Shipbuilding Programs

By the eighth year of the program the GAO had identified several serious problems. Developed under the pretense of a lower manned ship, the GOA consistently cited the manpower issue related to the ships operations and maintenance. The performance of the equipment had already led to several changes and cancellations to ships systems, and other issues identified by the GAO included cost, performance, and effectiveness in the ships intended primary mission role.

The GAO also consistently raised serious questions related to the ships survivability, and there were calls from various places for the Navy to review the programs acquisition strategy.

The acquisition strategy that awarded one ship of two different types to two different shipyards raised several questions, and within 5 years the program was already over budget 316%. New offboard systems that were yet to be operational had already informed the Navy that a stern redesign would be required in order for the ship to meet operational requirements, but by then the Navy had 26 ships under contract.

The GAO cited several performance problems. The biggest GAO complaint early on was the choice not to include a towed sonar array despite ASW being a primary mission capability. To compensate for what the GAO called inferior ASW capability, the Navy insisted that a new offboard platform would give the ship a stand off anti-submarine capability at a lower cost. Another problem cited by the GAO was that the ship was badly overweight, which meant the service life growth margins of the ship was 200% lower than normal. The GAO repeatedly voiced concerns that the ship would never reach its full service life due to the lack of growth margin. Because the ship was designed with a significantly smaller crew than previous ships, the GAO had serious concerns about the operation and maintenance of the ship. The ship also included a distinctly different propulsion system than other Navy ships of similar type, and the ship lacked accommodations to support additional personnel. Finally, the GAO had serious concerns about survivability. Survivability concerns ranged from the aluminum construction to the lack of armor to the absence of a shock damage testing plan to the absence of protection from chemical and biological agents. The GAO was extremely concerned about the "cheap kill," which the ship was suspected to be highly vulnerable to. A cheap kill occurs when a damaged system on the ship prevents the ship from completing its mission even though there is little or no physical damage to the ship. Congress raised the issue regarding the ships survivability many times, as did the Commander of the Second Fleet.

While the story might sound somewhat similar, by now some of you have likely figured out this is not a story about the Littoral Combat Ship program, rather it is my notes taken directly from the testimony of Jerome H. Stolarow, Director, Procurement and Systems Acquisition Division before the Subcommittee on Priorities and Economy in Government, Joint Economic Committee January 3, 1979. For those who would like to see the details of this testimony, his testimony is titled The Navy's FFG-7 Class Frigate Shipbuilding Program, and Other Ship Program Issues (PDF).

The early history of the Oliver Hazard Perry program carries with it a positive image that is completely out of step with reality. In the first decade of the program, FFG-7 was a dumpster fire that had serious people questioning whether the Navy would be capable of fielding a single Perry class able to perform the ships primary missions. Sound familiar?

In December of 1978 George Wilson of the Washington Post wrote a story about the Oliver Hazard Perry titled "Destroyer Built on Time, Under Budget" that was picked up in newspapers across the country. In the story, published only 13 months before the details above were discussed in Congressional testimony, Vice Adm. John Bulkeley (who was president of the navy's Board of Inpection and Survey at the time) personally conducted the Sea Trials of the Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG 7) and reportedly was so satisfied with the ship it returned 2 days early from its first trial. He was quoted in the Washington Times article as saying the ship was "magnificent" and "The Best Ship in 20 Years." It is impossible to imagine that Vice Adm. Joseph Bulkeley didn't know full well the problems with the Oliver Hazard Perry class at the time, including the need to redesign the stern of the ships, but in true NAVSEA fashion he said one thing while knowing another. Things haven't changed much...

The Washington Post story, like other newspaper articles about the Oliver Hazard Perry in the late 1970s, was a feel good story about a small shipbuilder in Maine struggling in the 1970s economy that had been able to deliver a quality product to the US Navy, and the shipbuilders reward for a quality product was a series of contracts to build more ships. These ship contracts would save the shipyard and the local economy in Bath. The problems were there, indeed they were very serious problems that directly influenced the ships ability to conduct it's primary mission, but that information never became widely disseminated to the general public because access to information at the time was limited. Despite the existence of problems, the FFG-7 program was built to 51 ships even though half of the ships had a very limited anti-submarine capability (without LAMPS III), all had gaps in radar coverage including the inability of the radar to determine the altitude of aircraft, the primary weapon was a limited range anti-air missile, and despite knowledge the FFG-7 required a stern redesign the Navy knew about as far back as 1976. In the end, half the ships were never capable of supporting the new LAMPS III helicopter. Other postponed or deleted equipment early in the program included a recovery assist securing and traversing (RAST) control station, the SQL-32, Nixie, a MK 36 Super RBOC, and an ASROC launcher - all of which were technologies that contributed to the ships primary mission.

The problems with the Oliver Hazard Perry program during that first decade were serious, as each and every problem directly impacted the primary mission role the ship was designed to perform. As we know in hindsight, the decision to use the reduced capability SQS-56 sonar instead of the new at the time SQS-53 potentially impacted the ship classes ability to detect mines, which could have been very useful to the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) in 1988. The cost saving decision to use the AN/SPS-49 2D radar rather than a 3D radar has been cited as a primary contributing factor for the inability of the USS Stark (FFG-31) to detect the maneuvering behavior of the Iraq F-1 Mirage prior to the attack in 1987. In hindsight one might ask why the Navy cut so many corners with the systems that directly contributed to the ships primary role, and how it was that the Navy was ever allowed to develop the Oliver Hazard Perry class when there were so many obvious problems with the ship during the early years of the program. The answer is simple, in a different information environment, the problems weren't as obvious as problems on ships are today.

The Navy, with a ship class that they knew required a redesign as early as 1976, built FFG-7 and fifty more just like it anyway - and to this very day the Oliver Hazard Perry class serves in several Navies worldwide including the US Navy conducting the roles and missions in low intensity environments the ship was originally designed for. Last week on July 29th the Navy retired USS Doyle (FFG 39) after completing over 27 years of service in the US Navy. Despite all of the early, very serious program and cost problems with the Oliver Hazard Perry class and despite the very serious criticism those who knew about the problems heaped onto the program, is anyone today ready to say the Navy made a mistake building the ships of the Oliver Hazard Perry class?

Not me, the early history of a shipbuilding program does not tell the story of a ship class.