAO, on Thursday again said that the Coast Guard “did not have a sound business case when it established the acquisition baselines” for the program in March due to risk in the four areas.
Mak said the Coast Guard’s schedule for the Polar Security Cutter doesn’t sufficiently account for risks inherent in building a unique ship and doesn’t have an understanding of the maturing of all the ship’s key technologies before design is complete.
Ronald O’Rourke, a specialist in Naval Affairs for the Congressional Research Service, told the panel agreed with Mak that there is schedule risk for the first icebreaker.
O’Rourke did point out those reductions in the estimated procurement cost for the Polar Security Cutter “strengthen the business case for the program.” The ships were originally pegged to cost around $1 billion but Navy and Coast Guard estimates earlier this year put the total cost to buy three of the ships at $2.1 billion, about $700 million each. He said an additional $150 million in potential savings could be had if the Coast Guard uses a multi-year contracting approach to the ships.
Haycock said he’s confident the design of the Polar Security Cutter will be at “a high level of maturity before we start cutting steel.” The industry studies have identified risk areas which have informed their designs, he said, adding that there will be time to “flesh out” design details once the detailed design and construction contract is awarded.