Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer on Wednesday defended the service’s decision to again break with industry and request just one littoral combat ship in its 2019 budget.
The request drew questions from House Appropriations Committee members who heard testimony from Spencer, the Marine Corps commandant and chief of naval operations as it begins to write its annual defense spending legislation and will have to fund any new littoral combat ship, or LCS, purchases.
The ships have long been criticized on Capitol Hill for their design and performance troubles, but the Navy has continued to buy LCS hulls in order to keep a Lockheed Martin shipyard in Wisconsin and Austal USA shipyard in Alabama humming so they can be ready to build the ship’s planned successor, a new Navy frigate. Lockheed builds the steel monohull Freedom class, and Austal builds the aluminum trimaran Independence class.
“Both LCS shipbuilders have publicly stated that they do not believe that [with] one ship in the Fiscal Year 2019 budget there’s enough work to sustain the industrial base and hot production lines going into the frigate competitions,” said Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., who sits on the appropriations committee.
Last year, the Navy requested a single littoral combat ship, but in an unusual move spurred by the White House it added another of the ship to its already-published budget plan one day after the budget request. After House and Senate wrangling, Congress eventually approved three ships for this year.
Spencer said the purchase of a single LCS is “granted, not optimal” for the shipyards.
“We believe that is a good sustaining rate for both yards as we move into what is going to be a very robust competition for the frigate,” he said.
The Navy secretary, a former Wall Street investor, has often said he sees his job as running the service like a business but he seemed to gently push back against the shipyards, saying the Navy should be judicious as it tries to increase the size of its fleet.
“Yes, we need to increase our capacity but we also need to understand what the industrial base can absorb and how we can work as partners with the industrial base while purchasing our assets at the most effective and efficient rate,” he told the committee.
The Navy request must also be weighed by the House and Senate armed services committees in the coming weeks and months as they write the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which will set the number of ships the service can purchase.
Members on the House committee, including those whose districts include the yards, were successful last year in pushing the Senate to accept an additional LCS purchase.
