With changing weather patterns opening up the once-impassable Arctic region for commercial maritime traffic and economic development in 2018, U.S. officials proposed the Polar Security Cutter program to recapitalize the Coast Guard’s meager fleet of icebreakers.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill said Wednesday that the first of the new Polar Security Cutter icebreakers won’t be operational until 2030 at the earliest. It was supposed to be in the fleet this year, even as Russia forges ahead with a far more massive fleet already deployed in the region.
“Despite being announced in 2018, we’re no closer to having an operational polar security cutter now than we were then,” said Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican who chairs the Transportation and Maritime subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the first Polar Security Cutter would cost $1.9 billion in 2024 dollars. Subsequent ships would average about $1.6 billion each. The current three-ship PSC program would cost about 60% more than the Coast Guard’s current estimate, the CBO said.
“The lack of progress of this program is a disservice to the men and women of the Coast Guard who are tasked with executing the mission under increasingly challenging conditions,” Mr. Gimenez said.
Russia has more than 40 icebreakers in its fleet, including seven nuclear-powered ones. China, despite not being a polar nation, has four, with a fifth expected to be completed next year. Meanwhile, the U.S. has just two polar icebreakers operated by the Coast Guard: the 50-year-old USCGC Polar Star and the USCGC Healy, which was commissioned in 1999.
The Coast Guard this year purchased the Alviq, an off-the-shelf commercial icebreaker, to help plug the gap until the first Polar Security Cutter icebreaker is ready for operations. However, the final touches to transform it into a Coast Guard vessel won’t be completed until 2026.
Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan, the top Democrat on the subcommittee, applauded the Coast Guard for the work it has done to drastically extend the service life of the two polar icebreakers it does have.
“Nonetheless, they are aging and insufficient to meet the Coast Guard’s long-term needs,” Mr. Thanedar said.
In 2019, the Coast Guard awarded the contract to VT Halter Marine to build the first of a class of new heavy polar icebreakers. Two years later, the service exercised an option under the contract to have Halter Marine build the second ship of the class. In 2022, the company was purchased by Bollinger Shipyards and renamed Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilding.
The first PSC, expected to be named Polar Sentinel, was supposed to be breaking the ice by “late 2024,” officials said.
“Here we are in late 2024 and the Coast Guard is only now beginning to construct the cutter,” Mr. Thanedar said.
Lawmakers said the delays appeared to be the result of underestimating the complexity of the ship’s design, while the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the supply chain also had an impact.
“Some of these factors were under the Coast Guard’s control and some were not,” Mr. Thanedar said. “Going forward, the key is for the Coast Guard to learn from the past and establish a reasonable schedule and cost estimates for the PSC program and then stick to them.”
The Coast Guard is not shying away from the mission, officials told the panel Wednesday. The U.S. risks undermining its interests in the high latitudes if it fails to beef up its fleet of polar icebreakers, said Vice Adm. Thomas Allen, Jr., deputy Coast Guard commandant for mission support.
“Despite setbacks, the Polar Security Cutter [PSC] program has worked hard to overcome obstacles, and I am confident that it remains the quickest and most cost-effective way to deliver the first of three new heavy polar icebreakers America needs to assure our interests in the Arctic and Antarctic,” he testified during Wednesday’s hearing.
The U.S. ultimately requires a fleet mix of eight to nine icebreakers — including both heavy and medium types — for year-round operations in the Arctic along with a seasonal Antarctic presence, Adm. Allen told lawmakers.
But Mr. Gimenez said he was frustrated with the time it has taken for the U.S. to create a new icebreaker compared to rivals such as China.
“Why would it take the Chinese 2 1/2 years to build an icebreaker and us, it takes five years, plus another six years for the design? That’s 11 years to put something in operation in an area as critical as the Arctic,” he said. “This is unacceptable, especially the security risk that this poses to the United States.”
The requirement for a fleet of polar icebreakers is only one of the financial burdens the Coast Guard faces, having asked Congress for a $13.8 billion budget for fiscal year 2025. Adm. Allen said that figure is simply inadequate.
“We need to be a $20 billion organization to meet the nation’s needs,” the admiral said. “We’re watching as we have crumbling infrastructure. We are decommissioning ships because we can no longer maintain them [and] we try to keep helicopters longer than anyone else.”
“I don’t think we are delivering to the Coast Guard men and women the assets that they need to be successful,” he added.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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