[3] The vessel's manufacturer, Bollinger Shipyards, of Lockport, Louisiana, delivered the ship to the Coast Guard on December 13, 2016, for her acceptance trials,[1][3] and then John McCormick was commissioned on April 12, 2017 in Ketchikan, Alaska.

[2] 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.

Houma Today quoted Ben Bordelon, Bollinger's CEO, that John McCormick will ""assist in defending our nation's interests in the Alaskan maritime region.

[18] The award citation noted the crew's high level of readiness and training, which allowed it to quickly deal with engineering and damage control problems which had appeared during McCormick's long voyage the previous year from Key West to her Ketchikan homeport.