Pols Speaking Out Against LCS

The pols are talking ship. That is with a "p" not a "t", but its basically the same idea. First we get the latest ploy by Gene Taylor who remains on the warpath regarding the LCS. In all honesty, if he was proposing an alternative I would taken him seriously, but absent the alternative in the offering, it just doesn't feel like it did last year when he was kicking the DDG-1000 around. From GovExec:

House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor, D-Miss., wants to give the two contractors on the Littoral Combat Ship a "take it or leave it offer" when his panel marks up its portion of the fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill later this week.

Taylor, who has long been frustrated by the cost increases that have plagued the LCS program, said he will require that the ship's two makers, Lockheed Martin Corp. and General Dynamics Inc., adhere to the $460 million cost cap set by Congress in the fiscal 2008 authorization bill.

If the contractors are unable to meet that limit, Taylor wants to reopen the program to competition, he said in an interview Friday. The Navy had originally hoped each of the shallow-water vessels would cost just $220 million.

I got an idea, if Gene Taylor (D-Miss) is serious about the LCS as an issue, he should call Vern Clark into Congress and ask him where the $220 million figure came from. Oh, he isn't available? Then call Admiral Mullen. Until I see him doing even the slightest bit of investigating, I question whether he is even trying.

Not to be outdone, Sen. Mel Martinez does offer an alternative as he channels his inner Byron.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s request to fund eight new ships falls far short of what is needed to keep pace with reaching the Navy’s shipbuilding goal. I expect the Navy’s need to build more ships will be underscored when the Department of Defense releases its Quadrennial Defense Review next year.

In addition to procuring more ships, the Navy can also increase its capacity by retaining existing assets. A service-life extension program for our frigate-class ships would keep their unique capabilities in the fleet while the littoral combat ships enter the Navy. Such a program would ensure the maximum life of our existing ships and reduce the number of ships decommissioned each year. Additionally, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughead have indicated, littoral combat ships will play an increasingly larger role in future naval combat.

He thinks its bad now? Wait until he sees how many ships we can afford to build between FY20-FY40. The Navy has to make serious moves over the next 10 years just to get to the point they can average 6 ships annually over that period. Give me a few days and I'll show you.

This is what is wrong with the idea to SLEP the frigate. The platform is an operational budget nightmare. If the LCS was on schedule, the Navy would already be retiring the frigs, we simply cannot afford littoral ships that have 200 sailors on them, much less barely armed ships that no longer have anything in common with the term frigate. I am not saying the LCS is a frigate replacement, because it isn't, but then again I'm yet to see a good reason why the Navy needs a guided-missile frigate. A guided missile-frigate, including anything similar on a LCS hull, would represent a gold-plated solution right now to the littoral. Don't tell us to the Europeans, because the guided-missile frigate is the backbone of European Navy's, while a guided-missile frigate would not be, nor ever be, the backbone of the US Navy.

For me, a guided-missile frigate does not fit into a littoral strategy. We need unmanned systems in numbers the LCS can provide, likely much higher, and neither Gene Taylor nor Mel Martinez are proposing anything of the sort. If we cancel the LCS, what becomes the MIW evolution? I think it is fundamentally dishonest for politicians to complain the fleet is shrinking and blame the $500 million LCS, and fail to mention the $2.2 billion Burke. The problem in shipbuilding isn't the high cost of a fixed price contract LCS, it is the enormous cost and industrial emphasis of battleships. Don't think so? Wait until you see how few we will be able to afford to replace the CGs and DDG-51s we have today, the Navy needs to be ready to go 20 straight years between FY20-FY40 building an average of 6 ships annually (~120 ships), because that is exactly what is coming.