By Geoff Fein

After facing a bevy of negative survey results for the first two LPD-17-class ships, the Navy appears to be headed in the right direction, moving away from incomplete work and into serial production, a Navy official said.

Earlier this year, the USS New Orleans (LPD-18) came under fire for a poor showing by the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (InSurv). Last year, the USS San Antonio (LD-17), the lead ship of the new class of ambitious ships, suffered numerous issues with its InSurv report.

The Navy took delivery of both the San Antonio and the New Orleans with a significant amount of work left to complete.

About three years ago, the Navy was facing challenges with the construction schedule for LPD-17. Eventually, the Navy was forced to take delivery of the ship early because they had no money to complete the work, Allison Stiller, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy ships, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.

“With LPD-18, we knew we were going to be in a similar situation financially…that we were going to have to take delivery with a lot less incomplete,” she said, although not nearly to the extent of LPD-17.

As the Navy and Northrop Grumman [NOC] Ship Systems began work on the USS Mesa Verde (LPD-19), they began to believe that this ship, too, would have to be delivered incomplete.

But the combined effort of the shipyard and the Navy helped deliver a completed ship, she added.

LPD-19 wrapped up her shock trials, and the Navy is now compiling the date from the tests, Stiller added.

“We saw what we expected to see. There were no surprises from the shock trial,” she said.

The USS Green Bay (LPD-20) was just delivered, and the follow-on ships are looking good, Stiller noted.

Stiller acknowledges there were concerns about delivering finished LPDs. Until the Mesa Verde, Northrop Grumman had not delivered a completed LPD.

“Certainly there are still challenges in getting the ship delivered, but we are in serial production,” she said. “The yard is working hard at it. The ships are delivering. [We are] seeing reduced trial cards on every one of them. That’s the trend you want to see. It’s good news to get into serial production, no doubt about it.”

The Navy is also seeing progress in the effort to fix LHD-8, Stiller said.

Earlier this year, Northrop Grumman said that it would take $320 million to $360 million charge on the LHD-8 amphibious assault ship. The ship was slated to be delivered late this year but is now slated to be delivered in 2009. The ship was in the late stages of testing where program engineers were doing the final connections of the various electrical systems when problems began to arise. (Defense Daily, April 16).

“We have taken the time with them to scrub the schedule, and right now the contract date is a May delivery,” Stiller said. “They’ve challenged themselves to better that, both the Navy program office and Northrop Grumman. That would be wonderful. They are applying the resources they need to LHD-8 now.”

Stiller said the Navy is seeing good progress from week to week in accordance with the integrated master schedule Northrop Grumman put out. “I think they can make a May delivery. I’d like to see them deliver early, but May is what we all agreed to. They are certainly marching to that path.”

Stiller said she is planning to visit Northrop Grumman’s Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard in the coming month to see how much progress they have really made.

One of the issues with LHD-8 is that even though it is the eighth ship of the class, it is more like a lead ship, Stiller noted.

“We went to gas turbines, so it’s really more like a lead ship than a follow ship,” she said.

For LHA-6, the propulsion plant remains the same, but the ship won’t have a well deck. There will be other design changes on LHA-6 as well, she added.

“Even though it is what people call a modified repeat, there is going to be significant design change, so we are working through that as well, with Northrop Grumman on LHA-6, to get the design to a point to where we are all comfortable before they go into production.”

The Navy is also planning to go to the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) this week for the joint command ship replacement, or LCC-R, Stiller said.

“In the draft guidance right now it is to look at a LPD platform, or T-AKE, so we are going to have to go through that analysis,” she said.

Once the Navy is given the green light to proceed, they will begin an analysis of alternatives (AoA), Stiller explained.

“It will be about a six-month AoA. What we wanted to do was to leverage platforms that are in production. It makes sense to us, especially if you are only talking a two-ship class,” she said.

“We will go through that AoA, then go back for a milestone decision authority hopefully in six to eight months,” Stiller added. “When you refine the scope of the AoA, it tends to makes it a little bit easier to come through all the options…but you never know.”