By Emelie Rutherford
The Navy wants lawmakers’ approval to scrap its plans to buy 10 Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) from one company and instead buy 10 of them from each of the two ventures competing to build it, for a total of 20 of the shore-hugging vessels.
Shipbuilder Austal USA and a team led by Lockheed Martin [LMT] have both built dramatically different LCSs for the Navy. The service for months has been weighing which company to tap to build the next 10 vessels, from fiscal years 2010 to 2014. As part of that acquisition strategy, the Navy intended to have other shipbuilders compete to build five subsequent copies of the ship, starting in FY ’12, based on the chosen company’s design.
A Navy spokeswoman said yesterday, though, that after weighing the two competing LCS designs the service now wants to buy both ships–Austal’s aluminum trimaran-hulled Independence-class version and Lockheed Martin’s steel Freedom-class vessel.
Austal teamed with General Dynamics [GD] for the LCSs it already built, but is bidding by itself in the current competition. Lockheed Martin is partnered with shipbuilder Marinette Marine.
“The Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program is on track for a downselect decision, but effective competition between industry bidders has led the Navy–separate from the downselect process–to start speaking with key defense committee members and industry about awarding each bidder a 10-ship block buy,” Capt. Cate Mueller, a spokeswoman for Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley, told Defense Daily.
To do this the Navy would need congressional authorization as well as industry buy-in, she said.
“So it’s not a done deal,” she said.
The congressional approval could come in the form of new language added to the fiscal year 2010 defense authorization bill, which Congress has not yet passed. Existing versions of the bill support the Navy’s former strategy to buy the next 10 ships from just one company and then look to other shipbuilders to build subsequent copies. Congress also could grant the Navy authorization for the new LCS plan through other legislation such as a continuing spending resolution.
“If that path to congressional authorization proves infeasible, we will still proceed to downselect in accordance with the terms of the current solicitation,” Mueller said.
The Navy needs to hear from Congress by mid-December if it can pursue this newly proposed dual LCS procurement, or if it has to stick with older plans to buy one ship’s design.
“So it’s a pretty tight timeline,” Mueller said. “But either approach, the Navy believes, procures affordably priced ships.”
The Navy had planned, in its FYDP, to buy a total of 19 LCSs from FY ’10 through FY ’15. This new dual-block-buy plan for 20 LCSs, thus, would require adding one more ship to the Navy’s budget plans for FY ’10 through FY ’15.
Under the dual-block-buy approach, the service still would buy the technical data packages for the two ships, in order “to leave open the possibility” that another shipbuilder could build the same design in the future, Mueller said. The Navy’s current LCS acquisition strategy calls for acquiring such data packages, but after 10 ships are bought from one company, not 20 ships from two shipbuilders.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said yesterday he is not sold on the Navy’s new acquisition proposal and argued the General Dynamics-Austal LCS he supports is the best ships.
“I remain concerned…about this new Navy acquisition strategy, how Secretary Mabus reached this decision, and the additional costs this will add to the program,” Shelby, a Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee member, said in a statement. “I look forward to learning more about this decision in the coming days.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said in a statement the new Navy plan “is a good strategy, and I will strongly support it.” Sessions, an Austal-Lockheed Martin LCS supporter who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he talked to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus yesterday and was told “because of strong competition and price reductions, this plan can be accomplished without new funds.”