No clear date for delivery of US Coast Guard's Polar Security Cutter
Warship Technology May 2023
A delivery date for the first of the US Coast Guard’s trio of Polar Security Cutters (PSC) remains unclear following testimony given to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation in April 2023.
Originally due to be delivered in fiscal year (FY) 2025, the date at which the ship will be delivered could now slip until 2027, Vice Admiral Peter Gautier, deputy commandant for Operations in the US Coast Guard told the subcommittee.
April 2019 saw the US Coast Guard and US Navy, through an Integrated Program Office (IPO), award VT Halter Marine in Pascagoula, Mississippi, a firm fixed-price incentive contract for detailed design and construction of the PSC. At the time, construction of the first the first PSC was due to begin in 2021, with delivery anticipated in 2024, but the design ‘does not yet have sufficient design maturity’ for firm dates for the start of construction or delivery to be confirmed.
In December 2022, the Coast Guard stated that the first PSC ‘might be delivered to the Coast Guard in 2026 or 2027,’ but in April 2023 – during a hearing on the Coast Guard’s proposed FY2024 budget before the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation subcommittee – Admiral Linda Fagan Commandant of the Coast Guard was unable to confirm dates when questioned by Representative John Garamendi.
Admiral Fagan said: “We are on budget, on contract for the Polar Security Cutter. We continue to work closely with the yard to get to the correct level of maturity on detailed design.”
Interrupting the Admiral, Representative Garamendi said: “This is not going well. There’s all kinds of design problems…” to which the Admiral replied: “I am confident in the design and confident in the yard. We've got work to do to mature that design. We have not built an icebreaker in the US since the mid-1970s. This is an incredibly complex ship to build the steel thicknesses. The scantlings will take effort to ensure that the designs at the right level of maturity.
“If we begin constructing before there's an appropriate level of design that will continue to delay reaching full operating capacity with the vessel downstream. We are engaged with the yard and in the planning process through the Integrated Planning office with the US Navy.”
Asked by Representative Garamendi when the design will be completed, the Admiral said: “I would give you a date if I had one. I don't have a definitive date from my team. I'm hopeful we will have one soon. Once we’ve got that level of design maturity, we will begin to put estimates around what the actual date.”
“So which decade?” said Representative Garamendi. “I do not want to put a date out there without the detailed design,” the Admiral replied, “it will be several years, three plus to begin to get to completion on that ship.”