CBO testifies about the agency’s analysis of the costs of the Coast Guard’s heavy polar icebreaker program, known as the Polar Security Cutter (PSC) program, before the House Homeland Security Committee's Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security on May 7, 2024.
CBO finds that in 2024 dollars, the procurement cost of the first PSC would be about $1.9 billion. Subsequent ships would average about $1.6 billion each. Given those costs, the procurement cost of three PSCs would be about $5.1 billion. That amount is 60 percent greater than the Coast Guard’s most recent publicly released estimate for the procurement cost of three heavy icebreakers, which was provided to CBO by the Coast Guard in March 2024.