The House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee on Wednesday unanimously passed an amendment to their mark of the 2017 defense authorization bill that would prohibit the Navy from downselecting to a single builder of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) that fiscal year.
The amendment, offered by Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), would prevent the Navy from using funds appropriated in fiscal 2017 to downselect to one vendor before the service transitions from the LCS to the frigate program.
“This program was just reviewed two years ago, and the Navy reaffirmed its commitment to 52 ships and two shipyards, and without a study, without anything to show that there should be a change in that, I think it would be premature,” he said. “It’s the last year in this administration, we’ll have a new president, perhaps a new secretary of defense in several months, so I think wisdom is for us to stay the course, maintain the two shipyards, and then if a new secretary of defense comes in and wants to actually do a study to show there’s some reason for us to downselect, then we can downselect at that time.”
The successful amendment marked the latest of the ways the seapower subcommittee has tried to block the Defense Department from moving out on changes to the LCS program imposed by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.
Last year, Carter sent a memo directing the Navy to truncate the LCS program from 52 to 40 ships and to choose one vendor by fiscal year 2019 to be its sole builder. Currently, Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Fincantieri Marrinette Marine in Wisconsin build the Freedom-class LCS, while Austal in Byrne’s homestate of Alabama builds the Independence class.
In hearings before the congressional appropriations and armed services committee, Navy officials repeated that their small surface requirement remained 52 ships, while Carter said Navy analysis showed it could make do with 40 (Defense Daily, Feb. 25)
The subcommittee’s National Defense Authorization mark, released Tuesday, revealed that HASC lawmakers were siding with the Navy. The mark proposed one additional LCS on top of the two vessels the service requested in the budget—in practice, returning the program to its three-per-year schedule in 2017 (Defense Daily, April 19). The purpose of the third ship was to ensure that both companies could continue building LCS until a downselect in 2019 to the frigate program, which will use either the Independence or Freedom-class as a basis.
The subcommittee also approved an amendment from Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif) that would direct the Coast Guard to provide its operational requirement document for a new polar icebreaker within 10 days after the NDAA is enacted.
Hunter called the Coast Guard acquisition process “nascent and naive” compared to that of the Navy.
“It takes them a long time and more money to build more simple ships,” he said.
The HASC tactical air and land forces subcommittee met earlier on Wednesday to mark up their portion of the NDAA, but members did not offer amendments.