After releasing a request for proposals for its first new heavy icebreaker in decades ahead of schedule last month, the Coast Guard now hopes to ink a contract early as well, the service’s director of acquisition programs said.
Speaking at the annual Sea-Air-Space exposition Tuesday, Rear Adm. Michael Haycock said the Coast Guard is working to cut down the lead time to design and build the first of what it hopes will be six new icebreakers.
“We beat the RFP release date by almost a month; we hope we can beat the contract award date as well,” Haycock said. “Ideally, if everything goes to plan, we’ll deliver the first heavy icebreaker at the end of calendar year 2023, and then a couple years later, we’ll follow with hull two and hull three if there’s funding and resources to do that.”