Bollinger Shipyards Inc. can keep a contract to design and build the first in a new line of Coast Guard security boats after the Government Accountability Office denied the protest of competitor Marinette Marine Corp. of Wisconsin.
The GAO announced on Monday its decision in favor of Bollinger, which received the $88 million Coast Guard award in September. The contract gives the Lockport company options to build up to 34 boats in the line during the next six to eight years, a $1.5 billion deal that could result in hundreds of new jobs for the company's 12 Louisiana shipyards.
More on the Sentinel class here. Bunch of good stuff here (PDF). This is good news.
Maybe it is just me, but that ship looks sexy. I've looked at this ship and think it is great for the Coast Guard, but it is about 250 tons too small and only has about half the annual endurance requirement the Navy would need in a small vessel.
The Navy needs something similar, slightly larger, with more legs and a heavy dose of armor and short range weapons. In a perfect world, that ship would be developed in the Obama administration, and the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) would be built using one of the two LCS hulls. Until the services are forced by the political class to work together in acquisition to build platforms, all this cooperative happy talk means the National Fleet will always remain a theory, not a practice.
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