The Secretary of the Navy on Tuesday confirmed the government is negotiating a multi-ship procurement of four amphibious ships, with an announcement expected within weeks.
“I think you’ll see something here very soon, and I mean that, I’m not going to get into the details of the negotiations with the actual shipyard. But in the case of the amphibious multi-year procurement…you know, we hope to be able to take a four-ship buy, basically with the LPDs and the one LHA that’s at play here, and be able to negotiate as low a price as we possibly can. And so I think you’ll see something come out of this, in a couple of weeks, hopefully, at the most,” Carlos Del Toro said Tuesday during an event at the Stimson Center.
(Image: Huntington Ingalls Industries)
HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., builds the large amphibious ships for the Navy, including Flight II San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships (LPDs) and America-class amphibious assault ships (LHAs).
“We look forward to working with Congress and our Customers as the budget cycle and multi-ship procurement discussions progress. We are committed to identifying the most efficient and effective way to meet the 31 amphibious warship requirement and look forward to leveraging our established production lines, skilled American shipbuilders and our supplier partners throughout the U.S.,” HII Ingalls Shipbuilding spokeswoman Kimberly Aguillard told Defense Daily in a statement in response to Del Toro’s discussion.
Del Toro’s statement today follows a discussion at a congressional panel last week of the amount of savings this kind of agreement could engender.
Several members of the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee on April 18 said they projected buying three LPDs and one LHA could save upward of $900 million over buying them separately (Defense Daily, April 19).
Congress has repeatedly provided the Navy the authority to conduct this kind of procurement.
During the hearing, Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, said HII told the government this multi-ship buy would save about $914 million. Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition (ASN-RDA) Nickolas Guertin confirmed savings were estimated at that scale and said they will ultimately put these plans within a future budget request submission to Congress.
In 2021, then-acting ASN-RDA Jay Stefany told a Senate committee the Navy and HII finished negotiations on a handshake agreement on what a multi-ship buy of four amphibious ships would look like, if the Navy went ahead with it that year (Defense Daily, June 9, 2021).
The Navy’s FY 2025 budget request documents include plans to procure the next three LPDs over the next five years at the rate the Navy and industry agree are optimal procurement rates, with one every two years (Defense Daily, March 11).
The Navy first indicated three LPDs were planned for the next few years in an August 2023 notice that said the service intended to solicit HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding for LPDS 33-35 (Defense Daily, Aug. 9, 2023).