By Geoff Fein
After acknowledging there will be delays in the delivery of LHA-6, Northrop Grumman [NOC] is working to determine the impact to the ship’s cost and construction schedule, a company spokeswoman said.
During an analysts call last week, Wes Bush, Northrop Grumman’s president and chief operating officer said the company is taking additional steps to ensure that engineering designs are ready before production, an approach that will delay the program.
“In fact our cost growth on the LHA-6 is driven by our assessment that we need to delay the delivery schedule on this ship to enable the engineering work products to reach a higher degree of completeness before moving into substantial production,” Bush said. Earlier this month, the company laid the keel on the new big deck amphibious ship (Defense Daily, July 24).
Yesterday, Margaret Mitchell-Jones, a Northrop Grumman spokeswoman, told Defense Daily some of the engineering work products Bush mentioned in the earnings call include changes to the USS Makin Island (LHD-8) drawings to reflect LHA-6 design requirements such as air conditioning, sanitation and lighting systems in the new habitability spaces, as an example.
“Additional engineering products are associated with incorporating lessons learned from LHD-8. The analysis, engineering and drawing products are used to develop bills of material and work instructions for the craft,” she said. “Adjustments to the overall ship schedule would allow more time to incorporate these changes.”
LHA-6 is being built under a fixed price incentive contract.
The Navy is aware of the Northrop Grumman statement, Cmdr. Victor Chen, Navy spokesman told Defense Daily yesterday.
“At this time, the Navy has not changed the contractual delivery date for LHA-6. The Navy has requested specifics of the proposed delay from the company and will work with the shipbuilder to better understand the issues..”
Earlier this month, the company held a keel authentication ceremony for America at its Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard.
America will have an extended hangar deck with two higher hangar bay areas, each fitted with an overhead crane for aircraft maintenance, according to Northrop Grumman. LHA-6 will also provide increased aviation fuel capacity, stowage for aviation parts and support equipment. In addition, America will be able to embark and launch the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, cargo and attack helicopters, the AV-8B Harrier and the short take-off vertical landing variant F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, the company added.
Last year, during a similar analysts call, Northrop Grumman officials said LHD-8 was several months behind schedule and would run $320 million to $360 million over budget.
The ship was in the late stages of testing where program engineers were doing the final connections of the various electrical systems when problems began to arise. Company officials had expected integration issues with the ship that it didn’t face with production of LHD-7.
LHD-8, which was slated to be delivered in late 2008, wasn’t handed over to the Navy until April of this year. Still, that was three months ahead of the schedule the company had been following.
Additionally, Northrop Grumman gave $60 million back to its shareholders (Defense Daily, April 21).