Campaign Nonsense

If you believe this, you are an idiot.

Democratic members of Louisiana's congressional delegation believe they may have found a solution to keep the beleaguered Avondale shipyard near New Orleans in business.

"The Navy will make public tomorrow its plans to move up construction of double-hulled tankers from 2017 to 2014 and the guarantee that two LPD ships currently under construction at Avondale will be completed there," Sen. Mary Landrieu and Rep. Charlie Melancon said in a news release.

It goes on.

Landrieu and Melancon said in a joint letter the chance to bid on the tanker contract would make Avondale "more attractive to prospective new shipbuilding buyers." They acknowledged they didn't yet have all the answers.

"While today's announcement is not a silver bullet, it is a small step in the direction of making Avondale viable years into the future," they wrote.

The tankers will be built by NASSCO, so the idea that the competition will somehow make Avondale more attractive to buyers is a load of political nonsense. The only way Avondale becomes attractive to potential buyers or shipbuilding jobs in the Gulf coast region are saved is if Congress does one or more of the following things:

1) Expand the Coast Guard - build a bunch of new cutters not currently part of Deepwater. With the average age of cutters 65' and longer currently at 41 years, this is something Congress should be doing anyway.

2) Move up the LSD(X) replacement program and fully fund it. The Navy and Marines have already agreed to use the LPD-17 hull form as a baseline for the LSD(X). I personally think this would be a smart thing to do over the next 10 years, because it is not very likely the money for LSD(X) replacements will be there once we see how much the SSBN(X) replacements cost in the 2020s.

3) Congress commits to building the bimodal fleet. This means adding 10% to the shipbuilding budget, roughly $1.8 billion, for the construction of lots of vessels for low end warfare and peace maintenance of the global commons. One of the really nice side effects would be the economic boost regionally this would give because there would be multiple shipbuilding programs come about - including extra larger vessels for the MSC to support the small vessels. While the New Navy Fighting Machine is one option, I think it should be kept simple by building 6 $100 million corvettes, 2 armed JHSVs, and 2 T-AKEs every year for 10 years and make those 100 ships the foundation of your low end capability.

Without doing one of those three options, Avondale will live on shipbuilding welfare sucking the Congressional nipple for mothers milk - and will be a far cry from a stable shipyard capable of offering stable jobs.