
Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] and VT Halter Marine, the two losing bidders for a recent Coast Guard contract to begin preliminary design work on its next major cutter, this week protested the awards, prompting the service to issue stop work orders to the winning bidders, Bollinger Shipyards, Eastern Shipbuilding Group, and General Dynamics [GD]. A Coast Guard spokesman told Defense Daily on Thursday in an email response to questions that all work on the Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) preliminary and…