Using the hull for the San Antonio-class (LPD-17) amphibious transport dock ship to replace the Navy’s older fleet of amphibious LSD landing dock ships remains a possibility but is “off the table” at the current price, the chief of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) said Thursday.
Vice Adm. William Hilarides told a small group of reporters that the LPD hull is too expensive to fit the role required for the landing dock ship mission, and that the design would have to be changed to lower costs if it were to be a viable option for the replacement LX(R) program.
“An LPD-17 variant that is built exactly like the current LPD-17 is off the table,” Hilarides said. “It’s unaffordable in the context of the ship we need to replace.”
The Navy is currently evaluating the requirements to inform an analysis of alternatives (AOA) to replace the Whidbey Island and Harpers Ferry LSD classes, but at a time of shrinking budgets affordability is playing a big role in the discussion. Hilarides said the Navy came through a set of requirements but decided to take a second look to align them more closely with cost.
“We kind of came though the requirements part and then said ‘wait a second, where’s the cost?’, and sent it back really to go bring cost forward with the technical requirements,” he said. He described the Navy’s internal deliberations on the LX(R) as “very robust” and “right at the balance between technical excellence and judiciousness.”
“What are the parts of the ship that you can’t afford to lose with moderate battle damage?” he said, citing an example of the discussion. Others examples include areas of the ship that may need to be hardened for survivability in case of a hit, such as the weapons storages areas, command and control structures or well decks needed to get Marines off and on the vessel, he said.
“We are in the mode of we are going to get the requirements right before we start design,” he said, adding that every proposed requirement is being scrutinized.
A San Antonio-class amphibious ship costs the Navy about $2 billion each. The service has long said it cannot spend that much for the LSD replacements and could look to other platforms in addition to the LPD hulls, such as a design based on the Navy’s Afloat Forward Staging Base ships, which cost around $500 million each.
Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] is the builder of the LPD class and has said that it could continue to lower the cost of the hulls through production efficiencies it has gained throughout the shipbuilding program, even as it nears its end. The company has already begun redesigning the ship to lower costs, such as removing command and control equipment or radar not needed for the LSD mission but expensive components on the San Antonio platform.
Lawmakers on the House and Senate armed services committees have proposed in the fiscal 2015 budget incremental funding to begin construction on a 12th LPD, a move that would keep the line open while the Navy contemplates a solution for the LX(R) program, and allow the service to acquire another San Antonio-class ship.
Hilarides said that if Congress ends up funding the 12th LPD, he will build the ship as legislatively mandated. But he cautioned that simply replacing the LSDs with current LPD-17 hulls would be too costly, possibly result in fewer ships and risk leaving the service short of the number of LSD replacements needed for the amphibious mission.
“What we’re trying to tell everyone is that doing that a bunch more will ultimately lead to a much smaller amphibious force than the nation needs,” Hilarides said.