Coast Guard embarks on its costliest ship buying program.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

The Coast Guard has one piece remaining in its long effort to modernize its aircraft and ships: the offshore patrol cutter.

The Coast Guard's fifth national security cutter left its construction birth in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in early May and is expected to be delivered to the service next year.

That came only months after the Obama administration put in its 2015 budget request money to build the final NSC of the eight-ship fleet. Meanwhile, a shipyard in Louisiana continues to turn out several fast response cutters per year.

This is all good news for the Coast Guard. In 1998, it embarked on a 25-year ship and aircraft modernization program called the Integrated Deepwater System. It became mired in cost overruns, poor management and delays, which prompted a major reorganization of the service's procurement strategy and the scrapping of the Deepwater name and its sour connotations.

After bolstering its acquisition personnel and fighting for funds to complete the national security cutter fleet, experts interviewed said the Coast Guard has put its acquisition woes behind it.

The offshore patrol cutter is next.

The ship, which is designed to operate in waters farther than 50 miles offshore and in high sea states, will be the most expensive acquisition program in the Coast Guard's history. The planned 25-ship fleet is expected to cost about $484 million per ship, which comes to $12.1 billion. Officials say it is a vital program because the average age of the two classes of medium endurance cutters it's intended to replace is 46 years.

Adm. Robert Papp, commandant of the Coast Guard until his planned retirement at the end of May, acknowledged at a House Homeland Security Committee subcommittee on border and maritime security hearing that the large price tag for the program comes at a time of shrinking budgets.

"I'm fully aware of the fiscal restraints we face as a nation, but I must continue to support the development of the offshore patrol cutter," he said.

The service issued three preliminary design contracts in February to Bollinger Shipyards, General Dynamics-Bath Iron Works and Eastern Shipbuilding. Two of the original eight companies in the competition, Huntington Ingalls and VT Halter, filed protests with the Government Accountability Office. Rulings are expected on those two cases the first week of June.

Papp, testifying in front of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said the service is taking the protests in...