By Geoff Fein
Most people will likely remember Navy Secretary Donald Winter’s tenure for his efforts to get new contracts for LCS, developing a new acquisition review process, or for leaning on industry to modernize their shipyards, but he hopes to be thought of as the secretary of the sailors and Marines
Winter, who came on board in the fall of 2005, leaves office today. Given the current state of Navy shipbuilding, some people might think he has mixed feelings about leaving with the service’s shipbuilding efforts up in the air. But Winter told Defense Daily in a recent interview that he came into the job with a realistic assessment of what he could do.
“I looked at it from a few perspectives. One was simply the fact that I was going to be in this job for what I thought was going to be exactly three years. I never thought it would ever be longer than that. And also recognize that I was coming in at the tail end of an administration, not the beginning of an administration,” he said. “I think I had realistic expectations. I never thought I was going to come in and restructure the fleet or get a major new program going. I didn’t have that type of agenda coming in here.”
But Winter did oversee an effort to reform the Navy’s acquisition process, which he sees as exposing the Navy and Marine Corps to a style of thinking and encouraging a questioning style of management.
“Get them to start thinking about what it was they were trying to achieve, how it was they were trying to achieve, and how they could take a look at some of these issues, in particular, how they relate to the industrial base,” he said.
He was trying to make sure that the services thought through what they wanted to buy, Winter noted.
“Are we able to separate that question from, ‘how do we want to buy it, who do we want to buy it from,’ and how that was all going to layout,” he added. “To what extent did we really want to be dependent on what the contractors brought to us, vice defining what we wanted–not just [for a] ship, but for the fleet of the future. Are we interested in buying a ship or are we interested in evolving the fleet? Are we interested in developing new capabilities? What does that really mean? How can we best go about doing that?”
Winter would like to believe he made some progress in that regard.
“I think that it helped in terms of addressing a number of questions. And it also has demonstrated to the Navy and Marine Corps they shouldn’t necessarily take everything as laid out to them…that they can perhaps benefit from that type of questioning attitude,” Winter said. “If I am able to do that for a few senior leaders and it benefits the department for a few more years to come, [that will be have been worthwhile].”
The gate review process is a good process, Winter said, but the concept behind it, asking questions up front, at the right levels, the right timing of the questions, is more important than any nuance of exactly how many control gates there are in the process and at what intervals those come into play.
“I think [we] got it pretty close when we laid it out. It will evolve a little bit. Again, getting people to recognize that they can and should ask questions and try to get things right, as opposed to being afraid of trying to stop a moving train if you will. It’s the right direction to be headed,” Winter said.
One acquisition challenge for Winter during his tenure has been procurement of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). In January 2007, the Navy publicly acknowledged for the first time that the cost to build both the Lockheed Martin [LMT]-led effort and one being built by a General Dynamics [GD] were at least double the original price. The Navy soon after began negotiating new contracts for the third and fourth LCS. In March ’07, Winter told reporters the Navy will require Lockheed Martin to agree to a fixed-price incentive contract before lifting a 90-day stop work order placed on the third ship (Defense Daily, March 16, 2007). One month later, the Navy canceled LCS-3.
In November 2007, a similar effort to get General Dynamics to negotiate a new contract led the Navy to terminate LCS-4 (Defense Daily, Nov. 2, 2007).
Currently, the Navy is in negotiations with both Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics for the next two LCS. Those negotiations started last year and resulted in a new revised solicitation midway through 2008. The Navy had hoped to award contracts for the two ships by the end of ’08.
Winter said the acquisition process for LCS is a fundamental issue of priorities.
“Is it important to get it right, up front or is it important to get it going? I maintain that especially when we are talking about a program like LCS, when we are talking about buying significant numbers of these ships, or CG(X), or any of the programs that are going to be bought in quantity…we need to figure it out up front,” he said. “There will always be those who accuse me, or my successor, whenever anyone else asks questions, [of] delaying the program. But I think the history of programs is very, very clear. The cost of making changes later on is huge compared to getting it right from the get go.
“We will always learn from our initial efforts, and if we are smart about [it] we will plan on working it so we can take those experiences and fit them in, so we are able to improve capabilities, product, and quality for successive items.”
But it is important to go ahead and make sure the Navy is doing the right thing up front, Winter added.
“That we’ve got everything laid out properly, that we’ve got the proper systems engineer, proper program manager structure and personnel in place. That we’ve taken the time to negotiate a contract that truly motivates the contractor the way we want him to be motivated and that we all understand the risks we are taking on,” he added.
The Navy plans to build 55 LCS. Those 55 ships will be a significant part of the Navy’s 313-ship fleet. And while the 313-ship fleet will primarily be made up of ships currently at sea, there are a number of new construction vessels that will make up that fleet.
But lawmakers and analysts have questioned whether the Navy will reach that number, a number that current Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead has called a floor.
Winter has said on several occasions it’s not the number of ships but how many can be deployed.
“I really don’t care how many ships there are on the register. I care about how many ships, on any given day, can get underway. I care about how many ships within a reasonable period of time could be prepared to get underway,” he said. “Just counting how many ships we have on the register just isn’t that significant.”
And capability matters as well, Winter added.
“It’s not just having things bigger, more capable, faster, whatever. It’s matching what is needed. It’s matching the fleet to what’s needed, and that nowadays means that we have to have a pretty decent sized portfolio of capabilities,” he said. “Again it’s not just a question of how many submarines, how many surface combatants. It gets down to how many of each type do we really want and, by the way, it’s not even the ships on the Navy register. How many riverine squadrons do we have? We have to address that issue throughout. You need to provide the best portfolio you can.”
On Thursday, in one of his last official acts, Winter named LCS-4 the USS Coronado. Earlier this month he had named LCS-3 the USS Fort Worth. The two ships will join the USS Freedom (LCS-1) and Independence (LCS-2).