The possibility that Congress may tell the Navy to procure additional Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) in FY ’19 is not changing the Navy’s plans for buying at least 20 future guided-missile frigates (FFG(X)), the Navy’s top weapons buyer said on Wednesday.
“We have not changed our requirements for the frigate. Our intent is still a 20-ship minimum on the frigate,” James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development & acquisition, told reporters following a morning keynote at Defense Daily’s first Modular Open Systems Summit.
Photo: U.S. Navy
Geurts reiterated the service has not changed the current force structure assessment (FSA) that plans for 52 small surface combatants and that LCS industrial base “is a related, but separate concern.”
The Navy has planned the first 32 of these 52 vessels be the LCS, while the remaining are expected to be the new frigate.
The Navy awarded frigate conceptual design (CD) contracts to Austal USA, Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII], Lockheed Martin [LMT], Fincantieri’s Marinette Marine, and General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works [GD] before a detail design and construction (DD&C) award in FY ’20 to a single winner (Defense Daily, Feb. 16).
Under the Dec. 2016 FSA, the Navy said its 355-ship fleet should include 52 small surface combatants (Defense Daily, Dec. 16, 2016). The services future vision paper, released last year, noted the defense industrial base could build up to 14 more small surface combatants than planned over the following six years (Defense Daily, May 17, 2017).
In accordance with the plans, Navy requested only one LCS in FY ’19 as the 32nd LCS, but the service is now receiving pushback in Congress.
In the last few weeks members of Congress, primarily those based near the Fincantieri LCS shipyard, have been pushing for additional LCSs to forestall layoffs at the yard and a resulting less competitive position on the frigate competition (Defense Daily, April 19).
The House Armed Service subcommittee on seapower’s mark of its section of the FY ’19 defense authorization bill would approve buying three LCSs in FY ’19 (Defense Daily, April 25).
Geurts acknowledged a healthy discussion about the industrial base, which is a “key concern for the Navy” but said “we’ll see where we get to in the marks and then we’ll go execute accordingly.”