Navy and Marine Corps officials recently told lawmakers a potential multi-ship procurement buy of three San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships and one
America-class amphibious assault ship could save upward of $900 million.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), said during an April 18 House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee hearing that he believed buying all four ships at once would save about $900 million.
“It seems like to me that that would be incentive itself to get this agreement executed as quickly as possible, if we’re looking at making sure we’re saving money and building the ships that we need as a Navy. So I would hope that you would keep that at the top of your list of priorities in executing this multi-ship year agreement,” he told Nickolas Guertin, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition (ASN-RDA).
Guertin acknowledged Congress has already provided the authority for the Navy to award the four-ship buy but did not indicate when the Navy might use it for amphibious ships.
“We’ve been doing very well with them in the places we’ve been able to use it. We want to make sure we preserve that for the places that it makes a good financial sense as well as good operational sense. We definitely have shown cost savings when we’ve done multi-year procurements, we actually don’t get into multi procurement unless we can show cost savings. So that’s a powerful tool, and we use it to the maximum extent possible.”
During the hearing, Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, said amphibious shipbuilder HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding told the service this kind of multi-ship buy would save about $914 million.
Ingalls shipbuilding builds the amphibious ships at its shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss.
Back in 2021, then-acting ASN-RDA Jay Stefany told a Senate panel that the Navy completed negotiations on a handshake agreement on what a multi-ship buy of four amphibious ships would look like, if the Navy went ahead with it amid previous congressional approval for the idea (Defense Daily, June 9, 2021).
“And so we have a handshake agreement on what that would look like if we were to actually enact it into a contract. And we packaged that up and we’re sending that to department leadership for decision and to get that in place before the authority that expires at the end of this year that you provided us,” Stefany said.
At the time, Stefany said the Pentagon indicated to the Navy they were deferring this kind of amphibious ship buy decision until after deciding on a new force structure review and the FY ‘23 budget request cycle.
Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), a member of HASC, also said his staff estimated this multi-ship buy would save $900 million to $1 billion.
Golden pressed Guertin again on why there is a hesitancy to start the multi-ship buy, as Congress already provided the authorization.
Guertin repeated the Navy wants to use this strategy often, admitted the savings would be around $900 million and implied the plan might come in a future budget submission.
“All told, it happens over the course of multiple years. And so we need to package that up and utilize those resources in complete transparency with Congress, where we have those savings, those benefits, and then we’ll have a dialogue about where the best places to apply them as we put our budget submission together and have that back and forth with you going forward,” he said.