By Geoff Fein
A government report examining the potential for the Navy and Coast Guard to use a common hull form for their small combatant programs would have similar costs, benefits and risks as the current services’ acquisition plans.
Options for Combining the Navy’s and the Coast Guard’s Small Combatant Programs, published last week by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), reviewed whether the Navy and Coast Guard could combine their small combatant programs to meet their individual service needs and still save money, according to the report.
Due to cost overruns and construction challenges with both the Navy’s dual Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program and the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter (NSC) effort as well as delays to its planned offshore patrol cutter (OPC), some lawmakers questioned whether the two services needed to buy four different types of ships.
According to the CBO, the first two LCS, the USS Freedom (LCS), a semiplaning monohull being built by Lockheed Martin [LMT], and an all aluminum trimaran the Independence (LCS-2), being built by General Dynamics [GD], are both expected to cost about $700 million each. “CBO estimates that the average cost of subsequent ships will be about $550 million and take three years to build.”
Freedom has been delivered to the Navy and Independence just completed Builder’s Trials.
The Navy had originally said LCS would cost approximately $260 million in ’09 dollars and take two years to build, the report added.
Earlier this year the Navy awarded contracts for LCS-3 and LCS-4 and is currently reviewing bids for three FY ’10 ships.
The Coast Guard’s NSC has suffered the same problems as LCS. According to the report, the lead ship, the USCGC Bertholf, built by the Integrated Coast Guard Systems, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman [NOC], has seen the cutter’s cost rise from $475 million to about $750 million. And because of the cost of the lead ship, the overall cost of the NSC program has increased by about 40 percent.
The 418-foot Bertholf (WMSL-750) was accepted by the Coast Guard more than a year ago (Defense Daily, May 8, 2008). The second vessel, the Waesche (WMSL- 751), is nearly 85 percent done and the Coast Guard and Northrop Grumman laid the keel for the third NSC, the Stratton (WMSL-752), on Monday.
The service has decided that for the fourth NSC it would negotiate directly with Northrop Grumman (Defense Daily, June 29).
CBO offered three options that, according to the report, “would not necessarily be more cost-effective or provide more capability than the services’ existing plans. Specifically, even if the options addressed individual problems that the Navy and Coast Guard might confront with their small combatants, it would be at the cost of creating new challenges.”
Option 1 has the Coast Guard buying a variant of the Navy’s LCS, specifically, Lockheed Martin’s semiplaning monohull, to fill the offshore patrol cutter requirement.
Option 2 looked at the Navy buying fewer LCS and instead buying a variant of the NSC for use as a patrol frigate.
Option 3 solely examined the pros and cons of the Coast Guard buying more NSC’s in place of designing a new ship to perform the OPC mission.
Under this option, the Coast Guard and Navy would build a combined total of 80 LCS: 25 for the Coast Guard and 55 for the Navy.
Additionally, having the Coast Guard use the more survivable LCS hull “would enable the Coast Guard to serve as a reserve force for the Navy,” the report said.
Using the LCS hull form would also enable the Coast Guard to avert having to start a riskier new shipbuilding effort–the OPC, the report added.
However, the report said, a Coast Guard LCS variant might not be able to take advantage of the three mission packages (antisubmarine warfare, antisurface ship warfare, and mine warfare) being built for the Navy LCS.
This option has two very distinct disadvantages: Buying a single LCS hull form for both services would be more expensive for the Coast Guard to implement and it would make it harder on the service to conduct its normal day-to-day operations, according to the report.
Option 2 would cut the Navy’s LCS buy to 30 and instead have the service purchase 20 NSCs to use as patrol frigates, the report said. Under this plan, all 30 of the Navy’s LCS would be of the same variant, the CBO added.
The Navy would begin buying the NSC patrol frigate in 2011 and build them at a rate of two per year, according to the report.
Benefits of Option 2 include aligning “the service’s purchases of small combatants more closely with the elements of the maritime strategy.”
A “NSC-derived patrol frigate would ease the strain on the Navy’s own logistical support force or reduce the frequency with which those ships would need to pull into port to purchase fuel and supplies,” the report added.
And the NSC/patrol frigate would enable the Navy to more easily perform humanitarian and maritime security operations, CBO said.
“Perhaps the most significant drawback is that even though the NSC comes equipped with some self-defense capability, it is not designed for use in combat operations.”
A patrol frigate would also be unable to carry the mission packages being designed for LCS. “The NSC was not designed with enough internal space to accommodate those systems,” CBO said.
The inability to carry a full mission package also means that NSC would provide less flexibility to the Navy, according to the report.
Additionally, the difference in speed between the LCS and NSC mould mean the NSC would take more time to deploy, the CBO noted.
To date, LCS-1 has hit a speed in excess of 47 knots on its transit from Annapolis, Md., to Norfolk, Va. The maximum speed of the NSC is 28 knots, the report said.
Option 3 would have the Coast Guard buy 20 more NSCs and cancel the OPC.
The addition of more NSCs would provide the Coat Guard with more mission days per year, as well as “eliminate the risks associated with designing and building a new class of ship–specifically the OPC,” according to the CBO.
However, building up the NSC fleet while terminating the OPC would cut the number of overall days at sea per year for the Coat Guard. According to the CBO, a mix of ships, as proposed under the Deepwater plan, “would provide about 7,600 days at sea, or 10 percent more than under Option 3.”
“The effects of such a reduction in planned capabilities could make it difficult for the Coast Guard to fulfill all of its missions,” the report added.
The Coast Guard could also face difficulties in finding homeports for additional NSCs. “In information provided to CBO, the Coast Guard states that many of the homeports that currently take the existing high- and medium-endurance cutters may not be able to accommodate the new NSC…without significant, and potentially costly, modifications to the ports’ facilities,” CBO said.