US Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw breaks ice in Whitefish Bay, Mich., in support of Operation Spring Breakout, March 16, 2009. (US Coast Guard/Petty Officer 3rd Class George Degener)
WASHINGTON — America’s new icebreaker production alliance with Canada and Finland is “really just starting” and it’ll be some time before it alters the US Coast Guard’s near-term race for more high-north capable vessels, according to the service’s commandant.
“My view on what ICE Pact will do for us is it creates broader synergies beyond just what US ship building capacity can do … [and] will allow us to leverage lessons and insights and capacity and expertise that the Finnish and the Canadians have alongside us,” Adm. Linda Fagan told Breaking Defense over the weekend on the sidelines of the Reagan National Defense Forum.
“What that actually translates to in the future? It’s so new. I don’t know,” she later added.
In July the three nations announced the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, or ICE Pact, meant to speed the production of new vessels using Canadian and Finnish expertise along with America’s larger industrial base. In November the countries inked a joint memorandum of understanding with key four elements: enhanced information exchange, workforce development collaboration, engagement with allies and partners, and research and development.
But the US shipbuilding industrial base is already under strain, and ICE Pact is just taking its first steps.
“The challenge now is leveraging all the goodness that’s in ICE Pact to actually begin to accelerate some of the icebreaker building and conversation in the country,” Fagan said. “There’s a defense industrial base reality to this, certainly as it pertains to shipbuilding and shipyard capacity.”
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The four-star admiral said that the nations have stood up working groups to look for collaborative opportunities and nail down just how each nation can contribute for “actual effectiveness.”
Any decisions, though, that may impact Coast Guard or Navy acquisition programs will need buy in from Congressional appropriators and authorizers.
“The ICE Pact doesn’t impact any of the federal acquisition rules, the Buy American requirements, all of that is in place,” Fagan said. “We’re … sort of negotiating through this part of what the working groups are going to need.”
“Ideally, it does speed up delivery, lower cost, increase the pace of delivery but this … really is just starting,” she added.
‘I Need The Ship Now’
Until ICE Pact kicks into high gear, the Coast Guard is left to pursue icebreakers as best it can. The service, for example, recently acquired a commercially available icebreaker dubbed Aiviq. It has now been repainted and recommissioned as the Storis, a nod to the World War II Coast Guard cutter. Fagan said the service is working to reach initial operating capacity with the vessel as soon as possible, and then ideally send it up to the Arctic for trials.
At the same time, the Coast Guard is closing in on a contract with the Bollinger Shipyard for the first new heavy icebreaker in the beleaguered Polar Security Cutter program. The program has experienced a host of challenges since inception — including one recent independent government watchdog warning over cost overruns.
Part of that challenge stems from the Bollinger acquisition of the Halter Marine shipyard that held the previous heavy icebreaker deal.
“The contract that was negotiated with the previous yard is a firm-fixed price contract bid at a price… [and] the current reality is the ship can’t be built at the original bid price,” Fagen said. “What the additional cost is, is what we’re working to definitize right now.”
Complicating the matter further, Fagan said, is the fact that this deal is only for the first of three vessels, the most expensive, and there is a “huge uncertainty” ensuring there will be a steady stream of dollars for the other two due the budgeting process and Congressional approval. While Fagan declined to disclose just what price tag that first vessel may now come in at, she said she hopes to get the deal inked in the coming weeks.
“The aim point,” she added, “is I need the ship now, and we need it at a fair cost that reflects what it’s going to take the yard to build it.”
Once that full-rate production deal is in place, it will likely take the yard four-plus years to get it ready for water.
