Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) and six other senators told the Pentagon yesterday they have serious concerns about the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program.
They cited reports from late last month about “aggressive galvanic corrosion” on General Dynamics’ [GD] USS Independence (LCS-2), the first aluminum-hulled LCS in the program that has two ship variants. In a letter to Pentagon acquisition czar Ashton Carter, the senators said the LCS-2 corrosion raises “concerns about the viability of this variant and whether costly fleet-wide fixes would be needed.”
The senators noted that the Navy has also had problems with hull cracking in the steel USS Freedom (LCS-1), Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] first ship in the closely-watched and problem-plagued program to build 55 shore-hugging warships.
“While some of that cracking was predicted and the Navy has a plan in place to ensure that it does not affect follow-on ships, the frequency with which information is coming out about major structural deficiencies in LCS-class ships is disturbing this early in the program’s lifecycle,” the letter to Carter states. It is from McCain and Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Scott Brown (D-Mass.), and Rob Portman (R-Ohio).
They told Carter “such problems could impact the Navy’s strategy to buy block quantities of each version of the LCS, and program-wide deficiencies could significantly impact the costs of maintaining the two LCS variants over their lifecycle.”
Congress gave the Navy permission last December to change its acquisition plan for the LCS program. The service scrapped plans to buy 10 LCSs from either Austal USA, which partnered with General Dynamics on LCS-2, or a Lockheed Martin [LMT]-Marinette Marine team. The Navy now plans to buy 10 copies of each ship design, for a total of 20, and have additional shipbuilders compete in the future to build subsequent copies of those two styles of ships.
McCain opposed this change in the Navy’s LCS acquisition plan, but was not able to block it late last year (Defense Daily, Dec. 22, 2010).
He said in a statement yesterday the littoral-ship program “has consistently failed in its promise to provide the Navy affordable combat capability on time and on budget.”
McCain said he and his colleagues are troubled that reports of galvanic-corrosion on LCS-2 and hull-cracking on LCS-1 were disclosed so soon after the Navy decided to buy both versions of the LCS in a block buy.
“The potential consequences of structural deficiencies like these showing up so early in two new ships is deeply troubling given the already checkered history of this program’s cost overruns and delays,” he said.
McCain said he is alarmed about the Pentagon’s decision to have the LCS ships proceed in the acquisition process based on Navy cost estimates that the Pentagon’s independent cost estimators dubbed “not achievable.”
“How the independent cost estimator made this finding and what it means for this program, and the viability of the Navy’s new strategy to buy LCS ships, is of continuing concern to Congress,” he said.
The seven senators asked Carter in yesterday’s letter about the LCS-2 corrosion and about the Pentagon’s use of the questionable Navy cost estimates.
Carter allowed the LCS ships to proceed to the Milestone B, or Engineering Manufacturing and Development (EMD), phase of the acquisition process early this year.
McCain and the other senators asked him yesterday why he did this while using the Navy’s cost estimates rather than those from the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office. Carter had said that the CAPE found the Navy numbers “are not achievable and therefore (it) would budget for higher estimates,” according to the senators.
“Please provide a full explanation of the CAPE’s position, the analysis the CAPE relied on to support its position, and why you chose to use the Navy’s cost estimates rather than the CAPE’s,” they wrote in their letter to Carter.