By Geoff Fein
The Navy is altering its acquisition plan for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), dropping the proposed FY ’08 ship and adding three more ships in FY ’10, according to the service.
Additionally, the service will now push out plans to hold a fly-off between the two LCS designs that was planned for FY ’10.
“Due to congressional direction contained in the FY ’09 Defense Appropriations Act, the Navy intends to amend the current LCS seaframe construction solicitation to remove the FY ’08 ship and add three FY ’10 ships, procuring a total of five ships, two in FY ’09 and three in FY ’10,” Lt. Clayton Doss, a Navy spokesman, told Defense Daily yesterday.
“This amended solicitation will continue the limited competition between the two industry teams,” Doss added.
Earlier this week, President Bush signed the FY ’09 defense appropriations bill that included $1.02 billion for two LCS in FY ’09, but cut $337 million for the lone FY ’08 ship. Additionally, the bill lifted the cost cap on the two FY ’09 ships, Doss said.
The two FY ’09 ships will be awarded before January ’09, Doss said.
The Navy will hold a concurrent competition for quantity in FY ’10, Doss noted.
“The FY ’09 and FY ’10 ships will be designated as Flight 0+ and will include existing approved engineering changes along with improvements to construction or fabrication procedures,” Doss added.
In May 2008, a team led by Lockheed Martin [LMT] and a second team led by General Dynamics [GD] submitted bids to build the next three ships of the LCS class. The solicitation called for one ship in FY ’08 and two in FY ’09. Those would be the first ships built since the Navy terminated contracts for Lockheed Martin’s LCS-3 and General Dynamics’ LCS-4.
Those contracts were anticipated to be awarded in the mid to late August ’08 time frame.
However, according to sources, the $460 million congressional cost cap impacted the designs the two industry teams submitted. Additionally, both shipbuilders had to submit bids on LCS-5 through -7 that not only included the cost caps, but bound the companies to fixed-price contracts (Defense Daily, July 30).
Sources said both teams turned in bids that reflected what could be built under the cap. Those bids, according to sources, lacked gun and combat systems, among other things.
The Navy has also decided not to downselect to a single variant, or a combination of the two variants, in FY ’10, Doss said.
In March 2007, as the Navy and Lockheed Martin were negotiating a new fixed price incentive contract for LCS-3, Navy officials said the service would conduct a fly-off between the Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics designs to determine the best ship for the rest of the acquisition strategy. Under the new plan, the Navy could pick either of the two current designs or select a third company in FY ’10 to ultimately build LCS (Defense Daily, March 16, 2007).
“The acquisition strategy for FY ’11 and outyear ships is under development, although the Navy does not intend to downselect to one variant at this time,” Doss said yesterday.
In other LCS news, the Navy confirmed a Reuters report that Lockheed Martin’s LCS-1, Freedom, has showed a 4 percent weight gain.
According to a source familiar with ship weight issues, weight gain is fairly common in first-of-class ships.
“The lion’s share of the weight gain was due to concurrent design and build as a result of the accelerated LCS schedule,” the source said.
While the added weight did not result in any structural integrity problems for Freedom, the weight would have to be removed for Freedom to meet the Navy’s standards for stability in the event of significant battle damage or flooding, the source said.
The plan to take off the weight is already funded as part of the post delivery maintenance period, the source noted.
That work will take place at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, the source added.