The delivery of the fifth Littoral Combat Ship, USS Milwaukee (LCS-5), likely will be delayed about a month because of a mishap at the Marinette Marine Corp. shipyard, according to the program manager for one of the LCS prime contractors.
During builder’s trials, workers operated the vessel’s shafts at full capacity without putting lube oil on the components, said Joe North, vice president of littoral ships and systems for Lockheed Martin [LMT], which makes the Freedom-variant LCS. Marinette Marine is located in Marinette, Wis.
“We went into kind of a repair mode,” he said. “The industry team had to stand down for the last two days of trials, and we’re in the process of putting her back together now.”
Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors have since opened the shaft line to inspect components and replaced bearings as a good-faith measure, North said. He predicted that acceptance trials could kick off by the end of August or early September.
The issue “caused us to move acceptance trials at least a month to the right, which will push our delivery about a month to the right as well,” he said, adding that the company still plans to deliver the Milwaukee this fall ahead of its commissioning ceremony in November.
The companies are also conducting an analysis to find the root cause of the problem, he said. In this case, existing workplace procedures were “probably were not followed exactly,” so Lockheed Martin and Marinette will likely add new processes to keep workers from making similar mistakes in the future.
LCS-5 and LCS-7, the USS Detroit, are the first two ships manufactured in a 10-ship block buy, as well as the only two ships that were fabricated as Marinette modernized its shipyard. That made the vessels more challenging to produce, North said. When Italian shipbuilding company Fincantieri bought Marinette in 2008, it decided to invest about $100 million in the Wisconsin yard.
During the construction of Milwaukee and Detroit, “we couldn’t dismantle or take down certain systems or production lines within the yard until the new one was up and running and proved out its value,” he said.
The USS Little Rock (LCS-9) was the first ship that was entirely built in the new facilities, which allowed workers to fabricate the vessel more quickly, and thus more affordably, North added. The Little Rock will be christened and launched on July 18.
The 10 Freedom-class ships being produced under the fiscal year 2010 block buy are planned to cost an average of $368 million per hull. “We’re basically mapping to what we bid to make that average,” he said. “We’re coming down the learning curve as we planned.”
The deployment of the USS Freedom (LCS-1) and USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) to Singapore has helped the company generate international interest. More than 20 countries—mostly from Southeast Asia and the Middle East—have contacted the Navy for information about Lockheed’s LCS variant, but foreign sales remain elusive, North said.
Saudi Arabia is “more promising than others, maybe, but there’s nothing formal under contract,” he added.