The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found the US Coast Guard has been using a high-risk approach to acquire new vessels that involves significant overlap in design and construction.
GAO gave this assessment after being tasked to review the status of the coast guard's offshore patrol cutter (OPC) acquisition program.
GAO said the coast guard urgently needs OPCs to replace ageing vessels that conduct law enforcement and search and rescue operations.
The coast guard plans to acquire 25 OPCs in stages: stage one initially included OPCs one through four, stage two includes OPCs five through 15, and stage three will include OPCs 16 through 25.
Construction for stages one and two is underway at two different shipbuilders. However, GAO said each shipbuilder’s design remains incomplete, and both have yet to deliver any ships.
The stage one shipbuilder made limited progress since GAO last reported on the OPC program.
In 2023, GAO found that construction of OPCs one through four began without a stable design, contrary to shipbuilding leading practices. This led to rework, which delayed ship deliveries.
The coast guard took steps in 2024 to prioritise delivery of OPC number one, such as adding payments at certain milestones, but these steps were largely unsuccessful.
As of July 2025, the coast guard terminated construction of OPCs three and four as part of an ongoing review of the current stage one contract, and delivery of OPC one was expected more than five years late.
GAO said the stage two shipbuilder and the coast guard incorporated some leading practices while developing the stage two design, such as conducting collaborative design reviews that supported timely decisions.
However, construction of OPC five began in August 2024 without a stable design. GAO said starting construction of more stage two OPCs before stabilising the design, as the coast guard plans to do, increases the risk that stage two will also encounter costly rework and schedule delays.
GAO said the OPC program is at risk of not meeting its cost goals, in part, because the program used outdated cost information to establish them. The program is updating this information to account for recent stage one cost increases.
GAO also found that the program reported an aggregated cost goal for all 25 OPCs instead of by stage. Reporting cost goals by stage would enable decision-makers to hold the program and OPC shipbuilders accountable for their performance.
The program plans to acquire stage three ships after testing whether the existing designs meet OPC’s performace goals, which is consistent with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy. However, the program is unlikely to have the test results before starting stage three procurement activities, such as developing the request for proposals.
GAO said incorporating the knowledge gained from testing—as well as other shipbuilding leading practices—into the procurement process for stage three could help the coast guard make better investment decisions. It could also improve the timeliness of future OPC deliveries.
GAO is making four recommendations to the coast guard and DHS, including that the program stabilises design before starting construction of additional stage two OPCs; reports cost goals for each OPC stage; and documents a plan for acquiring stage three ships that identifies how it will use test results to inform procurement activities and further incorporate shipbuilding leading practices.
DHS concurred with two of the four recommendations, and did not concur with the other two. GAO has maintained, however, that all four recommendations are warranted.