Coast Guard Orders 11 Arctic Security Cutters for $6.8 Billion While GAO Puts the First Polar Security Cutter at 2033

The US Coast Guard has now signed fixed-price contracts for 11 medium icebreakers, the Arctic Security Cutters, worth about $6.8 billion together. The first is due in 2028. Its heavy icebreaker, the Polar Security Cutter, was ordered in 2019 and GAO now expects the first one in 2033.

The two programmes run side by side at the same Gulf Coast shipbuilder, Bollinger. One was designed and built from scratch in the US and has slipped nine years. The other uses a Finnish-Canadian design, with four of the first six hulls built in Finland, and is meant to skip the learning curve.

Three contracts, two countries

The Coast Guard issued a request for information in April 2025. An October 2025 presidential memorandum allowed up to four cutters to be built in foreign yards. On 26 December 2025 it awarded the first two contracts: up to two ships at Rauma Marine Constructions in Finland and up to four at Bollinger in Louisiana. Both use the Multi-Purpose Icebreaker design developed by Canada’s Seaspan with Aker Arctic. The terms were finalised on 2 July 2026, at about $1.1 billion for Rauma and $2.2 billion for Bollinger. The first Finnish-built ship is due in 2028, the first US-built one in 2029, and all six by the end of 2031. Bollinger began welding steel in April, before the final contract was signed.

The third contract went to Davie Defense, announced on 11 February and finalised on 13 May at $3.5 billion for five larger ships of its own design. Two are to be built at Helsinki Shipyard and three at Davie’s yards in Texas, with the first due in 2028 and the last by February 2035.

The foreign building rests on the ICE Pact, an icebreaker cooperation arrangement between the US, Canada and Finland announced in July 2024 and signed as a memorandum in November 2024. A separate US-Finland memorandum of 9 October 2025 covered up to 11 cutters. Finland designs about 80% of the world’s icebreakers and builds about 60% of them, as CBO’s Eric Labs told a joint House hearing on 22 April.

Who pays

The money comes from the 2025 reconciliation law, P.L. 119-21, which gave the Coast Guard about $24.6 billion, roughly twice its annual budget. It included $3.5 billion for Arctic Security Cutters, $4.3 billion for the Polar Security Cutter and $816 million for light and medium icebreakers. The three Arctic Security Cutter contracts add up to about twice that programme’s $3.5 billion line, and the Coast Guard hasn’t said publicly how it will cover the difference. It, part of DHS, starts fiscal 2027 on the stopgap that runs to 11 December.

The heavy icebreaker’s record

The Polar Security Cutter shows what the new approach is trying to avoid. VT Halter Marine won the contract in April 2019 for up to three ships, with the first due in 2024. Bollinger bought the yard in 2022 and inherited the work. Design ran years late: GAO found in 2023 that it had advanced about 3% every six months.

GAO’s annual assessment of DHS acquisitions, published on 9 June 2026, put the cost of the lead ship at about $3.4 billion, close to what three ships were meant to cost under the first baseline. Delivery has slipped nine years, and full operational capability has moved from September 2029 to March 2039. GAO projected delivery of the lead ship, the Polar Sentinel, in 2033 and warned that it could be later still. The Coast Guard and Bollinger say they are tracking to 2030. In July, Bollinger told Congress that 33 of the ship’s 85 modules were under construction.

CBO’s testimony put the problem in historical terms. From congressional authorisation to commissioning, the Polar Security Cutter will take at least ten years. The last US heavy icebreaker, built in the 1970s, took five. The inflation-adjusted price per ship rose 55% between 2021 and 2025, the steepest increase among the Navy and Coast Guard ships CBO tracked.

GAO left the Arctic Security Cutter out of its June portfolio analysis because the programme was too new. It expects to assess it next year.

What sails in the meantime

The US has two working polar icebreakers. The Polar Star, a heavy icebreaker commissioned in 1976, is on a $75 million life extension to keep it going until the new ships arrive. The Healy, a medium icebreaker from 2000, is due for its own life extension in 2027 to 2031. The Coast Guard bought a commercial ship, the Aiviq, for $125 million in December 2024 and commissioned it as the Storis in August 2025. The Polar Sea hasn’t operated since 2010.

The Coast Guard’s 2023 fleet mix analysis called for eight or nine polar icebreakers. On paper, the new orders exceed that. In practice, the first new US-built hull isn’t due for three years, and the record of the last one is why the Coast Guard went to Finland.