By Geoff Fein
Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] second Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-3) has reached the 50-percent completion mark, 15 months since contract award, a company official said.
“To be at the 50 percent point, we are pleased to be able to get there so quickly,” Paul Lemmo, business development director for Lockheed Martin, told Defense Daily earlier this week. “And, also being on cost and on schedule at the 50 percent complete mark is certainly an accomplishment on our second ship.”
Fort Worth will cost $549 million when completed. That’s consistent with the Navy’s numbers, he said.
Lockheed Martin is driving toward christening in December and delivery of the Fort Worth to the Navy in early 2012. That means from contract award to handing the ship over to the Navy will take 36 months, Lemmo noted.
And Fort Worth will be much further along at launch than her sister ship, USS Freedom (LCS-1), was, Lemmo added.
“We project we will be about 85 percent complete at that point. That compares to Freedom being only about 62 percent complete at launch,” he said.
And, with Freedom, it took Lockheed Martin and shipbuilder Marinette Marine a lot longer than 15 months to get to that 50 percent complete mark, Joe North, LCS program manager, said in the same interview.
North praised Marinette Marine’s pre-outfitting work, adding that when the team started the erection process the shipyard’s goal was to have each module outfitted at about 85 percent.
“When you look at all of that work on the total schedule, that equates to where we are today–at the 50 percent mark already,” he said.
Marinette Marine, a Fincantieri company, has all the major equipment installed in the modules, North noted.
“They are doing all of the electrical cable pulling, all of the insulation is in, spaces are painted out, in fact they even have outlets already installed,” he said. “This is what happens when we have a solid baseline…control of the production process, without having any of the concurrency with design.”
There are 44 total modules on Fort Worth, and all of them are under construction, North added. “And 24 of those are erected today.”
“They are all heavily outfitted. It’s not just an empty steel shell. You’ve got engines, cables and all kinds of stuff in there…plumbing,” Lemmo added. “If you went and saw the ship, roughly 50 percent of the modules are connected together into what looks like a ship.”
Although as a lead ship Freedom faced a number of unique challenges, North said there were some lessons the team took away for that program and are applying to Fort Worth.
One big factor in Fort Worth‘s improved schedule and ability to stay on cost is that the team has a baseline to work from, North said. “We were creating it on the lead ship. That’s always the biggest problem.
“We found our producibility issues on the lead ship, so you would sometimes come to a stop and have to redo something,” he added. “They are all factored in and corrected on this ship.”
There were also changes made to sequencing the modules, North said.
“On the lead ship, we sent a lot of modules out of the outfitting building to the erection facility very sparsely outfitted,” he said. “When we put her in the water, Freedom was 62 percent complete. That was a lot more work that had to be installed and outfitted when it was in the water, which is more expensive.”
Now the modules are coming out of the pre-outfitting building with the goal of being as close to 85 percent complete. “That much of a completed ship is being erected inside the building and it will be even further complete by the time it hits the water,” North added.
Other than some final outfitting and touch-up things, most of the remaining work is the test program, he said.
One change that did take place was splitting the biggest module on Fort Worth in half, North said.
Louisiana-based Bollinger Shipyards built that module, the longest and heaviest one, for Freedom.
For Fort Worth, Marinette Marine split the module in two, thus increasing the total number of modules from 43 to 44, North noted.
“It just helped in the lift capability of what they were doing,” he said.
Although Bollinger built that module for LCS-1, everything on Fort Worth has been built at Marinette Marine, North said.
“Bollinger supported the team and helped us on Freedom because of the time phase we were in. At that point, they were able to take some of that workload and try to maintain the schedule,” he added. “Our schedule, with the changes and everything else, it was real hard on Freedom. Whereas they are hitting their schedule or in some cases exceeding the schedule on Fort Worth.”
Lockheed Martin and its competitor, a team led by General Dynamics [GD] and Austal USA, are awaiting the Navy’s decision on which version of LCS the service will buy and build. A decision is expected in August, at the earliest.
Lockheed Martin is building a semi-planing monohull. General Dynamics and Austal are building an all-aluminum hull trimaran.
To date, both teams have delivered one LCS each to the Navy and are in the midst of each building their second ship.
With the stretched-out build schedule for the first two ships, and a new acquisition strategy that guarantees acquisition of two LCS with an option for eight more, there has been some question as to whether sub vendors might not be able or willing to stick it out.
Lemmo said Lockheed Martin’s vendor base has been there every step of the way.
“But, just as with a shipyard, you have to realize if you are not buying every year you are essentially breaking production and that can have a cost impact,” he said. “But the vendors are there and they are willing to participate in the program. But what kind of cost expectations do you have for them if you are not placing an order every year, as we haven’t been since the program began? We’ve only had two ships and its been six to seven years.”
In the contract that is currently out for bid, Lockheed Martin’s vendors are looking at it with a lot of anticipation, Lemmo said, because there will be awards every year.
Additionally, there will be a decision to pick a single winning design so vendors won’t have to guess how many and what design will the Navy build from year to year, North added.
While Lockheed Martin has not lost any vendors, they will have to find a new supplier for future reduction gears, Lemmo noted.
Switzerland-based MAAG Gear AG sold their business, he said. “But there are plenty of other vendors out there.”
General Electric [GE], which was a subcontractor on the reduction gear, is out of the gear business, too, he said.
“Going forward, obviously, we will have a new supplier,” Lemmo said.