PORTLAND – Congress stymied the Navy’s winner-takes-all proposal for the next-generation destroyer, so now the Navy has come up with alternative: Let each defense contractor build one of them and see who’s better and cheaper.
Assistant Navy Secretary John Young’s proposal is being met with a healthy dose of skepticism from Maine lawmakers who see it as a thinly veiled attempt to drive one of two Navy shipbuilders in Maine and Mississippi out of business.
Young proposed letting Maine’s Bath Iron Works and Mississippi’s Northrop Grumman Ingalls shipyard each build one of the stealthy new destroyers. If both are competitive, then the remainder of the warship construction could be divvied up, Young said. If one yard is clearly superior, then that shipyard would get the nod, leaving its competitor possibly to sink.
“At the end of the day you still have a winner-take-all strategy,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. “I continue to think it’s a big mistake from a national security perspective and from an industrial base concern to end up with only one shipyard.”
Lee Youngblood, spokesman for Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Wednesday that Lott had maintained throughout the process that “he would like to see the DD(X) program go forward with both shipyards being involved as originally planned.”
“The reason is that America cannot afford to lose the shipyards and the shipbuilders,” Youngblood said. “If you have anything like a winner-take-all competition, then one shipyard would exit the surface combatant business and be lost to that segment forever.”
The original proposal of awarding all ships to one shipyard was put on hold in April after an outcry from Congress.
In announcing the new proposal, Young told a roundtable discussion two weeks ago that he wanted to “put these two yards in a competitive death grip” to force them to become more competitive and to produce a design that’s more affordable for the Navy.
Critics, including lawmakers from Maine, Mississippi and other shipbuilding states, say it’s critical to keep both shipyards in operation to maintain the U.S. shipbuilding infrastructure for national security in the future. The two shipyards are the only ones in the nation that build cruisers and destroyers for the Navy.
But the Navy contends it could save $300 million per ship by letting one contractor instead of two build the new destroyers.
Loren Thompson from the Lexington Institute said the Navy is to blame for requesting a warship that’s too expensive to build. The lowest estimate he has seen to build the DD(X) is $2 billion, or twice the cost of current destroyers at today’s higher build levels.
The DD(X) was envisioned before the war on terrorism, and the Navy asked for a larger ship with greater capabilities than the current destroyers. Since then, the Navy has begun exploring the possibility of building smaller Littoral Combat Ships while proceeding with a large cruiser that could serve as a platform for missile defense.
“The problem is not really the shipyards. The problem is a Navy customer that can’t sort out what it’s trying to accomplish,” Thompson said.
Kendall Pease, spokesman for Bath’s parent company, General Dynamics, suggested that the Navy should slow down and take a deep breath, saying that DD(X) is an important program and that “determining the best acquisition approach may be lengthy and complex.”
“We believe that the final plan needs to be the result of a fair and thorough deliberative process,” he said in a statement from Falls Church, Va. “Time invested in the process now will pay returns throughout the life of the program.”
Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe said it’s important to preserve two shipyards because it doesn’t make sense to put all eggs in one basket from either a competitive perspective – or from a national security perspective.
“Keeping two working shipyards preserves our ability to build major surface combatants if unforeseen emergencies hamper production at one shipyard, or to increase production to counter threats we cannot foresee,” Snowe said.
Jay Korman, a naval analyst at DFI International, said the congressional delegations will have to be careful in how they respond.
The Navy has clearly stated that the current DD(X) strategy is too expensive and unworkable. A rejection of the Navy’s latest proposal could lead to a cancellation of the DD(X) program altogether, Korman said.
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