US Coast Guard awards funds for ninth National Security Cutter

The U.S. Coast Guard recently awarded Huntington Ingalls Industries a contract to procure long lead time materials for the construction of the ninth national security cutter.

The total value of the contract is approximately $88.2 million and includes the initial order of components and materials necessary to support and sequence construction of the new cutter, including steel plating, propulsion systems, marine turbine/diesel engines, air search radar, ship integrated control system, switchboards and generators.

The NSCs are the Coast Guard’s most technologically advanced cutters. They are built to act as command and control centers for complex national security, defense and law enforcement missions and have interdicted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contraband. Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf – the first NSC to enter service – seized more than 20 tons of cocaine in 2015.

Five of the nine planned NSCs have been delivered to the Coast Guard: Coast Guard cutters Bertholf, Waesche and Stratton in Alameda, California, and Coast Guard cutters Hamilton and James to Charleston, South Carolina.

The sixth NSC, Munro, is scheduled for delivery in December and commissioning in spring 2017. The launch of the seventh, Kimball, and the keel authentication for the eighth, Midgett, are scheduled to occur later this year.