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1 The Cost of the Coast Guard's Polar Security Cutter 1 (August 21, 2024)

handle is hein.congrec/cstotecsgd0001 and id is 1 raw text is: On April 23, 2019, the Coast Guard awarded a contract to VT Halter Marine to build the first of a class of new heavy polar icebreakers, called the Polar Security Cutter (PSC). The service plans to name the first ship the Polar Sentinel. On December 29, 2021, the Coast Guard exercised an option under that contract to have Halter Marine build the second ship of the class. Halter Marine was subsequently purchased by Bollinger Shipyards in November 2022 and renamed Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilding. Construction of the lead ship in the PSC program has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. In February 2024, the Coast Guard notified the Congress that the ship would experience cost growth in excess of 20 percent and a schedule delay in excess of one year. Despite a contract awarded five years ago, full construc- tion of the lead ship has not begun, although the service is aiming to start by the end of calendar year 2024. The Congressional Budget Office was asked by the House Homeland Security Committee to provide inde- pendent estimates of the costs of the PSC program-not only for the three-ship program of record (that is, the officially approved program) but also for larger programs including as many as nine ships. This report describes those estimates. • Using its own weight-based cost model, CBO estimates that the first PSC would cost $1.9 billion in 2024 dollars. Subsequent ships would average about $1.6 billion each. Given those estimates, the three- ship PSC program would cost $5.1 billion-about 60 percent more than the Coast Guard's current estimate.1 • The Coast Guard's current official estimate of the cost of acquiring three PSCs is $3.2 billion, but the service is in the process of developing a new estimate, which it expects to release later in 2024. • CBO estimates that operating and supporting a force of three PSCs would cost $12.4 billion between 2029 and 2063, when those ships would be in service. If the Coast Guard acquires more than three ships, operating costs would be higher and would continue for a longer period. The Polar Security Cutter Program The Homeland Security Act of 2002 created the Department of Homeland Security and transferred the Coast Guard from the Department of Transportation to the new department. The law listed 11 specific missions that the service must be prepared to perform.2 The Coast Guard's polar icebreakers support 9 of those 11 missions in the world's polar regions: marine safety; search and rescue; aids to navigation; fisheries law enforcement; marine environmental protection; ice operations; polic- ing ports and waterways and conducting coastal security; 1. CBO testified on these analytical results on May 7, 2024. See testimony of Eric J. Labs, Senior Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons, before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives, The Cost ofthe Coast Guard's Polar Security Cutter (April 30, 2024), www.cbo.gov/publication/60168. 2. Sec. 888 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Public Law 107- 296, 116 Stat. 2135, 2249, https://tinyurl.com/ydux5bw6. Notes: Unless this report indicates otherwise, all years referred to are federal fiscal years, which run from October 1 to September 30 and are designated by the calendar year in which they end, and all costs are expressed in 2024 dollars. All tonnage numbers are expressed as long tons-or 2,240 pounds-which are also known as imperial tons or displacement tons. Numbers in the text may not add up to totals because of rounding.

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