The Navy’s decision to slow down its LCS frigate program is “reassuring,” the
said yesterday evening. Delaying contract award from 2019 to 2020 gives the service more time to do “due diligence” on the designs,
told reporters after a hearing on the
.
The extra time not only reduces the risk of mistakes that would require costly rework, Wittman went on: It also gives the Navy and the shipyards to fully explore options such as
— potentially including
. While there are other launchers, VLS accommodates not only the Navy’s largest missiles but also the widest variety of weapons, from anti-aircraft to
, from missile defense to land attack.
“It’s reassuring in the sense that we want to make sure that we go through the proper due diligence,” Wittman said of the delay. “(We need) a good discourse between Congress, the industry, and the Navy about what’s the requirement…. so I have no problem with taking a little bit of additional time.”
That way, Wittman went on, “when we go to award and
, design’s gonna be mature, we truly understand the requirements set, all the competitors understand what the needs are and how they can put out their proposals there, and we end up with the best decision.”
More Time, More Options
Just two weeks ago, the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s watchdog, issued an
that the Navy was
to upgrade the current,
to a frigate and
. Yesterday, the head of the LCS program,
, and the Navy’s director of surface warfare,
,
that the frigate contract would now be awarded in 2020 —
than the Navy had been shooting for.
“The specifics on that will come out when we come out with the budget, but we are now focused on a 2020 contract award for a future frigate,” Boxall confirmed to reporters after the hearing. “That’s what the work of the team is shooting for. That’s our goal.”
Does the additional time mean options like the
— originally ruled out by the task force that developed the frigate concept — are now back on the table?
“All that is kind of in play right now,” Boxall said. “All those are in the (process of) look at what we’d like to have vs. what we think we need vs. what we can afford.”
“You can drive yourself nuts on all the things you’d like to have,” Boxall warned. “We don’t want this to become … untenable.”
Boxall only mentioned VLS once during the hearing, specifically in the context of anti-ship weapons. The
to add an Over The Horizon missile to both the current LCS and the frigate envisions a relatively small weapon fired from a launcher mounted on the deck, but what about a VLS option?
“If we choose to go with a vertically launched system that could take any other longer-ranged missile of the future, that would be a
bonus if you will, it would increase the flexibility to adapt to future weapons, but from an anti-surface standpoint that is not one of the
focuses of this team at this time,” Boxall told the subcommittee. (Emphasis ours). “Most of the efforts we’re looking at right now is focused on the
aspects, (especially) improving the air defense capability.” (What he didn’t mention was that the Navy’s most powerful air defense missiles are all fired from, you guessed it, VLS).
That said, Boxall made clear that the Navy is now reexamining options initially ruled out for the frigate by the
back in 2014. Under orders from then-Secretary of Defense
, the
faced a tight timeline to come up with a more powerful ship that still met strict cost constraints. As a result, said Boxall, “it was… reactive in nature (and) we made some assumptions then that weren’t exactly right.”
The new Frigate Requirement Evaluation Team, by contrast, is operating on a less cramped schedule and without a predetermined cap on what its proposed ship should cost. That allows it to consider a greater breadth of options in greater depth.
In particular, Boxall said, the 2014 task force didn’t get as much information as desired on alternative foreign designs, something the new effort hopes to correct. The task force also didn’t consider the sensor, electronic warfare, and networking requirements of the Navy’s
concept, which was only rolled out in January 2015.
...
