Littoral Combat Ship Costs, Issues Rising Again
Feb 11, 2008 19:53 UTC
Back on July 24/07, in a statement to Congress, the Congressional Budget Office had this to say [PDF] about the Littoral Combat Ship program:
“The first FFG-7, including its combat systems, cost a total of about $650 million (in 2008 dollars) to build, or about $235 million per thousand tons. Applying that per-ton estimate to the LCS program suggests that the lead ships would cost about $575 million apiece, including the cost of one mission module (to make them comparable to the FFG-7)… Navy has not publicly released an estimate for the LCS program that incorporates the most recent cost growth… CBO estimates that with that growth included, the first two LCSs would cost about $630 million each, excluding mission modules but including outfitting, postdelivery, and various nonrecurring costs… Excluding mission modules, the 55 LCSs in the Navy’s plan would cost an average of $450 million each, CBO estimates.”
“Cost Growth Leads to Stop-Work on Team Lockheed LCS-3 Construction (updated)” and “US Navy Sinks LCS-4 Construction” chronicled the crash of the original program’s acquisition plan, and cancellation of both Flight 0 ships. Both contractor teams refused to commit to a new contract model that would let the Navy continue to force as many design changes as they liked, while holding contractor fees fixed and leaving the contractor financially responsible for cost overruns. Now Defense News reports that Navy FY 2009 budget documents released on Feb 4/08 give cost figures for the first 2 LCS ships: Team Lockheed’s LCS 1 Freedom, and the Austal/GD team’s trimaran LCS 2 Independence. Care to guess?
