Coach Says 'Go For Two!'

When Redskins coach Mike Shanahan decided to pull six-time Pro Bowl quarterback Donovan McNabb for backup Rex Grossman during the Lions game because coach Shanahan was supposedly concerned about his star quarterback's ability to run the two minute offense - I wonder if Coach Shanahan would have had more success had he put Admiral Roughead in the game instead of Rex Grossman.

Maybe he should have, because it looks like Admiral Roughead is quite comfortable running his version of the two-minute offense in Washington, DC.

The clock is ticking on the Navy’s request to Congress to change the rules so the service can buy both Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) designs. Contract offers from competitors Lockheed Martin and Austal USA expire on Dec. 14, and if lawmakers don’t agree to the change by then, the Navy — eager to award construction contracts and get the program into high gear — could miss an opportunity to move ahead with both LCS types.

“We’re going to have to act,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead told reporters Tuesday in Washington.

Asked what would happen if Congress does not act by the deadline, Roughead repeated his first answer.

“We’re going to have to act,” he said again. “We’ll carry through on the strategy and the authorization that we have.”

"What the hell is going on out there?" - Vince Lombardi

The post election LCS announcement has not gone as well as hoped by the Navy. It is unclear what expectations were, but the Navy has pitched this new twist to their LCS acquisition strategy to a lame duck Congress following a landslide election for the party out of power. This is the same lame duck Congress that somehow failed to pass a single one of the thirteen spending bills required to keep the government running. The reaction by those on Capital Hill to the Navy was basically, take a number, and the Navy drew #765.

This story by The Hill does a good job highlighting how Congress is busy serving #45.

“It is in a very short period of time,” said Rep. Todd Akin (Mo.), the leading Republican on the House Armed Services panel with jurisdiction over Navy acquisition and policies. Akin is expected to take the reins of that panel in January.

“It is a very turbulent airspace in the next few weeks, because everything is changing and turning over at the end of the year,” Akin said in an interview. “It is asking a lot politically to move something that is a fairly weighty decision in a fairly short period of time.”

These guys in the House are clever though. I really liked Gene Taylor, and I think I'm going to really like Todd Akin.

"Show Me the Money!" - Jerry Maguire

“I am asking for the hard numbers. … Show me the numbers,” Akin said.

“My job is to take a look at what is right for the Navy and the taxpayer.”

Akin is scheduled to meet with Stackley on Thursday to question the details of the new plan.

Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who leads the Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces panel, already met with Navy officials this week, but indicated he wanted more detail on the price.

“I want to see the price. If the price is right, then they made the right decision,” Taylor told The Hill. He said that he only received a range of numbers.

“Given the history of that program, whoever is in charge has to ensure the price is the delivered price,” said Taylor.

Now why would Congress want to see the hard numbers? Because like John Madden once said, if you say you have two quarterbacks, what you are really saying is that you don't have any. The House might be guessing that neither of the two contractor bids puts the per ship cost of the Littoral Combat Ship under the Procurement Cost Cap, and in that way the Navy can take the "buy both" route with plenty of political cover for Secretary Mabus to waive the cost cap if Congress tells the Navy to "Go For Two!"

According to Ronald O' Rourke (PDF), the FY2010 defense authorization act (H.R. 2647/P.L. 111-84 of October 28, 2024) adjusted the cost cap to $480 million per ship, excluded certain costs from being counted against the $480 million cap, included provisions for adjusting that figure over time to take inflation and other events into account, and permitted the Secretary of the Navy to waive the cost cap under certain conditions. Those conditions for the SECNAV are laid out in Section 121(d) as:

Section 121(d)(1) states that the Secretary of the Navy may waive the cost cap if:

(A) the Secretary provides supporting data and certifies in writing to the congressional defense committees that—

(i) the total amount obligated or expended for procurement of the vessel-

(I) is in the best interest of the United States; and
(II) is affordable, within the context of the annual naval vessel construction plan required by section 231 of title 10, United States Code; and

(ii) the total amount obligated or expended for procurement of at least one other vessel authorized by subsection (a) has been or is expected to be less than $480,000,000; and

(B) a period of not less than 30 days has expired following the date on which such certification and data are submitted to the congressional defense committees.

I do not have any idea what the numbers from each contractors bid will show, but I suspect that even when the Navy buys 10 - the final number is not below the cost cap. Since the contracts have already been submitted, I don't see the harm of exposing the numbers for all to see. In fact, showing the numbers of both contracts might be exactly what the Navy needs to do to win support for their plan to buy both. The public still has no idea how much LCS-3 and LCS-4 actually cost, and to be honest the real money issue here isn't the up front cost of purchasing Littoral Combat Ships; the real cost comes in the TOC for two entirely distinct classes.

I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. - Terry Bradshaw

Does the Navy want both ships? If so, why do they say they will settle on one ship design? Is the decision to buy both ships solely based on the competitive contract bids? What happened to the emphasis on TOC for Navy ships? The Navy has changed the acquisition strategy 3 times in 15 months, and is asking Congress for a Hail Mary in the last two minutes with one of the most troubled shipbuilding programs of the decade.

There are good reasons to build both, particularly with an ugly GAO protest looming should the Navy pick only one ship. What makes no sense to me is why the Navy couldn't get an additional 30-60 days on the bids from both industry partners with the stated intent of making the option for buying both realistically happen? December 14th isn't any more of a hard deadline than every other supposed deadline that the Navy punted with LCS over the last 15 months. Does anyone actually believe industry is going to reject the idea of giving the Navy a little more time to potentially guarantee a contract? Seriously doubt it.

I don't know what the right thing to do here is. Part of me says building both is a good thing, because in my mind the Littoral Combat Ship program is such a mess that it is smarter to build a dozen of both - or none of both - than it is to just build some of one. Given that everyone under the sun knows the Lockheed Martin version of the LCS will win the competition - and an almost equal certainty that Austal will successfully protest that decision - the other part of me thinks that choosing to build one LCS version is probably the same thing as building none in the context of a looming protest, at least for the rest of the current CNOs term.

The bottom line here is that the Navy is in a really bad place on LCS and is hoping Congress bails them out. I ultimately believe Congress will not bail them out before December 14th, and the Navy will ultimately not make a selection by December 14th either. If I was betting, I would bet that yet another twist is coming because the current situation makes no sense for all parties. The only good news here is that someone in the press will likely uncover what the price per LCS for each version is per the submitted bids.

If the LCS contract bid numbers are indeed over the cost cap as many suspect, it will only be the first in a series of bad shipbuilding budget news announcements by the Navy over the next few months. Folks, you would not believe the rumors going around regarding how much it is costing the Navy to restart DDG-51 - indeed I don't even believe most of the figures I have heard. It is noteworthy however that there is still no contract for the first DDG-51 restart, and in the context of the percentage of real cost growth - the DDG-1000 is the high profile shipbuilding program on schedule and budget in the US Navy right now.

That bad news of potentially serious shipbuilding cost increases with the DDG-51 restart that all signs suggest is looming over the FY2012 budget horizon matters quite a bit, because it has the potential to boomerang politically in the direction of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. Nothing like a high profile, big time Navy shipbuilding budget screw up to sink any prospect of Ray Mabus being the next Secretary of Defense as speculated by some news sources.

To salvage the situation (ie, reputation), Ray Mabus may be asked to take decisive action. If LCS contracts aren't under the Procurement Cost Cap and DDG-51 really is going to cost more to restart than just building out the 7 DDG-1000s would have cost (oh yes, that is a legit rumor being told by legit folks - although I remain skeptical), then will Ray Mabus pull a Shanahan and replace his starting quarterback (Roughead) with a backup from the bench?

Given that Coach Shanahan really did replace Donavan McNabb with Rex Grossman with less than 2 minutes on the clock down by only 6; at minimum I think we can all agree that in Washington, DC - anything is possible.