The Navy admiral in charge of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program said he is confident costs are being controlled with future ships and structural glitches with initial vessels revealed earlier this year have been fully addressed.
Rear Adm. James Murdoch, the LCS’s program executive officer, told reporters yesterday that as weapons programs are being scrutinized during budget-cutting talks, the closely watched littoral shipbuilding effort he is steering has wrung out unnecessary costs.
“We’ve already taken that step…to get the ship pricing down as low as we can,” he said at the media roundtable at the Washington Navy Yard.
He said the past criticism of cost growth with the two-ship shipbuilding effort–which lead to the Navy to cancel the first vessels under contract with Lockheed Martin [LMT] and General Dynamics [GD]–was “well founded,” considering at first the ships were designed and built at the same time.
Now, he said, “what the Navy has to do first and foremost to maintain (the) confidence (of) Congress and with the taxpayer is to demonstrate that we can get better and better and better on the cost.”
The Navy plans to buy copies of each ship design from Austal USA, which partnered with General Dynamics in the initial stages of the program, and from a Lockheed Martin-Marinette Marine team.
Murdoch said the Navy is “doing well” with his goal is to have LCS-3 and LCS-4, the second ship from each contractor, delivered within budget.
He said he expects LCS-3, Lockheed Martin’s USS Fort Worth, delivered “on cost and hopefully maybe even a little ahead of schedule.” The ship is currently undergoing sea trials in the Great Lakes.
The Navy is making preparations to launch LCS-4, General Dynamics’ USS Coronado, over the next month or two, Murdoch said. It and LCS-3 are slated deliver over the next year, he added.
“Then we really get into the serial production of the LCS-5 and (LCS-)6 and the following ships, and the pricing that we obtained through competitive bids is very good,” he said. “So the end cost will be below the cost cap set by Congress.”
To “succeed in this type of austere fiscal environment,” Murdoch said, the Navy is focused on ensuring the shipbuilders “build the ships to the quality and the cost that they got under contract to do.”
The Navy is working to control costs with LCS by ensuring the designs don’t undergo unnecessary changes, he said.
“One of our strategies always, this is probably not particularly new, is to make sure that we don’t introduce any changes that we don’t absolutely have to for us, other than (from) a safety and operational standpoint,” he said.
He said the Navy is getting “very good pricing” for future ships, noting the recently awarded contracts for LCS-7 and LCS-8 came in well below the congressional cost cap for LCSs. He further noted the agreements, with the Lockeed Martin team and with Austal USA, are fixed-price-incentive contracts that limit the government’s liability for cost overruns.
The LCS program received attention in Congress over the summer, when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and six other senators wrote to the Pentagon about their concerns with corrosion on General Dynamics’ USS Independence (LCS-2) and hull cracking on Lockheed Martin’s USS Freedom (LCS-1). . The senators said they were concerned such problems could impact the strategy to buy block quantities of the ships. Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Rob Wittman (R-Va.) also asked government auditors to review the LCS program.
Murdoch said yesterday the Navy has addressed those problems and provided a “pretty comprehensive response” to questions related to them.
“I don’t think the corrosion nor the cracking issues pose any risk to the acquisition strategy,” he said.
The Navy knows how to address the corrosion issue and has made needed refinements to the ship design, he said. He said the changes did note create a significant cost or impact the ship’s capability.
“I think the designs are good,” he said. “I’m sure there are going to be refinements to them that we make elsewhere throughout these ships,” he added, noting improvements made to items such as air-conditioning condensers.
In terms of the lead ships, LCS-1 is undergoing post-delivery modifications that are going “relatively well,” Murdoch said. LCS-2 just completed a period of developmental testing.