Current operational polar icebreaker fleet. The operational U.S. polar icebreaking fleet currently consists of one heavy polar icebreaker, Polar Star, and one medium polar icebreaker, Healy. In addition to Polar Star, the Coast Guard has a second heavy polar icebreaker, Polar Sea. Polar Sea, however, suffered an engine casualty in June 2010 and has been nonoperational since then. Polar Star and Polar Sea entered service in 1976 and 1978, respectively, and are now well beyond their originally intended 30-year service lives. The Coast Guard plans to extend the service life of Polar Star until the delivery of at least the second Polar Security Cutter (PSC).
Polar Security Cutter (PSC). The Coast Guard Polar Security Cutter (PSC) program is a program to acquire at least three new PSCs (i.e., heavy polar icebreakers), to be followed at some later point by the acquisition of additional new Arctic Security Cutters (ASCs) (i.e., medium polar icebreakers). The Navy and Coast Guard in 2020 estimated the combined total procurement cost of the first three PSCs in then-year dollars as $2,673 million (i.e., about $2.7 billion). The procurement of the first two PSCs is fully funded. The Coast Guard’s proposed FY2024 budget requests $170.0 million in continued procurement funding for the PSC program, which would be used for procurement of long leadtime materials (LLTM) and government-furnished equipment (GFE) for the PSCs, and for other program expenses. (GFE is equipment that the government purchases and then provides to the shipbuilder for incorporation into the ships.)
On April 23, 2019, the Coast Guard-Navy Integrated Program Office for the PSC program awarded a fixed-price, incentive-firm contract for the detail design and construction (DD&C) of the first PSC to Halter Marine Inc. of Pascagoula, MS, a shipyard that was owned by Singapore Technologies (ST) Engineering. On December 29, 2021, the Coast Guard exercised a fixed price incentive option to its contract with Halter Marine for the second PSC. In November 2022, ST Engineering sold Halter Marine to Louisiana-based Bollinger Shipyards. The former Halter Marine is now called Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilding.
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