[3][4] The vessel's manufacturer, Bollinger Shipyards, of Lockport, Louisiana, delivered the ship to the Coast Guard on February 7, 2017, for her acceptance trials.

[1][3][4] After completion sea trials, USCGC Bailey Barco was commissioned on June 14, 2017 in Juneau, Alaska.

[2][5] The Sentinel-class cutters are lightly armed patrol vessels with a crew of approximately two dozen sailors, capable of traveling almost 3,000 nautical miles, on five day missions.

The cutter is a multi-mission vessel intended to perform law enforcement, search and rescue, fisheries and environmental protection, and homeland security tasks.

[6][7] In 2014 the Coast Guard announced that Bailey T. Barco, a keeper in the United States Lifesaving Service, one of the agencies merged to form the US Coast Guard, who earned a Gold lifesaving medal for managing the daring rescue of the crew of a sailing schooner that ran aground during a severe winter storm off Virginia Beach, in 1901, would be the namesake of the 22nd cutter.