Someone Tell Congress: Shrinking Rhymes with Sinking

Bloomberg is leaking details of the revised Navy shipbuilding plan starting in the FY09 Budget, which will be introduced by the President early next year with his annual budget. Speaking of "leaking" the new plan reduces the expected number of ships under the 313-ship plan by 11, all of which are Littoral Combat Ships, however there are increases as well. In other words, the 313-ship plan is dead.

The U.S. military plans to delay its purchase of 11 warships now under development by Lockheed Martin Corp. and General Dynamics Corp.

The Navy planned to buy 32 of the new Littoral Combat Ships over the next five years and now will buy only 21, according to an unpublished Nov. 19 directive from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England that spells out changes in the Pentagon's fiscal 2009-2013 plan. The savings from buying the vessels after 2013 could be as much as $5 billion, an analyst said.

The delay is the latest indication of disarray in the Navy's plan to develop and field the new class of low-cost vessels designed to operate close to shore. The Navy already canceled two of four vessels on contract with Lockheed and General Dynamics.

General Dynamics, the Navy's second-largest shipbuilder, and Lockheed, the world's biggest defense company by sales, are building competing versions of the new ship. Costs for developing the vessel have increased as much as 70 percent, Navy officials have said.

``If the Navy doesn't keep this program on track, it will never get to its goal'' of building the U.S. fleet to 313 vessels from 280 today, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia.

I read Loren Thompson regularly, but he is an industry guy with an industry agenda. His priorities have not been in sync with the Navy in years, and align much better with the fat cats of the industry. SECNAV is doing the right thing, the program has been rushed, blundered, and the results have been expensive. The LCS program can be slowed down, or if SECNAV wants to be real smart, build the proposed twenty something through 2013 and then pick up a 20 something production run of FFG(X)s, I know of a few European designs that might work as starting points.

Noteworthy, the comment in the Bloomberg article about "savings from buying the vessels after 2013 could be as much as $5 billion" come from Ronald O'Rourke. He may be right, but if I am to believe what Murtha has said on shipbuilding, it is more likely that $5 billion just became a pot of gold for Congress to play with for shipbuilding.

The new plan will build 2 Littoral Combat Ships in 2009 instead of the 6 planned, then three in 2010 and 2011 instead of the 6 originally planned for each year, then build 4 instead of the 6 originally planned in 2012, and finally build 6 Littoral Combat Ships in 2013 instead of the 5 currently planned. That adds up to 18 between 2009-2013, but the Bloomberg article says 21 because it is counting LCS-1 and LCS-2, and the one funded in FY08 although I am skeptical of that one because I have heard Congress didn't provide enough money to actually build 1 LCS. Either way, that comes to 21 of the 32.

The article says the plan allows for $2 billion in fiscal years 2009 through 2011 to allow the purchase in 2011 of two Virginia class submarines. That tends to indicate the construction of 2 SSNs per year will begin in 2011.

And finally, the DDG-1000

England approved adding $693 million through 2013 for the new Zumwalt class DDG-1000 destroyer to be built by Northrop and General Dynamics, bringing funding for its development to about $9.29 billion, the Navy's highest projected cost.

9.29 billion for 2 DDG-1000s. I'm Calling BMFS (bull mother figure it out). Will the gentleman who believes two "destroyers" at a cost higher than the expected cost of CVN-79 is worth it please stand up and identify yourself. I've got about 1000 words of advice for the Navy on this project, but "stop after two for the sake of the fleet" is a quick 9.