Navy inspectors have documented numerous problems with construction of a next-generation vessel known as the littoral combat ship, or LCS, according to government records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Among the concerns singled out in more than 180 “corrective action reports” filed between late 2005 and this May: botched welding, employees doing work for which they were not qualified and potentially dangerous misapplication of sound-dampening material.

Both the Navy and the lead contractor, Virginia-based General Dynamics Corp., downplay the significance of the reports. Neither, however, would say how much the rework, as repairs are commonly known, has contributed to the ship’s ballooning price tag, now more than $100 million higher than originally expected.

“When you do work, issues are addressed, issues are corrected,” General Dynamics spokesman Kendell Pease said. “The bottom line is when the ship is completed it will be a quality ship.”

Now more than half complete, the aluminum-hulled vessel known as the Independence is under construction by Austal USA, a General Dynamics sub-contractor based in Mobile, Ala. The ship is one of two that the company is building on what is essentially a trial basis. The second is in a preliminary phase.

A rival team headed by Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp. is working on its own prototype. In 2010, the Navy intends to pick one of the two designs as the basis for billions of dollars worth of future orders. The service has said that it ultimately wants 55 of the ships, which are intended for submarine hunting and other operations in shallow coastal waters.

When the General Dynamics/Austal team won the Navy contract to build the Independence almost two years ago, the ship was supposed to cost $223 million, with delivery set for this October. Now, delivery won’t happen until next June, according to General Dynamics.

In addition, the cost will be at least 50 percent higher, Navy officials say, although they will not furnish a more precise number. In a separate forecast released last month, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegged the tab for the ship at $630 million, although that figure wraps in outfitting and other expenses not included in the Navy’s original projection.

The LCS is being built under a “cost-plus” contract, meaning that the General Dynamics team gets reimbursement for approved costs plus an agreed fee.

Allegations of substandard workmanship have tarred other Navy shipbuilding programs this year. In a June letter to Northrop Grumman Corp., Navy Secretary Donald Winter complained that the first of the company’s LPD-17 amphibious ships was delivered with “numerous outstanding deficiencies.” The first Lockheed Martin LCS has faced cost overruns and quality woes of its own, including a shipboard fire in April that caused about $3.5 million in damage.

The U.S. Navy awarded a $208 million contract option to a Bath Iron Works-led team for construction of a second LCS Ship in December.

Not long before, fear of unchecked cost growth led the Navy to cancel its contract for the second Lockheed ship.

Although Winter has proclaimed a “tough love” approach toward shipbuilders, Wheeler was unconvinced. “The entire Navy shipbuilding program is completely out of control,” Wheeler said in a recent interview. “They’re going through the motions, but I don’t perceive any of the motions to be a real solution.”

Many of the problems flagged in the corrective action reports appear to be minor. But at one point, the Navy faulted General Dynamics for “a lack of oversight” in ensuring that Austal was meeting contractually required production and quality standards.

In almost 60 instances, inspectors signaled that the Independence’s production schedule could be affected. On some occasions, the inspectors, who are officially known as “surveyors” and whose names were blanked out in the copies received by the Press-Register of Mobile, also expressed alarm at the potential financial impact.

In May of last year, for example, one inspector documented numerous flaws in pipe assemblies that Austal employees had failed to catch. When workers were asked about the technical standards that they were supposed to adhere to, “very few knew the correct requirements,” the report said.

The inspector urged Austal and General Dynamics to confront those failings quickly. “If allowed to progress, the potential for rework costs could grow exponentially until resolution of these issues has been found,” the report states.

Despite some improvements, problems in pipe fabrication persisted for months, the reports indicate. In a separate write-up late last summer, the Navy again singled out flawed assemblies as a cause for concern, noting that they “may have been fabricated early in (the) LCS program” and questioning how many were ending up on the ship. By September, the inspector reported that all repaired pipe had been “reinstalled” and was satisfactory.

In December, an inspector questioned Austal’s approach toward installation of the sound-absorption material. Instead of following the manufacturer’s spray-on requirements, the inspector wrote, workers were shaping the material into tiles, using cooking oil to ease the finished tiles out of their molds, and then attaching them to the underside of the ship’s main deck with flammable glue.

“Because of these violations,” the report continued, Austal “is exposing personnel and ship to possible fire/fume conditions and has added potential significant cost/rework to project.”

Austal later responded with a letter from the manufacturer saying that its practice was acceptable., but the Navy appears to have remained unconvinced. In January, a separate report complained that some tiles had cracked, while others were falling from the ceiling after installation. In an April notation to the earlier report, the Navy affirmed that the issue would be resolved “when all deficient material has been removed.”

The LCS is being built under a “cost-plus” contract, meaning that the General Dynamics team gets reimbursement for approved costs plus an agreed fee. When such contracts go over budget, taxpayers typically end up eating the bill, said Winslow Wheeler, a former congressional staffer now with the Center for Defense Information, a nonpartisan research group in the nation’s capital.

Allegations of substandard workmanship have tarred other Navy shipbuilding programs this year. In a June letter to Northrop Grumman Corp., Navy Secretary Donald Winter complained that the first of the company’s LPD-17 amphibious ships was delivered with “numerous outstanding deficiencies.” The first Lockheed Martin LCS has faced cost overruns and quality woes of its own, including a shipboard fire in April that caused about $3.5 million in damage. Not long before, fear of unchecked cost growth led the Navy to cancel its contract for the second Lockheed ship.

Although Winter has proclaimed a “tough love” approach toward shipbuilders, Wheeler was unconvinced. “The entire Navy shipbuilding program is completely out of control,” Wheeler said in a recent interview. “They’re going through the motions, but I don’t perceive any of the motions to be a real solution.”

PH END REILLY

(Sean Reilly can be contacted at sean.reilly(at)newhouse.com)

2007-08-02-SHIP-PROBLEMS

AP-NY-08-02-07 1713EDT