By Geoff Fein

MOBILE, Ala.–One of the first things most people notice when coming aboard the USS Independence (LCS-2) is the space, according to an official from General Dynamics [GD], the ship’s prime contractor.

The area where the ship will store the missions packages that will enable LCS to perform a variety of different missions is vast, visitors to the ship say.

“It’s impressive space we have throughout the ship,” Cmdr. Curt Renshaw, commanding officer of the Independence‘s Blue crew, told reporters last week during a tour of the ship.

“It’s almost a cross between a frigate and an amphib,” he added.

The all-aluminum hull trimaran Independence, built by General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Austal USA, set sail for Norfolk, Va., Friday to begin her integration into the Navy fleet.

General Dynamics and Austal USA are competing against a team led by Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Marinette Marine for the Navy’s LCS program. The Navy is looking to build at least 55 LCS and the winner of this first competition will likely build the majority of the ships. The two industry teams are expected to respond to the Navy’s request for proposals by April 12. This spring or summer the Navy will select a single design and combat system for LCS.

In 2012, the Navy will hold another competition to find a second shipyard to build LCS based on the first design. In 2015, the winner of the first and second competitions will square off in a third competition to determine what shipyard/company will build the vast majority of LCS.

The Navy took delivery of Lockheed Martin’s semi-planing monohull USS Freedom (LCS-1) in November 2008, and recently deployed the ship to the Caribbean to see how it performs during operations.

The Navy took delivery of Independence in January and has not yet determined when or where she will deploy.

Both teams are building second versions of their LCS. General Dynamics and Austal USA are building the Coronado (LCS-4). Lockheed Martin and Marinette Marine are building the Fort Worth (LCS-3).

While both teams’ LCS have a lot of common requirements between the two variants, the ships look nothing alike.

General Dynamics and Austal’s LCS has a flight deck 35-feet off the water line, higher up than Lockheed Martin’s Freedom. Additionally, Independence has considerably more space in its mission bay than Freedom, Joe Rella, Austal USA president and chief operating officer, told reporters.

“The trimaran has40 percent greater mission bay capacity than Lockheed Martin,” he said.

Not only is the flight deck twice the size of one on a DDG-51, but it is twice the size of the flight deck on Freedom, Jim Baskerville, vice president General Dynamics LCS program, told reporters.

“Our mission bay combined with our flight deck is 60 percent of a football field. Volume is a warfighter’s friend,” he added. “It gives the warfighter of today and tomorrow the flexibility they need to put that next weapon system on.”

And with the large spaces on Independence, there is room for future growth, Baskerville said.

Total Ownership Cost is also less with the aluminum trimaran because the ship, above the water line, never needs painting, and because the trimaran is more fuel efficient than the competition, Baskerville noted.

Austal and General Dynamics have touted the trimaran’s numbers for fuel efficiency, which they have said are better than the semi-planing monohull’s data.

“By the Navy’s own numbers we are significantly more fuel efficient than our friends at Lockheed Martin,” Baskerville said.

A one-page consumption curve document, part of a larger Navy LCS Total Ownership Cost Baseline Estimate Documentation dated Aug. 25, 2009, stated General Dynamics’ LCS uses less fuel per hour during higher rates of speed than the Lockheed Martin’s vessel (Defense Daily, March 2).

Lockheed Martin has disputed the data offered up by General Dynamics and Austal.

At the speeds LCS is expected to spend nearly 90 percent of its time, the Lockheed Martin LCS design is highly fuel efficient due to its economical 16-cylinder diesel engines, Kimberly Martinez, a company spokeswoman, told Defense Daily Friday.

“Actual ship performance shows our design displays better fuel efficiency rates at these speeds. Our competitor’s analysis is simply based on the installed power differential between the two designs, which is one of several factors in fuel efficiency. Hull form is another critical factor and our semi-planing monohull is significantly more fuel efficient than a standard monohull,” she said. “As Secretary of the Navy Mr. Ray Mabus said in a recent hearing, ‘If you look also at the way these ships are to be used, at the profile of the speeds that they will be used at while they’re at sea, where the fuel savings diverge is only at the very upper end of the speed of these ships.'”

But last week both Austal USA and General Dynamics officials stood by their claims.

“It’s about one-third more efficient overall,” Baskerville said of Independence.

The difference in fuel efficiency, Baskerville said, is brought about by the fact Independence has two gas turbines and two diesels. “The diesels are able to power the ship up to about 22 knots,” he added. “The diesels are very fuel efficient.”

Gas turbines are wonderful engines and it’s because of the gas turbines Independence can go faster than 46 knots, Baskerville said.

“But you’d rather not use gas turbines at slow or part load. You want to use the diesels, and that gives us the fuel efficiency.”

And while Lockheed Martin’s Freedom also has two diesels and two gas turbines, he added, Baskerville pointed out Freedom is a different hull form.

“Our trimaran is significantly more efficient than a planing monohull,” he said.

Rella said to look at the difference in installed horsepower between the two ships. “Roughly speaking, [Lockheed Martin has] about 38 percent more installed horsepower on their ship than on ours.

“For the same max speeds, they need 38 percent more horsepower to do that. You can imagine the fuel savings at higher speeds,” Rella noted.

While there may be debate over the operating profile of LCS as being undefined, at some point the crew is going to make the ship go fast, Rella said.

“You can go fast to catch drug runners, I just heard that recently. You can go fast to catch pirates, go fast to bring supplies to earthquake victims in Haiti,” he said “You are going to burn fuel, and at those high speeds we are more fuel efficient to the curve. If you want to debate lower speeds, OK. If you want to go to the higher speeds, it’s not even comparable.”