laststandonzombieisland

So much unrealized potential…

The future Offshore Patrol Cutter ARGUS, in launch position, 2023. Photo Eastern Shipbuilding Group

After being chosen to supply as many as 25 new 360-foot Heritage-class Offshore Patrol Cutters to the USCG in 2016, Panama City’s Eastern Shipbuilding Group has been consistently playing the whomp-whomp tuba.

After nearly a decade, not a single ship is within striking distance of entering service.

Yes, the yard was all but flattened by Hurricane Michael in 2018, but that was seven years ago and of the four cutters they were working on in the first flight (Hull# 302A: WMSM-915: USCGC Argus, Hull# 305A: WMSM-916: USCGC Chase, Hull# 307A: WMSM-917: USCGC Ingham, and Hull# 309A: WMSM-918: USCGC Rush) only Argus has hit the water and has slowly been fitting out for the past 25 months but is still long from finished, while work on the last two were ordered stopped by DHS back in June as so little progress had been made.

Now, as reported by GCaptain, ESG has announced the suspension of work on the U.S. Coast Guard’s first two Offshore Patrol Cutters (Argus and Chase), citing unsustainable financial pressures and workforce reductions as the company struggles with what CEO Joey D’Isernia described as “significant financial strain caused by the program’s structure and conditions.”

However, ESG is still hard at work on commercial vessels and Ingalls, and by extension, the Navy, in September inked a contract with ESG to help craft subassemblies for Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, so, yeah. That doesn’t sound promising for anyone involved.

As for the OPC program, the USCG has shifted it to Austal in nearby Mobile, which has just wrapped up its semi-successful (at least they were delivered) Independence-class LCS program.

The Coast Guard should bounce back.

It’s not the first time that they had a disastrous start to a large cutter program; just look back to the 270-foot Bear (Famous) class cutters of the 1980s, in which the original contract winner didn’t even own a shipyard, and the yard eventually selected, the Tacoma Boatbuilding Company, soon entered Chapter 11. Yacht builder Robert E. Derecktor went on to finish the class, and the Bears have been soldiering on admirably ever since.