The future US Coast Guard Cutter Argus, is running more than four years past its initial hand-off to the Coast Guard.

Eastern Shipbuilding Group just threw a wrench into the Coast Guard’s already-limping modernization program, announcing it’s suspending work on two Offshore Patrol Cutters. Why? Because the money isn’t penciling out and the workforce is shrinking faster than a boot camp haircut.

CEO Joey D’Isernia didn’t sugarcoat it. The OPC program’s “structure and conditions,” he said, have put the company under significant financial strain — translation: the contract was a financial booby trap, and Eastern stepped right on it.

This is just the latest stumble for a fleet recapitalization effort that’s been hobbling along for the better part of a decade. Months ago, DHS took a buzz saw to Eastern’s contract, chopping off two of the four cutters they were supposed to build. That was the polite way of saying: we just don’t believe you can deliver.

And now here we are — suspension of work, layoffs, and another promise of “we’ll get ’em next time.”

D’Isernia tried to soften the blow:

“Our people are the strength of this company.”

No argument there. But when you start laying off the very people who build the ships that defend our coasts, it’s a sign the whole system is wobbling on its keel.

A Program Born Under a Bad Star

Back in 2016, Eastern won the prize: the first four Offshore Patrol Cutters, the backbone of the future Coast Guard. It was supposed to be the start of a nine-ship run — steady work, steady jobs, steady progress.

Then Hurricane Michael smashed Panama City in 2018, gutting facilities, mangling schedules, and turning “routine shipbuilding delays” into “biblical catastrophe.” The contract had to be cracked open, rewritten, split into stages — and the program never regained its sea legs.

The future cutter, Argus, was meant to sail in June 2023. Now it might hit the water in late 2026 if the stars align. By mid-2025, Eastern was telling DHS it couldn’t deliver the next two ships unless someone wrote a check big enough to swallow “unabsorbable loss.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem replied with the bureaucratic equivalent of: Absolutely not.

A Homeland Security official was even blunter:

“We cannot allow critical shipbuilding projects to languish over budget and behind schedule.”

Fair enough. But someone should ask why we keep designing programs that guarantee exactly that.

A Punch, a Pivot, and a Prayer

To D’Isernia’s credit, he’s not rolling over. He’s pitching optimism like a man who’s had to pick up the yard after a Category 5:

“We’ve overcome a major hurricane and a global pandemic, and we will overcome this challenge as well.”

Eastern’s not shutting down — far from it. Washington State Ferries just tapped them to build two hybrid-electric ferries (with an option for a third), a $714.5 million contract that’s the maritime equivalent of a fresh battery in a dead flashlight.

If they nail that job, it’ll keep the lights on and the workforce humming. And maybe that’s the lesson here: in American shipbuilding today, the commercial work pays the bills while the federal contracts break your spirit.

The Big Picture — and It Isn’t Pretty

This OPC mess is not just a company in trouble. It’s another reminder that the Coast Guard — the service everyone loves to praise but hates to fund — is trying to sail into the 21st century with 20th-century tools and 19th-century budgets.

You can’t safeguard a 12,000-mile coastline on optimism and PowerPoints.

You need ships.
You need skilled workers.
And you need contracts that don’t treat American shipyards like disposable parts.

Until Washington figures that out, we’ll keep watching stories like this play out — patriotic rhetoric on top, rust and busted budgets underneath.