Lockheed Martin design or the one from General Dynamics?

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Workers toiled Thursday on the modular sections of steel and aluminum that will make up the next Lockheed Martin Littoral Combat Ship as it is being built at Marinette Marine Corp.

The vessel is a little more than 10 percent finished and is moving on schedule and on budget, according to officials from both companies. That comes a day after the Navy announced it would speed up making a decision on whether to go with the Lockheed Martin design or one from General Dynamics.

Both Marinette Marine Corp. and Lockheed are confident in their design and ability to produce the ships for the Navy on time and on budget, they said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

The news conference came a day after the Navy said it will select either Lockheed Martin Corp. or General Dynamics Corp., but not both, to build a fleet of small, speedy Littoral Combat Ships.

“It’s an opportunity and a risk at the same time,” said Joe North, Lockheed Martin’s director of the LCS program. “Our challenge and our goal is to go win it. It was always a tenet of the program that they would select one potentially and it’s just been accelerated.”

Marinette Marine Corp. is in the process of building another LCS (LCS-3), the Fort Worth, after delivering the Marinette-built LCS-1, USS Freedom, to the Navy late last year.

The Fort Worth is scheduled for delivery to the U.S. Navy in 2012.

Richard McCreary, Marinette Marine Corp’s president and chief executive officer, said the yard has already built and delivered one vessel to the Navy and the other is moving along smoothly. He said they have taken lessons from the construction of LCS-1 and applied them to LCS-3 to lower costs and streamline the construction process.

“We know exactly … what we are building and have a very good sense of cost,” he said. “We feel very confident that we can be very aggressive on the program. The question is which ship better fits the Navy’s mission.”

The LCS is made up of 44 modular assemblies that eventually form the ship. Crews at Marinette just finished installing a pair of gas-turbine engines in an assembled section of the hull this week. The work is hailed as one of the milestones of the construction process.

Marinette Marine could see as many as 24 or 25 ships built at its facility if the contract is approved. The total impact of the Navy’s decision this week including where the ships would be built isn’t yet clear and won’t be for several months while company officials await a new government request for proposal.

McCreary said the economic impact of each ship is about $450 million to the area, according to a survey they commissioned with Lockheed to catch the eye of area legislators.

Each ship adds about 1,500 jobs over the three years it takes to build and could raise employment at Marinette Marine to as high as 2,200 to 2,500 from the current figure of about 1,000, he said.

“Each one… has a major effect in the community,” McCreary said. “When we start talking about multiple ships, that’s huge.”

As part of its new strategy, Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley and Vice Admiral Barry McCullough said, only one defense contractor will be picked in fiscal 2010, not two as initially planned, due to rising costs.

Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, MD, and General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, VA, have been building separate and very different models of the ships.

The Navy said it canceled its previous competition to buy three ships in fiscal 2010 due to affordability concerns. In total, the Navy wants a fleet of 55. The program is also subject to a cost cap of $460 million on each new ship, starting in the new fiscal year.

Source: Marinette Marine Positioned for Large Navy Contract

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