The newest U.S. Coast Guard vessel in Alaska was commissioned at Base Kodiak last week and is set to officially begin service.
The Earl Cunningham is the second of three new cutters to be homeported in Kodiak. It joins the John Witherspoon which was commissioned in Kodiak in April. By the end of this year the third vessel, the Frederick Mann, is scheduled to arrive in Kodiak and be commissioned into service as well.
Acting Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday said these 154-foot cutters have the capability to move beyond the Gulf of Alaska, into places like the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Sea.
"They're amazingly capable, much more so than the older 110-foot patrol boats that they replaced," Lunday said. "And so that enables us to move them forward and base them temporarily, position them out of forward operating locations. We haven't decided how to do that specifically in Alaska and the Arctic, yet."
Lunday added that the plan is to have future fast response cutters homeported in Seward, Sitka and Ketchikan. But infrastructure still needs to be developed in Sitka and Seward before those vessels can dock there.
The new Kodiak cutters are the latest in a build-up of Coast Guard personnel and infrastructure in Kodiak.
Since at least 2018 the Coast Guard has taken steps to build a handful of fast response cutters bound for Alaska – and to homeport three of them in Kodiak. That includes an expansion of 200 service members and their families on Base Kodiak, with more local housing at Nemetz Park to accommodate them. The new housing complex was announced in 2022, at a cost of $85 million. In that same time frame, the population of Coast Guard Base Kodiak has roughly doubled to over 2,000 members.
Although these Sentinel-class cutters were authorized to be built years ago, they are being included as part of plans the Trump administration said it has to renew the Coast Guard's capability. Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security which oversees the Coast Guard, calls it a blueprint to transform the force after "decades of underinvestment, neglect and strategic drift."
The Coast Guard renovation plan has been deemed Force Design 2028.
"Force Design 2028 kind of had two components of strategy and funding," said Deputy DHS Secretary Troy Edgar. "So the strategy that had been laid out with the Secretary and worked very closely with the commandant, really took the Force Design 2028 that would take quite a bit of time, at least three to five years, to come to full fruition."
During the Aug. 11 commissioning ceremony in Kodiak, Edgar noted that the Earl Cunningham is an investment in the Coast Guard's growing presence in this part of the country.
"And with the Arctic region and the natural resources that are up here right now, you can see that the President and the Department of Homeland Security we're very focused on making sure that we don't leave the Arctic uncovered," he said. "And as we can see that right now, our adversaries are absolutely focused on this area."
Roughly 24 hours earlier in Juneau on Aug. 10, the service commissioned its first additional icebreaker in 25 years – the Storis, which was formerly the private vessel Aiviq.
Edgar said more investment is coming to the Coast Guard in Alaska after the One Big Beautiful Bill was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4. That gave the Coast Guard its largest budget ever, nearly $25 billion. That does not include the roughly $14 billion the Trump administration is asking to go to the Coast Guard in the fiscal year 2026 federal budget.
Last month on July 29 the Coast Guard started the process for ordering at least 10 additional fast response cutters from Bollinger Shipyards in Louisiana with the new funding, according to a Coast Guard press release. So far, Bollinger has built 60 new FRCs for the Coast Guard, including four that are in service in Alaska.
The third new cutter to be homeported in Kodiak, the Frederick Mann, is scheduled to arrive in the next few months.
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