Amid issues with its shipbuilding programs, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the spending bill for the U.S. Coast Guard this week.
House Resolution 4275 passed by a 399-12 vote on Wednesday and will run until 2029. It comes on top of the $25 billion the service will receive in reconciliation.
The bill is now headed to the Senate.
The service is in transition as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security implements a plan called Force Design 2028 to create a more streamlined force and the service has to replace many of its helicopters and cutters (any vessel more than 65 foot in length with crew accommodations), some of which date from the mid-1960s.
“The Coast Guard Authorization Act provides the men and women of the Coast Guard with the resources they need to carry out their many missions, including protecting our nation’s maritime borders, preventing illegal drugs and migrants from entering the country, and ensuring maritime safety,” said Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo. in a news release. “This legislation builds on the historic investments in modernizing the Coast Guard’s air and sea assets provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and it supports the administration’s vision to strengthen America’s maritime and shipbuilding capabilities.”
The bill will create a position of the secretary of the Coast Guard, giving the service equality with the other armed forces and will bolster sexual assault and harassment protections.
The measure also requires the service’s commandant to study extending unmanned aerial vehicle capabilities on the service’s larger National Security Cutters to both the medium endurance cutters and the new Offshore Patrol Cutters, which have yet to be commissioned.
The legislation mandates the Coast Guard maintain a 140-helicopter fleet. The service is planning to phase out its smaller MH-65 Dolphin fleet by 2037, when its support contract with Airbus expires. The helicopters, which entered service in 1984, are aging and no longer in production.
The goal is to transition the service to one helicopter, the MH-60T Jayhawk, a medium range aircraft. The service is doing a service life extension program on the 45 existing helicopters with new structures and will add more to replace the Dolphins via conversions of ex-U.S. Navy H-60 airframes and new hulls.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” provides $2.28 billion for purchases of helicopters and $1.14 billion for more Lockheed HC-130J Hercules transport and long-range patrol aircraft.
The bill also requires the commandant to report on the status of the new Polar Security Cutter program and provide a strategy to replace the service’s aging Bay class icebreaking tugs for the Great Lakes and Northeast Atlantic.
The Coast Guard authorized full production of the Polar Security Cutter in May at Bollinger’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. The service is down to one heavy icebreaker built in the 1970s and one medium icebreaker commissioned in the 1990s. But the icebreaker program is now several years behind schedule.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” appropriated $4.3 billion for icebreaker procurement, along with $3.5 billion for a smaller, yet-to-be awarded Arctic Security Cutter icebreaker and $816 million for light and other medium icebreakers.
Other shipbuilding programs continue to be an issue for the Coast Guard. While the Sentinel class Fast Response Cutters built at the Bollinger shipyard in Lockport, La. represents a successful program — with up to 71 likely to be procured and $1 billion allocated by Congress for more cutters — the service’s other shipbuilding programs are in disarray.
In June, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem cancelled a contract with Huntington Ingalls for the 11th and final National Security Cutter, which the department says will save taxpayers $260 million.
Construction of the cutter, which is the service’s largest non-icebreaking ship, began in 2021 and was supposed to be complete by 2024. The release said $135 million in components from the incomplete cutter will go to support the other 10 vessels in the class.
The service’s most important shipbuilding program, the Heritage class Offshore Patrol Cutter, is years behind schedule and its cost has ballooned from $12.5 billion in 2012 to $17.6 billion by 2022. The “Big Beautiful Bill” provides $4.3 billion for OPC procurement.
Homeland Security earlier this month cancelled a contract with Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City, Fla. for the third and fourth OPCs. The department says it still plans to build 25 of the ships, which will replace medium endurance cutters that, in some cases, date from the mid-1960s.
The first ship, the Argus, was due to be commissioned by June 2023 but the department says it will now be completed by the end of 2026 at the earliest. It was launched in October 2023. The second OPC was supposed to be delivered by April 2024, but no delivery date has been revealed.
Austal in Mobile, Ala. has a contract for up to 11 of the OPCs.
The department has issued a request for information about a possible tow of a ship of a length between 300 to 400 feet (the Heritage class ships are 360 feet long) on the Florida/Alabama/Mississippi Gulf Coast between September and October 2026.
