Navy poised to pick builder of new Littoral Combat Ship this summer

[unhappycamper]

Navy poised to pick builder of new Littoral Combat Ship this summer
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 2, 2010; 12:27 PM

The Navy plans to pick a winner this summer in the contest to build a new high-speed warship that can prowl close to shorelines as a vital part of future military strategy. But whether the service can live up to its promises to build an inexpensive ship that can do a variety of missions remains a big question, defense industry analysts and congressional leaders say.

Two local companies -- General Dynamics of Falls Church and Lockheed Martin of Bethesda -- are competing for the contract to build what is known as the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), a deal that could be worth as much as $28 billion over several decades. The ship is meant to be smaller, cheaper and more versatile than the Navy's fleet of aircraft carriers and destroyers and is seen as crucial to the Navy's longer-range plans to increase its fleet to 313 ships. Last week, the House agreed to spend about $1.5 billion on building the LCS in its defense authorization bill.

But the Navy's shipbuilding plans are under heavy scrutiny in a time of budget cuts and changes in military priorities. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has questioned whether the U.S. military "can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 to 6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers" given that that the service has a "massive over-match" compared with others and the Navy's top admiral recently warned that new ships could face a procurement squeeze. So, more than ever, the program depends on the contractors' ability to hold down costs.

"This is a linchpin of the Navy's future shipbuilding plans," said Maren Leed, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "Two to four billion dollar ships are increasingly less doable, so if you're going to have ships in numbers, it has to be something like LCS that you can buy for less than a billion dollars a pop."

The littoral ship program has a long, troubled history. The concept started more than a decade ago, but it has gone through delays and cost overruns, and last year the Navy launched a major overhaul of its acquisition plan for the ships. Some government auditors and analysts worry about whether the ships will stay within the latest congressionally mandated cost cap of $480 million per ship. The original price was expected to be $220 million.



unhappycamper comment: LCS #1 (USS Freedom): $637 million dollars. (updated from Wikipedia)

LCS #2 (USS Independence): $704 million dollars.


Not bad. The new LCS ships will cost only 218% over the original estimated cost.

[izquierdista]

1. What enemy are they keeping up with?

Or does the Taliban navy have a new submarine with a caterpillar drive?

[Sal Minella]

2. The Taliban Navy must have very effective means of squelching leaks

about its new war machines.

I mean, I read from a LOT of sources, and I've read NOTHING about the new hardware of the Taliban Navy . . .

[izquierdista]

3. Those burkas hide a lot

'Submarine' is feminine isn't it?

[Orrex]

4. Not to be taken littorally

Hey, it was either that or else go with the other joke suggested by "littoral."

Which would you prefer, really?

[msongs]

5. corporate war profiteers should eat the "cost overruns" as reward for incompetence nt

[TreasonousBastard]

6. "...the program depends on the contractors' ability to hold down costs."

What could anyone add to that?