The SteelNavy.Com Message Board: Re: COAST GUARD ICEBREAKERS

Ralph,

Wonderful laws, it is a shame that our ability to manufacture in the United States precludes us from building vessels in country. Case in point; LCS were both foreign designs, one builder was a foreign company. Constellation frigate is a foreign design which we do seem capable of building. Submarine building capacity is so low it impairs maintenance on existing boats. The list goes on for the beleaguered industry. Not to mention fabrication of sub-components such as castings, forgings and plastic molding. Welcome to the new world order.

Bill

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Three articles on the subject:

First, last year was when talks started:

https://www.dhs.gov/archive/news/2024/11/13/united-states-canada-and-finland-sign-mou-build-arctic-and-polar-icebreakers

Now, this year, Finland is the front runner according to this:

https://maritime-executive.com/article/report-finland-is-frontrunner-negotiating-for-uscg-icebreaker-order

The above contains this cautionary paragraph:

"Yle cautions in its report that the negotiations do not guarantee a deal. It says the U.S. Coast Guard has approached several shipyards around the world to assess their capacity to deliver icebreakers within 36 months. However, it also quotes Foreign Minister Valtonen who said after meeting Rubio, "We will likely have concrete news fairly soon." "

Here is USNI coverage:

https://news.usni.org/2025/04/16/coast-guard-asking-u-s-foreign-yards-for-arctic-security-cutter-pitches

Finally, everyone should be aware of the Byrnes-Tollefson Amendment (aka the Tollefson-Byrnes Amendment) which is actually two amendments to laws governing the DOD passed in 1965 and 1968, and which prohibit US government vessels from construction in foreign yards. This issue I have also mentioned in more detail in this thread about South Korea possibly building destroyers for us;

https://members.boardhost.com/Warship/msg/1743958222.html

While the language being seen in most of the current articles seems to indicate the vessels would be built directly in foreign yards--in direct violation of our own law--earlier articles (from last year) indicated we were holding talks with many foreign yards about coming here and setting up yards in this country. If it did go that way, I am doubtful we'd get ships in 3 years. Might take that long just to create yards here. Other ideas are for us to just directly build a foreign design in our yards, likely supervised and assisted by individuals from the parent company coming here to supervise. Of course, we can also--through Congress--change our laws, and--through the administration--ignore our laws.

In any case, this whole direction is exciting to me, and I will watch with interest how it all works out in detail.

Previous Message

THERE HAS BEEN ANNEWS ITEM THET THE USCG is in talks with FINLAND for up to 5 icebreakers, presumably for delivery in less than the 7-10 years for the already 8 year old uscg project to be us built!