Written by Malte Humpert (Captain) –
Congressional hearings on the status of the Coast Guard’s Polar Security Cutter program revealed ongoing design challenges and little certainty regarding the schedule.
The Coast Guard aims to begin construction of the first polar security cutter by the end of the year, Lt. Gen. Paul Thomas, deputy mission support commander, suggested to the committee.
When asked by Rep. Carlos Jimenez, chairman of the Transportation and Maritime Security Subcommittee, when exactly construction would begin, Thomas replied, “December.”
“I’ll put up with it. See you here again in December, I’ll call you,” Jimenez replied.
Expert witnesses from the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, and the Congressional Budget Office repeatedly expressed doubts about the Coast Guard’s timeline.
Labos, an expert witness for the Congressional Budget Office, said the best word that comes to mind when describing the construction schedule is “hope.”
Jimenez asked: “You said the Coast Guard wants to start construction later this year. But weren’t they expecting the first icebreaker to go into service this year?
“Yes, I did use the word ‘hope’. Given the troubled history of this program, that was the best term I could come up with,” Rabo replied. His new CBO report, expected this summer, will detail his 60% overrun on program costs.
According to GAO testimony and a new report, the functional design is currently only 67% complete.
“GAO recommends that functional design be 100 percent complete by the time construction begins,” warned Shelby Oakley, GAO’s Director of Contracts and National Security Acquisition.
Jimenez asked to make sure he heard correctly. “And after five years he’s 67% complete with the design?”
“Yes, going from 67% to 100% is quite a bit of work. We have quite a bit of work left before the end of the year,” Oakley admitted.
The Coast Guard’s construction schedule is driven by a “culture of optimism while ignoring historical reality,” the panel of experts reiterated multiple times during testimony.
In fact, the Coast Guard’s progress in finalizing the design has been very slow. Based on the latest his GAO numbers, feature design maturity has increased by just 10% since his last GAO update in March 2023.
Even based on the Coast Guard’s own goal of having the design 95 percent complete before construction, significant work remains.
The Coast Guard is struggling to finalize a stable design, Oakley explained, and warned against proceeding with construction without a final design. “Such decisions increase the risk of the program.”
“The Coast Guard and shipbuilders underestimate how much design changes would have to be made to meet Coast Guard specifications. And they designed the bottom deck of the ship at the wrong height. “We made costly design mistakes,” she elaborated.
Vice Adm. Thomas acknowledged that the Coast Guard is currently aiming to begin construction without finalizing the design in accordance with GAO’s recommendations.
“We are currently building a prototype module that will be part of the ship. Even if it were to happen, it would not be at the level of design maturity that GAO expects. [begin construction]” Thomas said.
Ron O’Rourke, a Congressional Research Service witness and naval affairs expert, said delivery is “no later than the end of 2029.”
He suggested that one way to speed up procurement would be to build the first ship with the current builder, Bollinger, and then bring in a second builder to build additional PSCs in parallel. .
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