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Brumby said:

The specs are effectively a San Antonio lite since the main one is too expensive for the numbers they are after. The USN will eventually find itself with a navy it can't afford to build as long as it is business as usual.

You can get a Mistral for half the cost of a targeted LXR and still achieve the mission parameters as outlined. A least it doesn't have to go to the Russians.

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Naval Today said:

The Boeing Co., Seattle, Washington, is being awarded a $295,6 million advance acquisition contract for the procurement of long-lead items for the manufacture and delivery of 12 Lot II Full Rate Production P-8A aircraft for the U.S. Navy (8) and the government of Australia (4).

Work will be performed in Seattle, Washington (82.6 percent); Baltimore, Maryland (6.2 percent); Greenlawn, New York (4.2 percent); the United Kingdom (3.5 percent); and North Amityville, New York (3.5 percent), and is expected to be completed in April 2018.

Fiscal 2014 advanced procurement aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $152,043,495 and foreign military sales funds in the amount of $55,800,000 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year.

This contract combines purchase for the U.S. Navy ($152,043,495; 51 percent) and the government of Australia ($143,599,789; 49 percent) under a cooperative agreement.

This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to FAR 6.302-1. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity.

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Jeff Head said:

The problem I have with the Mistral, and some of the other similar ship where nations have achieved some significant cost reductions is that they have done so by turning to significant commercial standards as opposed to MILSPEC, which means that their ability to withstand military style conditions, and articulately to take damage s seriously degraded.

A war vessel...a combat vessel...has to be able to go into those conditions so they cam stand those conditions with a far better hope of using damage control techniques and have a hope to survive and figh again.

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Aviation Week
Northrop Bomber Team Relieved Over California Legislation

AWIN First
Amy Butler
Fri, 2014-08-15 10:51
The California legislature has passed a last-minute measure to equally offer a tax incentive package to both contracting teams vying for the next-generation U.S. Air Force bomber program, overturning an earlier law that gave a $420 million discount to the Boeing/Lockheed Martin team alone.

The Air Force announced that its classified request for proposals (RFP) for the new, stealthy bomber was released July 10. Typically, proposals are due about 90 days from issuance of an RFP, though service spokesman Ed Gulick declined to say when they would be due. This program is shrouded in secrecy and officials have been selectively citing classification in providing scant details publicly. The service plans to buy 80-100 bombers, each costing less than $550 million to build, making the stakes high for contractors in this duel.

When Northrop Grumman realized Lockheed Martin’s lobbying arm had caught it flatfooted in securing tax credits for a bomber win, the company swung into panic mode. Had the legislature not passed a measure equally offering the tax credits to both teams, Northrop would have been at a near half-billion-dollar disadvantage in the bidding, possibly sounding a death knell for its hopes to continue its B-2 legacy with a new bomber project.

Lockheed Martin’s lobbyists quietly and successfully campaigned for California law AB 2389, offering a series of tax credits applicable only to a "subcontractor" providing jobs in the state for a special access program, clearly referring to the secretive bomber project. Lockheed Martin is the subcontractor to Boeing on the bomber bid. Northrop Grumman is proposing a design as a prime contractor, excluding it from the potential tax advantages.

The measure, passed Aug. 14 by the legislature, levels the playing field with the tax package by applying the benefits equally to prime and subcontractors and averting what could have been yet another Air Force procurement train wreck. The service has been on the defensive since its clumsy handling of the Combat Search and Rescue replacement helicopter and Boeing KC-135 replacement programs.

Northrop supporters say applying such large tax credits to one contractor and not another—both companies have production operations in Palmdale, California—would have been unfair. And though company officials would not say whether they were exploring legal options in the event the tax incentive package wasn’t applied to its own bid, it is highly likely the company could have pursued a remedy in court. Onlookers consider the bomber program a must-win for the company.

The Pentagon, however, had a different view of the issue, signaling that Northrop Grumman could have been left out in the cold without legislative help from Sacramento. "The fact that one company receives a tax break from the state in which it is situated is possibly a competitive advantage for that company, but it is not an unfair competitive advantage because it was not given to that company by the Air Force," says Maureen Schumann, a Pentagon spokeswoman. "It does not have to be equalized. The general rule is that an agency is not required to equalize the competitive advantage a firm might enjoy by virtue of its own particular circumstances so long as the advantage is not the result of preference or unfair action by the agency."

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Brumby said:

Traditionally, ship design has always been about trade offs. Whilst I don't disagree that survivability is an important condition, there is always the trade off factor in place.

I have not seen any capability specs of a LXR outlined although an AoA was meant to be released in July 2014. Some Generals have talked about the LXR needing to be independent deployable with all round capabilities of C2, aviation, medical and surface. This is a significant departure from the LSD that were meant to be replaced which is essentially a big sized truck operating at sea.

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Jeff Head said:

In any case, simply to rebuild these, as they sit, would certainly cost a billion dollars in today's money...if not more.

And since they are meant as a part of n ARG to go into combat, my contention about keeping them at MILSPEC stands either way.

Now, the US Navy is augmenting its amphib capability, and doing so very ingeniously with the new Mobile Landing Platforms and Mobile Offshore Bases, that are meant to logistically supply the ARGs but not meant to stand into combat ith them. These vessels are very capable for their intended purpose and are built to lesser standards, meaning less its, faster builds, etc. the US Navy is already engaged in this endeavor in an effort to get much more out of its 34 or 35 combat mph is it hour having to have 40 or 50 of them.

But for an actual part of an ARG, that is meant to go into combat, those commercial tandards simply will not do.

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