“Creating Cutters for the Next Generation of Heroes,” This banner hangs over a passageway in one of the shops at Bollinger’s Lockport shipyard.

The Navy and Coast Guard have had a lot of bad news from the ship building industry lately. Delays and cost overruns seem to the norm. Both the Polar Security Cutter and the Offshore Patrol Cutter programs are running well behind schedule. The Fast Response Cutter program has been a notable success story, delivering on time and on budget in spite of Covid, category 4 Hurricane Ida in 2021, and the recent supply chain problems. It looks like the program will soon start to wind down.

I recently had the opportunity to tour Bollinger’s Lockport, Louisiana shipyard where the Coast Guard Webber class cutters are being built. A retired Coast Guard mustang, Mark Matta, Director Program Management at the yard, explained the operation of the yard and showed me around.

Before we start looking at the yard itself, I will mention a few things I learned in the course of our conversations.

• The Lockport yard was optimized exclusively for production of FRCs. They employed about 600 people but that is declining as the program has slowed. They are understandably concerned about the loss of talent that will occur as the program ends.
• The ships were built in four major sections or blocks, stern, mid-body, bow, and superstructure.
• They have a second dedicated facility at Tampa to facilitate the handover of the ships to the Coast Guard.
• They will have a continued relationship with the FRCs because of long term sustainment and warrantee work.
• The yard demonstrated an ability to produce a new ship every 70 days and they believe they could have improved on that rate.
• The yard was able to deliver on time following Hurricane because, when it struck, their work was already three months ahead of schedule.
• They are still feeling the effects of Hurricane Ida.
• The program went into a phase II with upgrades beginning with FRC #33.
• The ships are built to American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) warship standards and inspected by ABS.
• Sound powered phones are still an important part of the internal communications system. The FRCs have a very extensive network of sound powered phones.
• The Coast Guard crews are given six weeks of training prior to commissioning by a Bollinger subsidiary.
• Extra racks and storage are being added to every berthing area.
• The Mk38 systems on the PATFORSWA cutters have been upgraded to use the 30mm gun. Given that it, unlike the 25mm has an airburst round, it probably has a good capability against UAS. Presumably this change was made at the same time other Counter UAS systems were installed. The 30mm will also be more effective against small craft.

(Construction Zone–Photos of the yard will return shortly.)