By Geoff Fein
The Navy is hoping to head into a Milestone review this spring for additional T-AKE cargo ships and the Mobile Landing Platform (MLP), both important vessels in the service’s sea basing fleet.
Currently, the Navy has been given permission from the Pentagon to obtain option prices on the current T-AKE contract, Allison Stiller, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy ships, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“We have option prices to go ahead and buy them,” she added. “We don’t have the approval yet to buy them.”
That approval won’t occur until the Navy holds discussions on its Maritime Preposition Force Future (MPF(F)) fleet with Office of the Secretary of Defense officials, Stiller said.
“We are in the process of working up an acquisition strategy for those T-AKEs as well as the MLP. So that discussion is ongoing and hopefully we will be going to a milestone in the spring,” she added. “At least I am hopeful because the MLP is a FY ’10 ship now. We’ve got to get this moving…and we are. We have been working with the Marine Corps and the Navy resource sponsor to move forward on those.”
The MPF(F) squadron still consists of 14 ships that includes: Two LHA-Rs (now called LHA-6), with Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) Command and Control (C2), one Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) ship with Aviation C2, three modified Large Medium Speed Roll on Roll off (LMSR) ships, three Combat Logistic Force (CLF)-T-AKE (Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo and ammunition) variant ships, and three Mobile Landing Platforms (MLP) (Defense Daily, April 25, 2006).
The Navy will first acquire the MLP and T-AKEs.
General Dynamics [GD] NASSCO shipyard in San Diego builds the T-AKE ships.
Discussions are also underway with senior Navy leadership on the Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) for the CG(X) cruiser.
“This was a long AoA, so there is going to be considerable discussions going forward,” Stiller said.
She didn’t have a timeline when the Navy might sign off on the AoA.
“This is an important decision that the Department is going to make,” she said.
Because of that, Stiller expects the Navy to set aside as much time as necessary to understand all the issues and make sure the service has a clear way ahead.
Although the lead ship in the new cruiser class is planned for FY ’11, Stiller said it’s possible the time needed to fully review the AoA could influence that ship’s schedule, but that will have to be part of the discussions the Navy is holding.
“I don’t know the answer to that yet. Right now, it is an FY ’11 ship,” she said.
The Navy is also working to alleviate any confusion over the acquisition strategy for its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).
The current plan has the Navy holding a competition for one ship in FY ’08 and for two in FY ’09. The competition will be limited to the two incumbent teams–one led by General Dynamics, the other led by Lockheed Martin [LMT], Stiller said.
Where the confusion might be coming from, she noted, is that the Navy is talking about the FY ’08 and ’09 ships as Flight 0 plus. What that really means is the Navy wants to buy the same ship types as it has bought before, but as the service learns things from the construction process and tests, those things would be incorporated onto the FY ’08 and ’09 hulls, Stiller said.
“It’s not [about adding] capability or redesigning anything,” she said. “We are not making any radical changes. That’s why the Flight 0 connotation is there.”
If something happens during LCS tests, the Navy wants to make sure they get that into the next buy of ships so that they don’t have to buy those changes later, Stiller added. “We’d like to buy that up front.”
As for the FY ’10 ships, the Navy plan has been to conduct a “fly-off” between the two designs: General Dynamics’ aluminum hull trimaran and Lockheed Martin’s semi planing monohull. Stiller said the Navy will be working through that plan this year.
Stiller said program officials will go back to John Young, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, Navy Secretary Donald Winter and, John Thackrah, the Navy’s weapons buyer, to see what needs to be done for the out-year ships.
“Right now we only have an approved [plan] for ’08 and ’09,” she said. “We still want to get the lead ships delivered and in the water and tested so we can inform our decision in ’10.”
Lockheed Martin is building the lead ship in the class, the USS Freedom (LCS-1), at Marinette Marine [MTW] in Wisconsin.
Stiller added that a recent issue with General Dynamics’ USS Independence (LCS-2) under construction at Austal USA in Mobile, Ala., didn’t turn out to be a major problem for the Navy.
In February, bowing was discovered in the transverse beams that support LCS-2’s flight deck, the Navy reported at the time (Defense Daily, Feb. 12).
“We’ve come through the analysis. We put a Navy technical team down there along with General Dynamics and Austal to understand it. There is some rework that has to be done…it’s in the 1,000-hour or less category,” Stiller said. “I don’t want to downplay it, but certainly there was concern [as to] what caused it.”
Austal and General Dynamics are working to make sure that doesn’t happen again, Stiller added. “But from a rework perspective, it didn’t turn out to be anything major for us.”
The incident that led to the bowing didn’t sound any alarm bells about aluminum hull surface combatants, she added.
“I would say in this particular case, it was the processes they were following to get the ship ready for launch. I don’t really think it’s [an issue] of an aluminum ship at all,” she explained.
In January, General Dynamics notified the Navy it was delaying the launch of Independence until April to complete work before the ship goes into the water. Independence was scheduled to launch in February.
Stiller said the bowing issue should not lead to any further delays.
“At this point we don’t believe so. At this point they are still on track, but certainly we will continue to monitor it,” she said. “But right now I think they are in good shape to make [it].”