I’m not surprised at all. I knew the propulsion units got used, but I haven’t been back to Houma in a while to see if the houses and modules they’d started were still there or had been scrap binned.
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You might have more reliable information than I do. My knowledge on the project is based on public sources and something I heard when visiting the U.S. years ago for another project.
Maybe this would be the chosen one?:
Fennica. Image: Arctia
“Built in 1993, Fennica was specifically designed to support polar operations during the northern hemisphere summer (when Finland’s icebreakers sit idle)”
So doesn’t meet the “5-6 year old” existing vessel Trump was talking about, but such small matters usually doesn’t border him.
PS> This is a reproduction of an article that first appeared on Sixty Degrees North
Here is an earlier article by same author in "Sixty Degrees North:
Forty Icebreakers. Big Ones. - by Peter Rybski
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the potus signed has $8.6 billion appropriated for USCG Icebreakers.
where’s the money coming from?
When the last POTUS & Congress was giving away $50 BILLION, $100 BILLION, $139 BILLION etc. to Ukraine, $250,000 (a quarter million dollars!) spent for every 1 Russian soldier killed, the answers were crickets, MMT or “asking means you hate America & love Putin”. Now for this measly $8.6 Billion for ships we will keep in the USCG fleet for decades. Maybe when Zelensky rolls into Moscow to accept Putins surrender after conquering Russia, Ukraine will give us a little piece of those hundreds of Billions back to pay off our icebreakers?
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By all means surrender a sovereign nation to Putin to pay for over priced ice breakers in an area where the ice is disappearing. Another question is who is going to man these US Navy and USCG vessels? The people wanting them built don’t seem to be be producing enough ‘patriots’ to man them.
https://news.usni.org/2025/01/23/navy-must-meet-recruiting-goal-for-3-years-to-close-gaps-at-sea
Come 'on man? $8.6 Billion is a drip in the bucket of all the money the US Gov gives away to never be seen again & you know it. I know many folks are “Anti-Whatever-Trump-Is-For” but please not on USCG Icebreakers too? Icebreakers are cool, literally & figuratively. Maybe having a modern fleet of vessels with real challenges & missions will help with recruitment too. About your GAO article & USCG recruitment difficulties. Below is a quote from another GAO articles saying the USCG is making progress & met their recruitment goals in 2024 for the first time in 5 years. I’ve heard the USCG is doing good concerning recruitment so far this year under their new leadership. Maybe because DEI isn’t their #1 goal & only stated mission anymore? Very few patriotic, testosterone filled, empty headed teenagers were joining military branches to be preached to about DEI. Since that’s no longer the objective of the military, maybe the cannon fodder types that used to make up our military will start volunteering again?
From the below GAO article:
“The Coast Guard missed its recruiting targets from 2019-2023. In 2024, it beat its recruiting target after increasing recruiting offices, marketing, and other outreach efforts.”
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Man, you’re smarter than this, I don’t know why you keep rehashing these same blatantly bad faith arguments that I don’t even think you believe. You don’t want us antagonizing Putin because you think he’ll nuke us? I think you’re wrong, but none of us can really know, so that’s a valid point of view.
On the other hand, nobody (besides Prigozhin) has said a thing about marching on Moscow, especially not Zelenskyy - you know perfectly well that this has always been purely defensive in nature for them, and even the Russian arguments about Ukrainian provocations were mostly fantasies and fabrications.
To argue that we’re just dropping hundred of billions of cash on Kiev is also blatantly false, you know full well that a very significant portion of the “dollar value” is the cost of equipment that has already been bought, paid for, used, put to pasture, and in many cases slated for disposal that was going to cost us a lot more than just loading it onto an ARC ship and giving it to people who can make use of it. What, are you upset that we’re giving away our M2 ODS (Operation Desert Storm, you know, used in that conflict thirty four years ago) instead of spending those billions to chop them and their similarly obsolescent brethren up at home? Much of the rest is in the form of loans that they’ll pay back when they’ve secured their lives, and a significant amount of the money and money-equivalent donations have been appropriated but not actually disbursed - as of March, we’d still actually given less than $90b. One source of many: https://www.ukraineoversight.gov/Funding/
So, if you don’t want us supporting friendly democracies against naked aggression, if you don’t believe that backstopping stability abroad benefits us at home, just say so. That’s fine, it’s a free country, you can hold whatever opinions you like, but don’t dress them up as righteous or reasoned with blatant falsehoods when you know better, and we know you know better.
Now, if you want to argue that’s it’s good we’re taking money from Medicare and SNAP and spending it on bureaucrats to deny claims for Medicare and SNAP, that it’s good we’re now spending more new appropriations on ICE than the FBI, DEA, BATF, U.S. Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons combined, as much in a year as we’ve “spent” on Ukraine in two, that’s cool too. You do you. But quit with the hyperbolic surliness. You’re better than that.
As for the Coast Guard recruiting crap about DEI, I like that your own reference pointed out that the problems began halfway into Trump’s first term, and ended under Biden, while parroting the nonsense about “DEI is killing the military” because we have to suffer a “Please Stop Raping Each Other” presentation once a year. Of the hundreds of people I’ve served closely with, I know none who openly felt like DEI was detracting from readiness. (EDIT - That’s a lie, I do know one, but he was also loud and proud about being a prick. Make of that what you will.) I know a number of good sailors who are in because of so-called “DEI” which, in their cases, mostly just looked like recruiting efforts aimed at more-than-just-white-men. I know at least two excellent, well-liked and highly skilled sailors, meanwhile, who are getting kicked out because their very existence is considered “DEI”. Take a guess how much that’s boosting morale.
Back to the original point, icebreakers are cool, and I’m glad we’re investing in them. I just wish it wasn’t at the expense of so many other things we could and, I believe, should be investing in as well.
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Of all the things you said this is only thing I agree with without further discussion/argument. But since I like icebreakers, this thread & the commenters who usually contribute to it, I’ll leave it at that. I’m happy the USCG finally got a significant amount of money specifically earmarked for icebreakers. Good for us. Happy Independence Day.
Russia may have the icebreakers, but lack docking facilities in the northern regions:
The nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika was placed in dock at the Kronstadt Marine Plant outside St. Petersburg on July 4. Photo: United Shipbuilding Corporation
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Just out of curiosity:
Why doe it cost a lot more, and take a lot longer, to build icebreakers at US yards than to build them at a Finnish yard? (Assuming that the design is Finnish in both cases)
- Is actual labour costs that much higher in the US than in Finland? (Actual cost, incl. social costs etc., not just hourly pay)
- Is it that steel of the required quality for icebreakers is more costly in the US?
- Any other factor, like finance costs, administrative cost, shareholder return, taxes, import duties etc.?
Major equipment is likely to come from the same suppliers, regardless of where they are built, so that should not effect overall costs per vessel.
PS> I know, it is “anti-American” for a foreigner to ask questions about anything as American as building icebreakers. but what the heck.
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I think the last paragraph in the gCaptain article is interesting, worth repeating & I hope becomes a reality to get the ball rolling on this project.
Last paragraph from the above gCaptain article:
“If President Trump aims to see any new icebreaker funded by this week’s bill enter into service before the end of his term he will likely push for a mix of domestic and foreign-constructed vessels, though the latter would require a presidential waiver.”
From the article I found this also interesting.
"The funding allocation brings the U.S. Coast Guard significantly closer to its long-stated goal of needing to operate between 8-9 icebreakers. The timeframe for construction and commissioning of the vessels, however, remains an open question.
Construction of the initial PSC at Bollinger Shipyards in Mississippi has faced a multi-year delay pushing completion of the first heavy icebreaker in the U.S. in 50 years back by at least five years to 2030."
Why? A seventh generation drillship with much more technology and equipment capable of operating in harsh environments is running about 800 million+. Why in the world does a ise breaker which is essentially a high horsepower ship with ice class construction cost the same? Maybe one of the forum ice class experts can answer.
An experienced European shipbuilder could have offered to build a well-designed 23,000-tonne commercial-spec Polar Class 2 icebreaker for about $300-400 million in the late 2010s.
The PSC is a quasi-milspec U.S. Coast Guard cutter awarded to the lowest U.S.-based bidder with a questionable design and no prior experience from similar projects half a year before a global pandemic hit.
I’m not that surprised about the challenges, delays, and cost overruns. However, I wonder how different it would have been with the other bidders. You could as well be blaming someone else for more or less the same problems. At least some of them.
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Now that Canadian Davies (who is learning how to build icebreakers in Finland) is buying Gulf Cooper—- maybe we will have a US shipyard capable of building an icebreaker.
Why not build the same fully developed “Canadian design” icebreakers that Davies and Seaspan are building in Canada?
Why let the USCG screw up the design and build an inferior vessel with enormous cost overruns?
You already have shipyards capable of building icebreakers in the United States, but getting one more certainly does not hurt. Of course, judging from the satellite photographs it will take some time and money until those former Gulf Copper yards are ready to build icebreakers for the USCG.
Things are happening on the icebreaker front:
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