Washington pulse

November 2007

By Sandra I. Erwin, Grace Jean and Stew Magnuson

Ship Woes: Navy Should Have Known Better

For the past several months, the Navy has been scrambling to keep afloat its littoral combat ship program, which has come under political fire for its soaring costs. Originally estimated to run $220 million per ship, the latest calculations raise the LCS price tag to more than $500 million.

The Navy could have saved itself much grief if it had just been upfront about the costs when it began designing LCS five years ago, said a senior Navy official who is closely involved in the program. The original estimates were close to $400 million, not $220 million, but the Navy was so focused on proving that it could build an inexpensive warship that it allowed contractors to submit lowball estimates, the official said. “We convinced ourselves it was going to be $200 million. The process was budget driven, not cost driven.” The Navy told shipbuilders to come up with a $200 million ship, but it should have trusted its own estimates the first time around.

Marines and Navy at Odds Over Ship Priorities

Marine Corps officials for some time have grumbled about the Navy not buying enough amphibious transport ships. These vessels are essential for Marine deployments, officials contend.

Marines argue that they need more amphibious ships to respond to crises around the world and for humanitarian operations. Other ships in the Navy’s budget, such as attack submarines, are less urgently needed because they only are useful in major wars against naval powers.

“We need to think how we spend our money,” said Lt. Gen. James F. Amos, deputy Marine commandant for combat development and integration. Maybe the Navy ought to consider buying fewer submarines, he suggested. “You can probably contain the Chinese fleet and wreak havoc with just five or six attack subs.”

Turf Battles Over Drones Far From Over

The Army-Air Force flap over who should be in charge of unmanned aircraft appeared to have been settled by a Sept. memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

But the issue is far from resolved, and the services can be expected to continue squabbling. One major point of contention is England’s mandate to combine the Air Force Predator and the Army Sky Warrior into a single aircraft. That sounds good in theory, but it could take years to design a “general purpose vehicle” that meets both services’ needs. Further aggravating the situation is that both services are competing for production capacity. The manufacturer of both aircraft, General Atomics, is unlikely to have enough capacity to increase production so it can meet both services’ requirements, said Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne.

The merger of Predator and Warrior is “all about production capacity,” he said. “We are behind schedule on Predator. We need another hundred Predators.”

General Atomics disagrees. “Our current production capacity exceeds the number of aircraft we are currently under contract to produce,” said a spokesperson.

Industry experts point out that the company may be meeting current orders but that the Air Force is not placing more, because it doesn’t think the company can satisfy them.

Unmanned Aircraft: ‘A Ridiculous Situation’

The Pentagon’s decision to deny the Air Force the role of “executive agent” of unmanned aircraft programs was particularly upsetting to Gen. Ronald Keys, former chief of Air Combat Command. A directive from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England to create a “task force” to coordinate “critical unmanned air systems issues” is bad news for troops fighting wars, he said shortly before his retirement last month. The committee that England proposed would be best described as a “cul-de-sac down which good ideas are lured and then quietly strangled,” Keys said. “We are in a ridiculous situation. We have 1,000 UAVs down range, but the control systems are incompatible, the data systems are not compatible.” The information is “going to a single person, not across the battle space.”

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