US Navy to revive LCS program

The US Navy is moving forward with construction of a new type of smaller, speedy warship after upending the program by canceling contracts last year, officials said.

The Navy’s formal requests for proposals issued to General Dynamics Corp.’s Bath Iron Works and Lockheed Martin Corp. call for construction of three Littoral combat ships (LCS) to be carried out over the next several years.

The Navy envisages a competition in which the winning bidder is awarded contracts for two of the ships while the other gets to build just one ship and ultimately hopes to build up to 55 LCSs. The ships are a key element of the Navy’s goal of increasing the size of its fleet to 313 ships. The program is described as the most significant Navy shipbuilding program over the last decade and it is the one thing that the Navy is doing that is directly responsive to how the threats have changed.

But the shipbuilding program has been plagued by cost overruns, and the Navy’s handling of the fast-tracked program has come under criticism. Two competing versions of the ship are under construction at shipyards in Wisconsin and Alabama but the Navy put the brakes on the program last year, canceling two additional ships, after costs of the original ships grew from early estimates of about $220 million to more than $300 million apiece.

The Navy now is operating under a congressional cost cap of $460 million per ship, a reflection that the original cost estimates for the ships were too low.

So far, production of the first two ships has fallen behind schedule, and it remains to be seen whether either design is capable of achieving the Navy’s goals.