Posted on 04/17/2009 4:05:59 PM PDT by SandRat
WASHINGTON, April 17, 2009 – A recent agreement among the Defense Department, the Navy and shipbuilders will enable more efficient construction of the next-generation destroyer at one shipyard instead of two, a senior Defense Department official announced here today.
The “swap” agreement calls for three DDG-1000 destroyers to be built at the Bath Iron Works in Maine, John J. Young Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters at the Pentagon.
Work on the DDG-1000 destroyers previously was to be split between General Dynamics’ Bath Works and Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls Shipyard in Mississippi, Young said. As part of the new agreement, the Ingalls shipyard, which also builds some other Navy vessels, will gain a contract to build two more DDG-51 guided-missile destroyers.
The swap agreement, Young said, is the result of months of negotiations and is a reflection of “unprecedented efforts by the Navy and industry partners to operate in a business-like manner.” The agreement, he added, involved compromises by all parties “to enable efficient construction of naval vessels.”
The DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class vessel is a high-tech, guided-missile destroyer envisioned to eventually replace the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class of warships that were developed 30 years ago. Navy Adm. Arleigh Burke was a famous destroyer commander in the South Pacific during World War II.
Named for Navy Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr., who served as chief of naval operations in the early 1970s and died in January 2000, the DDG-1000 ships feature computer-aided design, modular construction, high-tech armaments and radar, as well as a unique, streamlined hull design.
The DDG-1000’s complicated, high-tech content, Young said, makes its design and construction an admittedly expensive endeavor. Cost of a first prototype, or lead, DDG-1000 ship is estimated to be around $3.2 billion, he said, with prices of follow-on vessels likely to decrease due to industrial economies of scale.
The design and development of the DDG-1000 “has gone well,” Young said, noting that the program has “gone to budget [and] gone on schedule.”
Initial plans were to build 32 of the DDG-1000-series vessels at the Bath and Ingalls shipyards. Today, the Defense Department’s proposed fiscal 2010 budget calls for building just three vessels.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today told members of the Naval War College in Newport R.I., that the United States will require a naval presence in the future.
“But we cannot allow more ships to go the way of the DDG-1000,” Gates told the Naval War College audience. The DDG-1000’s rising cost per ship, he noted, was among the reasons for buying reduced numbers.
Gates has recommended building more Arleigh Burke-class vessels and upgrading those now in the fleet. Sixty-four Arleigh Burkes have been built, not counting the two new ones slated for construction at the Ingalls shipyard.
Gates also deemed the arrangement for constructing DDG-1000s at the two shipyards as inefficient and too costly to taxpayers, Young said.
“I think it was important to him that we build these ships efficiently,” Young said of his understanding of Gates’ reasoning.
If the DDG-1000s couldn’t be efficiently produced, Gates “was potentially prepared, even in the face of clear political danger, to go back and possibly cancel two ships, and that would have cut jobs in both shipyards,” Young said.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today told members of the Naval War College in Newport R.I., that the United States will require a naval presence in the future.
It’s stupidly inefficient to build them in two yards, by two different companies.
Congress, I suppose, being played like a fiddle by contractors, at the expense of the taxpayer and the Navy, in as much as they will get less hulls at higher prices.
Typical.
Initial plans were to build 32 of the DDG-1000-series vessels at the Bath and Ingalls shipyards. Today, the Defense Department’s proposed fiscal 2010 budget calls for building just three vessels.
I guess the lessons of economy of scale learned in WW II.
are lost on the government of today.
Buy three at 3.2 billion or thirty at 2 billion each.
Lunacy. This with the Chinese and Russians building up
their navies. Insanity.
It’s stupidly inefficient to build them in two yards, by two different companies.
That’s what I thought, these are CNC parts that should be
cut in large numbers and shipped in yard, not to some other
state.
We would have a hard time winning World War Two , today.
For a $50.4 billion savings you'll note. Money that can go for more Burke's, a proven design.
It is an awesome ship...That costs $3.3 Billion Dollars a piece. - For a destroyer!
In current US dollars the Navy built a Gato Class submarine for 26 million and an F6F Hellcat fighter for $560,000. The USS Jimmy Carter cost $3.2 Billion and a F-18 SuperHornet costs $55 million. Those number are adjusted for inflation. I will give that our weapons systems today are highly advanced and dominate their enemies, and I will give that wartime production give you good economies of scale but we are looking at over a 100-fold increase in the cost of weapons systems. That is pork and waste beyond measure.
Might as well build them in Bath. Ain’t nuthin’ else going on there.
The Russians are having a nightmare, but predictable, time building anything. Any Russian of any skill, let alone running world class machine shop, manufacturing, power and computer system design and install has left the country.
Putin and the Navy can wish all they want, but knowledge and skill workers can go anywhere in the world.
With the collapse of oil, I don’t see the Russian Navy coming back.
As for China, they have to be decades away from a regional...win. Not to mention the return of allied fleet vis a vis, say the US, Japan, India. In which case, say 40 years.
But then again, reality disconnect didn’t stop Imperial Japan and Hitler from taking on the whole world or Saddam, with not even the French for friends from thinking he could get his ‘elite’(snicker) slave army to southern Saudi Arabia.
I hope those fine folks working at the naval shipyard in Maine have a backup plan.
They do, it’s called welfare, just like the rest of the state.
They've been doing this in the case of the current class of submarines, dividing construction between Newport News Shipbuilding in Norfolk and General Electric Boats in Groton. I worked on a system to coordinate the accounting between the two sets of financial systems, just one of the complications of doing things this way.
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