New Coast Guard cutter Sparks fierce competition among shipbuilders.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

* It is one of the most highly anticipated military shipbuilding programs in the foreseeable future, and it has nothing to do with the Navy.

The Coast Guard wants to acquire 25 Offshore Patrol Cutters and spend some $8 billion doing so.

Despite hand-wringing about the decline of the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base, no less than eight contenders answered the service's request for proposals that was released last year.

Three contractors will be chosen for an engineering and development phase this fall, with one eventually being tapped to begin production at a two-per-year pace, as early as 2016.

That is if the current budget crisis doesn't throw the process into disarray.

"'It's not looking good for any of the [Coast Guard acquisition] programs, particularly when you have pretty serious budget cuts," said Brian Slattery, a research assistant for defense studies at the Heritage Foundation.

The eight shipbuilders are: Bollinger Shipyards, Lockport, La.; Eastern Shipbuilding, Panama City, Fla.; General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine; General Dynamics Nassco, San Diego; Huntington Ingalls Industries, Pascagoula, Miss.; Marinette Marine, Marinette, Wis.; Vigor Shipyards, Seattle and VT Halter Marine, Pascagoula, Miss.

As the Coast Guard was in the process of writing its request for proposals in 2011, acquisition officials stated that the ship would be designed for affordability and that it would meet "minimum" requirements. Expensive items such as the ability to launch small boats from the stern--featured on the new National Security Cutters--would not make it onto the boat. Nor would costly gas turbine engines.

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp Jr. said at the Naval Surface Association conference in January that the Offshore Patrol Cutter will be the service's "workhorse" for the next 40 years. He has stated many times in public that the ship is the Coast Guard's most important project.

"We've put an awful lot of effort into it," he said of the program.

"There seems to be significant interest out there to build 25 ships, and we're very pleased about that. I think people are thinking out of the box. They're looking at new designs. We need to think out of the box as well as we go forward, because as I said, this ship is going to be very, very important to us."

Slattery said the Coast Guard desperately needs the program to get under way. The 210- and 270-foot cutters the OPC is intended to replace are already operating beyond their...