Austal USA Starts Construction of USCGC Ingham
Austal USA has started construction on its third U.S. Coast Guard Heritage-class Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC), the future USCGC Ingham, at the company’s Mobile, Ala. ship manufacturing facility.
Ingham is being built under a contract that includes options for up to 11 cutters and has a current potential value of $3.3 billion.
The 360-foot OPC will provide the majority of the Coast Guard’s offshore presence, conducting missions including law enforcement, drug and migrant interdiction, and search and rescue. With a range of 10,200 nautical miles at 14 knots and a 60-day endurance period, each OPC will be capable of deploying independently or as part of a task group and serving as a mobile command-and-control platform for surge operations such as hurricane response and mass migration incidents. The cutters will also support Arctic objectives by helping regulate and protect emerging commerce and energy exploration in Alaska.
The OPC program will recapitalize the Coast Guard’s aging medium endurance cutter fleet and provide a capability bridge between the service’s national security cutters, which operate in the open ocean, and fast response cutters, which operate closer to shore.
With the start of Ingham, Austal USA has three OPCs under construction: the future USCGC Pickering, USCGC Icarus, and USCGC Ingham. Together, these cutters anchor Austal USA’s growing steel shipbuilding portfolio, which also currently includes construction of four Landing Craft Utility vessels, three Navajo-class Towing, Salvage and Rescue Ships, an Auxiliary Floating Dry Dock Medium, and submarine modules supporting the Virginia- and Columbia-class submarine programs.
Austal USA uses a modular construction approach designed to increase production efficiency and allow a high percentage of each module to be outfitted before final assembly. The company’s engineering and production teams also developed a detailed 3D model of the cutter early in the design process to support planning, coordination and construction.
