Senior official calls DDG-1000 destroyer deal good for taxpayers
Previous plan to split construction of three DDG-1000s between two shipyards would have been "horribly inefficient," Defense acquisition chief says.
The Pentagon's lame-duck acquisition chief John Young is praising a recent agreement to build all three of the Navy's DDG-1000 destroyers at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works in Maine and to restart construction of the older model DDG-51 at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Ingalls shipyard in Mississippi as a better deal for the service and the taxpayer than splitting the work between the firms.
But he said there will be no real benefit from competition in those or future Navy shipbuilding programs because of Congress' requirement to keep both shipyards in business. In a session with reporters Friday, Young noted that although Defense Secretary Robert Gates has insisted on matching procurement programs to military requirements, the Navy has shown no strategic requirement for more DDG-51s than the 64 Arleigh Burke destroyers purchased. The original requirement called for 62. But Young would not say that the decision to buy more was based on the need to protect the shipbuilding industrial base, and suggested that reporters ask Navy officials why they want more.
Young, who remains on the job pending Senate confirmation of Ashton Carter, President Obama's choice for the top acquisition post, said the previous plan to split construction of the three DDG-1000s between the two yards would have been "horribly inefficient" because the Navy would have had to pay about $1 billion to each yard to produce the detailed construction plans and save little from improved production on later ships.
And restarting production of DDG-51s at both yards, which are finishing the last ships approved in 2005, also would have duplicated some expenses.
The deal between the Navy and the shipyards, which was revealed by House Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor, D-Miss., this month, will enable the Navy to get fixed-price contracts for the second and third DDG-1000s, instead of cost-plus contracts susceptible to big increases. He said the first DDG-1000 would cost about $3.2 billion and the next two would cost "quite a bit less."
The deal also "provides five or more years of stability of work load at two shipyards, a time both yards must use to stabilize their work force and improve their production practices," he said. About the DDG-51s, Young said he expected each would cost $2 billion. He said he saw little savings on the additional DDG-51s because Congress would continue to require the Navy to divide the work between Bath and Ingalls. "I think we're going to struggle to have competition in shipbuilding going forward," said Young, a longtime advocate of a "winner-take-all" approach.
Young, who was the Navy's acquisition official before taking the top defense acquisition job in 2007, said his consistent opposition to ending DDG-1000 production and building more DDG-51s was based on the fact that the Navy's analysis of requirements for the future missile-defense cruiser called for features like those in the DDG-1000 that could not be added to a DDG-51.
He also rejected as unrealistic the Government Accountability Office's insistence that all new weapon systems establish a high-level of technology maturity before starting construction, arguing that if he followed GAO's demand to stop production of the Joint Strike Fighter until all the testing was completed, the contractors would have to lay off workers who had learned how to build the jets.