Here are some highlights from the 2014 Navy League SeaAirSpace conference in National Harbor, Md., which wrapped up last week…
Navy floats ideas on Ohio-class cost cuts — Is the Navy getting closer to a solution for the Ohio-class replacement submarine’s astronomical price tag? We reported last week that Capt. William Brougham, the program manager, indicated that the Navy may use cross-class joint buys and multiyear contracts to help drive the cost of the vessel down. He said the service is looking at the feasibility of lumping materials needed for the lead ship in the class with a block buy of nine Virginia-class attack submarines. The Navy may also try to include the lead ship in the multi-year procurement contract, which typically begins with the second ship. However, even with these measures, there’s only so far the Navy can reduce the cost of the ship, and the thorny question of how to pay for the class — whatever the cost is — will continue to be a contentious issue in the coming years as Congress and the Pentagon wrangle over budgets.
E-2D multi-year deal nears — The Navy and Northrop Grumman are close to an agreement on a multi-year production contract for 25 E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes over five years, according to our report. The service has already bought 20 aircraft under low-rate initial production, and plans to buy 30 more to bring the total to 75 aircraft. The new contract would appear to cover all buys from fiscal 2015 through 2019 — actually a reduction in buys from the original Navy plan to buy at least 26 aircraft through fiscal 2018 (not including any aircraft to be purchased in 2019) as the program bowed to budget pressures and pushed buys to the right.
Putting the CH-53K through the ringer — Sikorsky revealed at the conference that it had successfully completed a series of initial structural strength tests of the CH-53K, which are part of a three-year program to validate the helicopter, we reported. The tests will push the aircraft to its 88,000-pound gross weight limit. In the meantime, a Sikorsky exec noted that the first flight aircraft is 95 percent complete. The news comes not long after the Navy unveiled a budget that pushed the start of buys of the aircraft to fiscal 2017, a one-year delay, due to fiscal realities.
Longbow supplants Griffin on LCS — Years after the demise of the Littoral Combat Ship’s Non-Line-of-Sight launch system slated for the surface warfare mission module, its planned successor — the Griffin missile — will probably be dumped in favor of the Army’s Longbow Hellfire missile, we reported. The LCS mission modules program manager said the Army has a stock of 10,000 missiles, which mean it would be a no-risk deal for the Navy — something the service is craving in an age of fiscal uncertainty. The program still plans on having a competition later this decade for a follow-on with much greater range, however.