SAS12: Multi-year contract could yield 10th destroyer

SAS12: Multi-year contract could yield 10th destroyer

By Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 10:44 am
Posted in Naval

The Navy must work to find cost savings and keep programs on schedule if it  hopes to deliver a fleet that measures up with the new defense strategy that emphasizes the Navy and Marine Corps’ influence in the Pacific, the Navy’s top buyer said Wednesday.

Sean Stackley, Navy assistant secretary for Research, Development & Acquisition, told a breakfast crowd at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition the service must continue to invest in multi-year contracts to find those savings.

The Navy has requested a multi-year contract from 2013 to 2017 to buy nine Arleigh Burke class destroyers. Stackley said the multi-year contract would save an estimated $1.5 billion. Saving money means the Navy could build more ships.


“In addition to these savings, our ability to leverage programs … gives us a reasonable expectation that a tenth destroyer, a tenth destroyer, will be within reach,” Stackley said. “Congress is working closely with us to meet this objective. This would be a huge win for the Navy and industry.”

Stackley said 2014 will be an especially challenging year for ship building. The Budget Control Act has restricted the Navy to building one submarine and one destroyer that year.

The Navy wants to boost that number to two submarines and two destroyers in 2012, but it is imperative the service lock down a multi-year contract for the Virginia class submarine to provide that cost stability. Stackley, however, has received resistance from Congress when requesting additional funding for the Virginia class submarine.

Navy leaders chose to delay development of the Ohio class submarine, deferring $8.5 billion in funding. Stackley said it was important for the Navy to direct that $8.5 billion to other Navy ship building needs because of the budget cuts dictated in the Budget Control Act.

If the Navy wants to avoid losing funding for the next generation John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, it must learn from the mistakes it made in building the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.

“The cost of building CVN 78 is unacceptably high,” Stackley said.

He cautioned that the Navy will not “charge into” production of CVN-79, but instead take lessons learned from CVN-78 and make sure the building experience is not repeated with the John F. Kennedy carrier.

“We are convinced she will deliver on schedule,” Stackley said. “We can afford no other outcome.”

Congressmen Joe Courtney and Rob Wittman, members of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, introduced Stackley before his speech. With other Congressional staff members in attendance, the potential $1 trillion sequestration cuts hung over the discussion.

Courtney quipped that he had never seen such a breakfast crowd for an acquisition speech saying that the defense cuts and Budget Control Act passed by Congress might have something to do with it.

Those cuts have placed incredible pressure on the Pentagon to deliver Joint Strike Fighter, Stackley said.

“This year our formidable challenge of matching schedule and cost growth associated with next generation capabilities provided by the Joint Strike Fighter has been compounded by our fiscal realities,” Stackley said.

Join the Conversation

Geoffry Woods April 18th, 2012 at 12:13 pm

Wanna save money? Cancel LCS and the three Zumwalts and redirect all that “fabulous and necessary” new technology into the upcoming 10 Arleigh Burkes you want to built. Call them Flight IV, if that catches your fancy.
If you look back at the way the Navy used to procure ships, especially destroyers, technology was always phased in through successive classes and ships. They’d built four to eight DDs/DDGs/DLGs to a design, refine it, add new systems, build some more with the new stuff and so on.
I don’t know where this “cram it all into a fantastically expensive platform so we can only afford two of them” mentality came from, but I imagine it has more to do with contractors making money than any kind of strategic logic.

Bronco46 April 18th, 2012 at 12:33 pm

Well put! Both these classes need to be rethought! The cost of the Zumwalts is ridiculous; and calling them a destroyer is a stretch.

Lance April 18th, 2012 at 2:49 pm

Well we need more modern destroyers. LCS should be cancelled as should other services priorities in favor for more DDG-1000 and more upgrades for current destroyers.

Benjamin April 18th, 2012 at 3:04 pm

Keep with the DDG-1000 and limit the procurement of Flight III Arleigh Burkes. The Flight III’s are showing that are going to have cost and performance problems because of installing the AMDR radar. I would argue to keep Aegis on the Flight III’s but improve the rest of the ship. Maybe add an IR sensor to track missiles.
Place the AMDR first on a new type of cruiser that is designed to carry larger arrays then the Flight III’s and preferably have them be nuclear powered with minimal stealth features. I think stealth will pretty much be useless because of how powerful the radar is. Everything else on a new cruiser could come from the Flight III’s to reduce development costs and time.

Nicky April 18th, 2012 at 5:52 pm

If the US Navy wanted to save some serious cash, just Kill and pull the plug on the LCS and three Zumwalts. Use the money from the LCS sale to finance the cost of buying a Euro frigate design such as FREMM Frigate, Álvaro de Bazán class Frigate, De Zeven Provinciën class frigates, Valour class frigate, Fridtjof Nansen class Frigate or the Formidable class frigate

Geoffry Woods April 18th, 2012 at 6:14 pm

Lockheed would lean on Congress, and not a single foreign ship would be bought. I might be wrong, but I think the last time we bought a foreign warship for USN use was back in 1898…

We don’t need to shop elsewhere, anyway. Just have the Navy set out the requirements and the basic design, then send it to the shipyard to be built. That’s how they always did it up until the late 90s.

Roland April 19th, 2012 at 6:47 pm

We (USA) definitely need more Arleigh Burke class destroyers for defense. Say 1000 units. Each with multiple missile launchers like that of Slava Class Guided-Missile Cruiser. We need pack of fire power on any sea battle for defense to make sure we will win it. But we also need to look into frigates and corvettes as alternative and look onto Spain frigate and corvette designs like the Alvaro de Bazan and the De Zeven ProvIncein frigate.

Roland April 19th, 2012 at 6:58 pm

If we have 10 new orders of Arleigh Burke class destroyers, that mean we will have 62+10=72 Arleigh Burke class destroyers? Because we currently have 62 unit built and currently 61 is active.

JRT April 19th, 2012 at 7:38 pm

Back in September 2011, USN awarded BIW a $680M contract for construction of Rafael Peralta (DDG-115), 65th ship of the Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) class, and 3rd ship of the construction continuation program (post restart). The award also included a $665M option for BIW to build DDG-116 (66th ship in class). DDG-115 is scheduled to be delivered in 2016.

I do not think these A-B DDGs are included in the aforementioned request for a multi-year (2013–2017) contract for 9 or 10 additional ships.

Guest April 19th, 2012 at 8:12 pm

DDG-113 gets graded by INSURV December 2015, while DDG-114 has INSURV inspections in September 2016. Neither ship will conduct CSSQT until 2017 ! You’ve got a long wait before you’ll know how these next two restarts will perform !

exnuke April 20th, 2012 at 9:30 am

Actually, this originated in Congress. They didn’t want to have multiple classes of the same type of ship with differing capabilities nor their numerous supply chains. They claimed it cost to much. It also cost to much to up-grade the existing ships to the newer standards. That is until it was less expensive than replacing the old hulls.

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