Eastern Shipbuilding Group, Inc. photo
The U.S. Coast Guard’s “highest investment priority,” the $17.6 billion Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) program, faces additional delay. After blowing through a contractual delivery date of June 2023, governmental auditors are already suggesting that the new delivery estimate of late 2024, coming as Panama City-based OPC shipbuilder Eastern Shipbuilding Group inks an array of new commercial and governmental contracts, is optimistic.
The Coast Guard, in an emailed statement, now estimates that Eastern Shipbuilding Group will deliver the future Coast Guard Cutter Argus, the first of the Coast Guard’s much-needed OPCs, by September 30, 2024. The revised delivery target for the 360-foot vessel comes almost six years after the yard first cut steel for Argus back in January 2019.
There is a lot of additional analysis in the post.
As you may remember, Austal was awarded a contract in June 2022 that included options to build up to eleven OPCs, while Eastern’s contract for up to nine OPCs was truncated at four ships.
Thanks to Robert Cullison for bringing this to my attention.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
Good article by Craig. ESG has a good commercial reputation, but the USCG is certainly not placing enough pressure on them to deliver the OPC. There is no reason for this first in class to take 6 years to deliver. Austal is about to prove why they’ve been awarded that second tranche, and I’m sure they’ll be more efficient with their production as they’ve become an experienced government contractor.
It’s a shame, as ESG has put a lot of money into their systems integration facility, but in my opinion, not enough into the yard itself. There is absolutely no reason why a complex cutter or warship should be built on the hard and not in an enclosed facility where the environment can be controlled, and production efficiencies can be maintained.
Yeah, this davit thing seems like a contractor created, totally avoidable situation. I understood the delays for awhile with first in class and their storm damage, covid, supply chains. I don’t understand why they aren’t pushing on executing and making the case that’s what they are doing. They really can’t afford to walk away from government business at this point, but maybe I’m wrong. There is a huge need for offshore wind vessels, but all of that will have government pulling the strings.
Thanks, I just updated the Wikipedia articles for Heritage-Class Cutter and USCGC Argus with the bad news of the latest in a long series of delays and setbacks.
Wow, the Argus was originally planned to be delivered in August, 2021, and now it has been delayed to September 30, 2024; that is just shocking. Since Eastern Shipbuilding is three years behind schedule, why can’t Austral, who has the contract for ships 5 through 11, pick up the slack by simultaneously constructing ships 5 through 11? Let the two shipyards compete against each other to see which ship will be finished first, ship 1 (Argus, WMSM-915) or ship 5 (Pickering, WMSM-919). Why not do that? Is it a budgeting issue, or is Austral not yet ready to begin construction? It seems it would make sense to have both shipyards building at the same time, now that the program is over three years behind schedule..
Austal or Austal USA, not Austral.
Given the ever changing senior management at Austal USA, I would say that the services need to go looking for Other ship builders. If they can get past the Alabama congressionals?
I know that there is a evaluation of business responsiveness to make a contract award. Maybe someone needs to re-visit those for Austal?
I’m beginning to wonder if United States shipyards have forgotten hot to build non-commercial ships (including Coast Guard and Navy ships). It’s amazing that small countries like Denmark and Norway are able to build icebreakers and other complex ships, but the United States, supposedly the richest and most powerful nation on Earth, has forgotten how. Six years to build an offshore patrol cutter. Twenty years to design and build an icebreaker. “Littoral Combat Ships” that break when you put them in water.
Ok. So we have few naval shipbuilding yards, but we do have several. Many countries, like Denmark and Norway which you’ve listed have 1 each (same with the UK, which basically has 2). None build general purpose commercial ships like cargo or tankers, they leave that to China, South Korea and Japan. But they sometimes do specialize in Icebreakers (Finland).
Austal USA is just not that big of a player, yet. The Mississippi congressional crew is much worse, with both Ingalls and Bollinger. BUT the real problem is the lack of shipyards period…
The US owns and operates four shipyards: Pearl Harbor, Puget Sound (nuclear decommissioning), Norfolk, and Portsmouth (subs only). Philadelphia exists, but only as a storage facility for some mothballed hulls. (It could be brought back.) No ship has been built at a Navy yard since the early 70s, when a report stated ships built at government shipyards cost 30% more than private ones. In addition to cessation of new builds, this resulted in the closure of: Brooklyn, Charleston, Boston, Mare Island, Long Beach, San Francisco, Pensacola, New Orleans, and Washington D.C. Naval Yards.
Private yards which specialize in Naval vessels are really only three big ones: Newport News, Ingalls and Bath Iron (not counting sub-only shipyards, Electric Boat). Eastern, Bollinger, Marienette are medium-size, and Austal probably fits in that category as well. My worry with Austal is after the disaster of LCS, can they transition to and do better with steel? There are a few other good shipbuilders, but some seem to struggle landing contracts, such as Vigor.
So, the point of this diatribe is Congress and money. EITHER Congress needs to spend the money to return government shipyards into the construction (and not just maintenance) world, OR, they need to spend the money to put out multiple contracts simultaneously for the same ship design to multiple yards. Private shipyards are in business to make money, and when the government gives all of its contracts to a few big yards, there is no incentive for medium-sized yards to increase capacity. I know that Congress is looking at this and talking about it, but given the lead times to upgrade/upsize the yards, hire and train people, and THEN build ships, this should have been done 20 years ago.