By Carol Coultas,Business Writer

WASHINGTON – A provision intended to prevent the Pentagon from awarding all its next-generation destroyer work to one shipyard is included in the latest appropriation bill passed Wednesday by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The measure effectively requires the Pentagon to maintain its competition-based acquisition strategy by denying any federal money to change it.

At stake is the future workload for about 6,000 employees at Bath Iron Works.

The provision was written by U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She and the other Maine delegates have been working with their counterparts in Mississippi – home to Ingalls shipyard and BIW’s main rival – to maintain the shared-work arrangement. The two yards have been splitting work on Navy destroyers for more than 10 years, ensuring that both yards remain viable.

But in an effort to trim costs, the Navy recommended in February that work on the next class of destroyer – dubbed DD(X) – be consolidated at one yard. Navy officials estimated about $300 million per ship would be saved in production costs if the work were performed in one facility. Cost estimates for the DD(X) range from $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion per ship. The latest Navy budget requests funding for five of the destroyers.

Collins, who was in Lewiston last week to tour Falcon Shoe, said at the time that preserving the two yards was “vital” to the economies of Maine and Mississippi, as well as maintaining national security. Ingalls is the biggest private employer in Mississippi; BIW is Maine’s third largest private employer.

Collins said consolidating the work at one yard cripples the country’s ability to step up repairs or production of warships if necessary, and could make the surviving yard a terrorist target. It also removes competition from the bidding process, which has sparked innovation in past Navy projects, she said.

The provision was attached to the supplemental appropriations bill by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran of Mississippi. The bill provides the continued financing of the war in Iraq.

After clearing the Senate Appropriations Committee, the bill now goes to the full Senate for a vote.

Last month, the full Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution that expressed its opposition to the Department of Defense’s pursuing a one-shipyard acquisition strategy for the DD(X) destroyer contracts.