The Sentinel-class cutter, also known as the Fast Response Cutter or FRC due to its program name, is part of the United States Coast Guard's Deepwater program. At 46.8 m, it is similar to, but larger than, the 123 ft lengthened 1980s-era Island-class patrol boats that it replaces. Up to 71 vessels are to be built by the Louisiana-based firm Bollinger Shipyards, using a design from the Netherlands-based Damen Group, with the Sentinel design based on the company's Damen Stan 4708 patrol vessel. The Department of Homeland Security's budget proposal to Congress, for the Coast Guard, for 2021, stated that, in addition to 58 vessels to serve the Continental US, they requested an additional six vessels for its portion of Patrol Forces Southwest Asia.

Planning and acquisition

In March 2007, newly appointed United States Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen announced that the USCG had withdrawn a contract from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for the construction of an initial flawed design of what would eventually become the Sentinel class. Allen announced that instead of the initial high-tech design Bollinger would build vessels based on an existing design, and the new program would focus more on existing "off-the-shelf" technology. The design chosen was largely based on the Damen Stan 4708 patrol vessels from the Netherlands firm the Damen Group. The South African government operates three similar 154 ft Lillian Ngoyi-class vessels for environmental and fishery patrol. In September 2008, Bollinger Shipyards in Lockport, Louisiana, was awarded US$88 million to build the prototype first vessel in its class. That prototype was the first of a projected series of 46.8 m cutters. In September 2008 the series was expected to comprise a maximum of 24 to 34 cutters but by the time the prototype cutter, which became USCGC Bernard C. Webber, entered service in 2012 the planned number of Sentinel-class cutters had grown to 58. They replaced the 37 remaining aging, 1980s-era 110 ft Island-class patrol boats. USCGC Bernard C. Webber (WPC-1101) and all following Sentinel-class vessels are named after enlisted Coast Guard heroes. Bernard C. Webber was launched in April 2011, and commissioned in April 2012 at the Port of Miami. She and five sister ships are stationed in Miami, Florida. The second cohort of six vessels is homeported in Key West, Florida. The third cohort of six vessels is homeported in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As of October 2024, the Coast Guard plans to station most of the Sentinel-class cutters in the United States, but a cohort of six is stationed with the Coast Guard's largest unit outside the United States, Patrol Forces Southwest Asia (PATFORSWA), whose homeport is Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. As many as six more are planned to be stationed in the Indo-Pacific region. A second contract was awarded on December 15, 2009 for an additional three Sentinel-class cutters at a cost of US$141 million. By April 2010 the Coast Guard's contract with Bollinger allowed for the order of up to 34 Sentinel-class cutters at a cost of up to US$1.5 billion. Even then, the Coast Guard was planning to build a total of 58 Sentinel-class cutters. In September 2013, Marine Link reported that the Coast Guard had placed orders with Bollinger Shipyards for additional cutters, bringing the number of such cutters ordered by then to thirty. In July 2014, it was announced that the U.S. Coast Guard had exercised a $225 million option at Bollinger Shipyards for construction through 2017 of an additional six Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutters (FRCs), bringing the total number of FRCs under contract with Bollinger to 30. Later that number was increased to 32 cutters. In May 2016, Bollinger Shipyards announced that the U.S. Coast Guard had awarded it a new contract for building the final 26 Sentinel-class fast-response cutters. That brought to 58 the total number of FRCs that the USCG ordered from Bollinger. Acquiring the 58 cutters was expected to cost the federal government $3.8 billion — an average of about $65 million per cutter. By June 2016, 38 of the projected 58 FRCs had been ordered and 17 were in service. The Miami and Key West chorts were complete. The 18th fast response cutter, Joseph Tezanos, was delivered to the Coast Guard in Key West, Florida, in June 2016 en route to completing the San Juan cohort. On August 9, 2018 the Coast Guard exercised its contract option to order six more Sentinel-class cutters. These would be the 45th through 50th cutters of that class. With this order, the total value of orders under the contract grew to almost US$929 million. On August 21 the 30th fast response cutter, Robert Ward, was delivered. On July 31, 2019 the Coast Guard exercised its contract option to order another six Sentinel-class cutters. These would be the 51st through 56th cutters of that class. With this order, the total value of orders under the contract grew to about US$1.23 billion. Under the contract, the Coast Guard could order as many as 58 cutters, at a total cost of US$1.42 billion. The six new cutters were expected to be delivered starting in late 2022 and ending in late 2023. In September 2020, the Coast Guard announced it was ordering four more FRCs from Bollinger, to be delivered in 2024. These would be the 56th through 60th cutters of that class. At that time, 40 FRCs had been delivered and 38 had been commissioned. The Coast Guard had recently modified its contract with Bollinger to increase the maximum number of cutters that could be ordered under the contract to 64. The modified contract had a potential value of US$1.74 billion. In 2017, the Coast Guard announced two FRCs would be stationed in Astoria, Oregon starting in 2021. In 2018, the Coast Guard announced four more would be stationed in San Pedro, California in 2018 and 2019. Also in 2018, the Coast Guard revealed plans to eventually homeport a total of six FRCs in Alaska, with one cutter in Sitka, one in Seward, and two in Kodiak, joining two already operating from Ketchikan. Boston, Massachusetts and St. Petersburg, Florida would eventually be FRC homeports. In June 2019, the United States House Committee on Armed Services approved a requirement for the US Navy to study the possibility of buying a version of the FRC, and basing them in Bahrain. In 2019 Lieutenant Commander Collin Fox (USN), and columnist David Axe suggested that, when the US Navy started to develop unmanned patrol ships to replace the Cyclone-class patrol ship, which are similar in size to the Sentinel class, the hulls and other elements of the robot ships would be based on the Sentinels, and built in the same factory. In August 2021, the Coast Guard exercised its option to order four more Sentinel-class cuttersthe 61st through 64thfrom Bollinger. Bollinger planned to build the ships at Bollinger's Lockport, Louisiana facility and deliver the first of the four vessels in the fall of 2024 and the last in the summer of 2025. In 2022, the Coast Guard awarded a $30 million contract to install a fixed pier and two floating docks to accommodate FRCs at East Tongue Point in Oregon. The first new cutter is expected to arrive at Astoria, Oregon in March 2024 rather than in 2021 as originally planned. In March 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2022, which provided $130 million in funding for two additional FRCs, bringing the total number to 66. In August 2022, the Coast Guard exercised its contract option for the first of these additional cutters, to be delivered by Bollinger in 2025. This order expanded the total value of the Phase 2 contract with Bollinger Shipyards to US$1.8 billion. On May 8, 2024 the Coast Guard exercised a contract option for two additional FRCs, bringing the total vessels built by or under contract with Bollinger to 67 and the total value of the Phase 2 contract to about US$2 billion. The two new FRCs are expected to be delivered in fiscal year 2028.

Mission

The vessels perform various Coast Guard missions which include but are not limited to PWCS (Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security), Defense Operations, Maritime Law Enforcement (Drug/migrant interdiction and other Law Enforcement), Search and Rescue, Marine Safety, and environment protection.

Design and construction

The vessels are armed with a remote-control Mark 38 25 mm Machine Gun System and four crew-served .50-caliber (12.7 mm) M2HB heavy machine guns. They have a bow thruster for maneuvering in crowded anchorages and channels. They have small underwater fins, for coping with the rolling and pitching caused by large waves. They are equipped with a stern launching ramp, like the Marine Protector-class coastal patrol boat and the eight failed expanded Island-class cutters. They are manned by a crew of 22. The Fast Response Cutter deploys the 26 ft Cutter Boat - Over the Horizon (OTH-IV) for rescues and interceptions. Modifications to the Coast Guard vessels from the Stan 4708 design include an increase in speed from 23 to 28 kn, fixed-pitch rather than variable-pitch propellers, stern launch capability, and watertight bulkheads. The vessels are built to ABS High Speed Naval Craft rules and some parts of the FRC also comply to ABS Naval Vessel Rules. The vessels meet Naval Sea Systems Command standards for two compartment damaged stability and meet the Intact and Damage Stability and reserve buoyancy requirements in accordance with the “Procedures Manual for Stability Analyses of U.S. Navy Small Craft". The vessels have space, weight, and power reserved for future requirements which includes weapons and their systems. The cutters have a reduced radar cross-section through shaping. The bridge is equipped with a handheld device that allows crew members to remotely control the ship's functions, including rudder movement and docking. In February 2013, the Department of Homeland Security requested tenders from third party firms to independently inspect the cutters, during their construction, and their performance trials. At the September 2022 commissioning of USCGC Douglas Denman, it was announced that she had several upgrades compared to the two cutters deployed to Ketchikan, Alaska six years previously. These include an improved bow thruster and radar system and the addition of a forward-looking infrared camera. Though initially stationed at Ketchikan, Douglas Denman will eventually be homeported at Sitka when port infrastructure improvements have been completed there. In March 2024, a Congressional Research Service report revealed that the Coast Guard's long term procurement plan called for the purchase of up to 71 FRCs. Six of the new cutters would be deployed to the Indo-Pacific region for engagement with allies and partner countries.

Crew accommodation

Prior to the deployment of the Marine Protector class, the Coast Guard decided that all its cutters, even its smallest, should be able to accommodate mixed-gender crews. The Sentinel-class cutters are able to accommodate mixed-gender crews. When USCGC Rollin Fritch was commissioned, a profile in The Philadelphia Inquirer asserted off-duty crew members had access to satellite television broadcasts. The vessels come equipped with a desalination unit.

Ships

Operational histories

Press coverage of the vessels' operational histories suggests they have been effective at interdicting refugees who resort to dangerous overloaded small boats, and effective at capturing drug smugglers. The cutters have intercepted smugglers carrying large shipments of drugs. In February 2017 Joseph Napier intercepted a shipment of over four tons of cocaine, reported to be the largest drug-bust in the Atlantic Ocean since 1999. Cutters are given tasks like looking for shipping containers full of toxic cargo that have fallen from container ships, as USCGC Margaret Norvell (WPC-1105) did in December 2015, when 25 containers fell from the barge Columbia Elizabeth. Similarly, Charles Sexton helped search for the freighter SS El Faro when she was lost at sea during Hurricane Joaquin in October 2015. In 2018 and 2019 Oliver Berry and Joseph Gerczak made voyages beyond the design range, on missions from Hawaii to the Marshall Islands and American Samoa. Both voyages took nine days. In August 2022, one of the ships in the Sentinel class, Oliver Henry, was stuck in the Solomon Islands after the country's government failed to respond to a fuel request. In February 2024, Clarence Sutphin Jr. intercepted a shipment of weaponry on its way to the Houthi militia in the Red Sea.

Namesakes

Charles "Skip" W. Bowen, who was then the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard, is credited with leading the initiative of naming the vessels after enlisted rank individuals who served heroically in the Coast Guard or one of its precursor services. Originally, the first vessel of the class was to be named USCGC Sentinel. In October 2010 the Coast Guard named the first fourteen individuals the vessels will be named after, and has provided biographies of them. They are: Bernard C. Webber, Richard Etheridge, William Flores, Robert Yered, Margaret Norvell, Paul Clark, Charles David Jr, Charles Sexton, Kathleen Moore, Joseph Napier, William Trump, Isaac Mayo, Richard Dixon, Heriberto Hernandez. A second group of eleven names was announced on April 2, 2014. In 2013 the name of Joseph Napier was reassigned to WPC-1115 when WPC-1110 was named after the recently deceased Commander Raymond Evans. The other ten new namesakes were: Winslow W. Griesser, Richard H. Patterson, Joseph Tezanos, Rollin A. Fritch, Lawrence O. Lawson, John F. McCormick, Bailey T. Barco, Benjamin B. Dailey, Donald R. Horsley, and Jacob L. A. Poroo. The 17th cutter (ex-USCGC Richard Patterson) was renamed as Donald Horsley after request of the Patterson Family, and the 24th cutter (ex-USCGC Donald Horsley) then was renamed as Oliver Berry. In July 2014, Coast Guard Commandant Paul Zukunft announced that the Coast Guard would name an additional cutter after Senior Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne, the first Coast Guard member to be murdered in the line of duty since 1927. In February 2015, the Coast Guard publicized ten more names tentatively assigned to cutters 26 through 35. They were: Joseph Gerczak, Richard T. Snyder, Nathan Bruckenthal, Forrest O. Rednour, Robert G. Ward, Terrell Horne III, Benjamin A. Bottoms, Joseph O. Doyle, William C. Hart, and Oliver F. Berry. In December 2017, the Coast Guard announced the names of the 35th through 54th cutters. The twenty namesakes are: Angela McShan, Daniel Tarr, Edgar Culbertson, Harold Miller, Myrtle Hazard, Oliver Henry, Charles Moulthrope, Robert Goldman, Frederick Hatch, Glen Harris, Emlen Tunnell, John Scheuerman, Clarence Sutphin, Pablo Valent, Douglas Denman, William Chadwick, Warren Deyampert, Maurice Jester, John Patterson, and William Sparling. The 35th cutter (ex-USCGC Oliver Berry) is to be named as Angela McShan since the 24th cutter (ex-USCGC Donald Horsley) was renamed as Oliver Berry. In October 2019, the Coast Guard named the namesakes of cutters 55 through 64. They are: Melvin Bell, David Duren, Florence Finch, John Witherspoon, Earl Cunningham, Frederick Mann, Olivia Hooker, Vincent Danz, Jeffrey Palazzo, and Marvin Perrett.