Navy eyes bid request for ships

BATH

The Navy is preparing a request for proposals for the next round of multi-year contracts for Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

The only two shipyards allowed to compete for the bid are Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding of Mississippi. Traditionally, the two shipyards have split construction of the destroyers roughly evenly.

The Navy issued a pre-solicitation last week, which states that the Navy is seeking to procure 10 new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the Flight III design from 2018-22. The Navy would look to procure two ships per year for that time period. There is also a possibility that Congress could fund an additional five guided missile destroyers.

The DDG program has been a mainstay of work at BIW for years. BIW has been building Arleigh Burke-class destroyer nearly continuously since the late 1980s, when they built DDG 51, only stopping briefly when the Navy planned to replace the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer with the highly advanced guided missile Zumwalt-class destroyers, exclusively built at BIW. Due to higher costs, and the difficulties associated with incorporating new technologies and designs in the Zumwaltclass series, the Navy restarted the program in 2008. The first restarted Arleigh Burke-class destroyer officially joined the fleet this year.

All of the new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers will be Flight III. The new destroyer design includes “extensive changes to the ship’s hull, mechanical, and electrical systems to incorporate the SPY-6 radar and restore safety margins to the weight and stability limitations of the ship,” according to a 2017 U.S. Government Accountability Office report. The Flight III guided missile destroyers will be larger than their predecessors, partly to accommodate the larger radar.

The new Flight III design was 86 percent complete as of June, according to a Congressional Research Services report, but the Navy expects it to be complete before construction begins. If the design is not complete by then, some fear that costs could increase unexpectedly. At a June hearing, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, questioned whether the design would be ready in time.

“I probably have been to a dozen hearings, maybe more, about procurement and particularly about procurement problems. It always seems to come back to trying to build something while you’re designing it,” said King, referring to the over-budget F-35 aircraft. “I am worried … about the Flight III being ready for multi-year.

“This isn’t minor changes,” he added. “This is much more than the Flight IIA changes.”

Allison Stiller, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, stated that the Flight III destroyer being built by BIW as part of its last multi-year contract will help mitigate the risk involved with the coming multi-year procurement.

“I have a lot of high confidence that we have the (Flight III) design well in hand,” she said. “Both yards have been on schedule on design.”

Bath Iron Works declined to comment for this article.

nstrout@timesrecord.com