Posted on May 21, 2026
By Sam Lagrone
The Coast Guard and Eastern Shipbuilding are negotiating the end of the Offshore Patrol Cutter program at the Florida shipyard, the service confirmed in a statement to USNI News this week.
Eastern Shipbuilding stopped work last year on the first two cutters in the class — Argus (WMSM-915) and Chase (WMSM-916) — in November after announcing the yard wouldn’t move ahead with the third and fourth OPC hulls.
“The Coast Guard is currently discussing contract close out with the OPC Stage 1 shipbuilder,” reads a Tuesday statement from the service. “The Coast Guard will acquire and deliver the OPC class as fast as possible to address the nation’s security and safety needs, while maintaining public trust and stewardship of American taxpayer dollars.”
As part of the service’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget submissions, the service provided additional details on the effort.
“The USCG partially terminated its contract with the Stage 1 OPC shipbuilder, removing OPCs #3 and #4 from the contract. The USCG is working towards a contract resolution for OPCs #1 and #2,” reads the budget documentation.
The estimated cost for the 25 OPCs is around $17 billion with the Coast Guard asking for $204 million in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget. The service funded $530 million in Fiscal Year 2025 and 2026.
Eastern won a contract in 2016 to build the OPCs at its Florida yard but construction was delayed in part to damage from a major hurricane in 2018 and what the Government Accountability Office called an, “unstable design.” The delays prompted an award in 2022 to Austal USA in Mobile, Ala., for a second set of OPCs starting with the fifth hull Pickering (WMSM-919). Eastern protested the decision and ultimately settled with the Coast Guard. Last year, the company announced that it had stopped work on all four OPCs under contract with the Coast Guard.
“Eastern Shipbuilding Group has made the difficult decision to suspend work on the Offshore Patrol Cutter program due to significant financial strain caused by the program’s structure and conditions. Despite our best efforts, continuing under the current circumstances is not sustainable,” Joey D’Isernia, CEO of Eastern Shipbuilding Group, said in a November statement to USNI News.
Eastern Shipbuilding declined to comment when contacted this week by USNI News.
According to Coast Guard budget documents, Argus and Chase are set to deliver this year, though its unclear how complete the cutters are. Pickering, the first OPC is set to deliver next year from Austal, according to the documents.
Last year, the Department of Homeland security had issued a request for information for towing Argus and Chase to be towed from Eastern to potentially be completed at a different shipyard.
The ongoing talks come as Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) has put a hold on all Coast Guard promotions over questions on shipbuilding contracting and lack of information from the service, Scott’s office confirmed to USNI News late last week. In a statement, Scott said the hold was the result of 18 months of unanswered questions over the status of Coast Guard contracting that includes the status of Argus and Chase.
“I am very concerned about the Coast Guard’s contracting process. For a year and a half, I have had questions about the contracting process and for whatever reason, the Coast Guard has refused to answer my questions. As it relates to Eastern Shipbuilding, the Coast Guard executed a contract that has cost taxpayers over [millions]. If this contract impasse is not solved, taxpayers will have paid [millions] yet no ship has been built. That is a problem,” reads the statement from Scott. “I don’t care what that resolution looks like, we just need a resolution. President Trump has been clear that we need ships and we need American shipbuilders. The Coast Guard needs these vessels and they ARE almost finished… I want to get past this as soon as possible. But, for that to happen, all parties need to work together to come to an amenable agreement that gets ships built and is fair to U.S. taxpayers.”
A Coast Guard spokesperson referred USNI News to the Department of Homeland Security when asked about the hold. DHS did not respond to two messages from USNI News.
“I care deeply about these Coast Guard promotions. These officers have spent their careers serving OUR country and they have sacrificed a lot to get to this point,” Scott said in the statement. “We need them.”
