Approving Purchases Of Littoral Combat Ships

Floor Speech

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Mr. TAYLOR. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, the Littoral Combat Ship Program started off as a very good idea. It was to be a single purpose, low-cost war ship that would help our Navy get to the stated goal of at least three Chiefs of Naval Operations of getting back to a 313-ship Navy.

With that said, the program has had, admittedly, a number of problems. First of which was, we were going to build it to commercial specifications. That was a mistake that Congress later corrected because this is a warship. It needed to be built to warship recommendations. You don't build disposable ships unless you want to have disposable crews, and our Nation will never settle for disposable crews.

Madam Speaker, having solved that problem, we found that the two vendors took a ship that was supposed to stand for LCS, Littoral Combat Ship, and it came late, costly, and subject to protest. And only because of the great work, in my opinion, of Under Secretary of Defense Sean Stackley of devising a strategy about a year ago that, in effect, read the riot act to both vendors and told them they were going to do a number of things.

No. 1 in order to submit their package to Congress, their proposal, they were going to submit with that a technical data package which meant that our Nation that has paid to develop these ships would have the specifications to those ships so that if either vendor continued to underperform, we could then go out and seek additional vendors to build this ship if we felt like our Nation was not getting the ship we deserved at the price we need to pay. Under Secretary Stackley came back with a proposal that said we would give to one vendor a contract for 10 ships and then take that technical data package, put it out on the street and give a second vendor a contract for five, a winner-take-all strategy between a monohull ship and a trihull ship and gave the vendors about 8 months to come up with a price.

Madam Speaker, one of the few pleasant surprises of this Congress was that both vendors came back with remarkably good prices when given that all-or-nothing proposal. And I want to compliment, give credit where it's due to Under Secretary Stackley. I also want to give credit where it's due to the Seapower Subcommittee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin), and the other gentleman from Missouri, Chairman Skelton, for allowing us to work with Under Secretary Stackley to get this program back under control.

Having said that, Madam Speaker, Under Secretary Stackley, once he looked at those prices--and I deeply regret the gentleman from Arizona was exactly right over in the other body when he said yesterday, What's the price? The public needs to know. Unfortunately, under the rules of our Nation, we are not allowed to divulge them just yet. Part of that reason is the fear that both vendors will drop their bids and come back later at higher prices.

So one of the limitations we are going to be working under today is the inability to give the exact price to Congress but to tell you that this ship that started out to be about a $220 million dollar ship grew to be about a $720 million ship. We have now got the price a heck of a lot closer to the first number than the last number which is where we needed to go all along.

Under Secretary Stackley is now asking, since both prices came back, and since there is a working ship of each variety out in the fleet right now that are performing well, he has asked for permission to buy both ships at the low price that the contractors have agreed to build them on. Having given that some thought, I think he is right. And also given the economic circumstances that the price of aluminum is down by about half since 3 or 4 years ago, the price of steel is down by about half from 3 or 4 years ago, that American vendors need work, that because they need work, they are supplying the kind of prices that our Nation should have been paying all along, that we can get the Navy the ships they need at a price our Nation can afford and build 20 ships for about $2 billion less than we had originally budgeted to build 19 ships. For all of these reasons, Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this program. I want to thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) for being a cosponsor to this measure.

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Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6494, a bill granting authority for the Secretary of the Navy to construct up to 20 Littoral Combat Ships, 10 each from the shipyards currently building the vessels. This is a change in already passed authorization to ``down-select'' to one of the two types of ships and build 19 of them over the next 5 years. This change in acquisition strategy is the result of lower than expected construction proposals from the two competing shipyards.

The LCS has a very troubled history, but the bill before us today is about the future, it is about how true competition between vendors has actually forced these contractors to return competitive bids that this Nation can afford. These are good ships. Up until now they have just been too expensive to build. Neither contractor, until faced with the prospect of being shut out of the program, had ever submitted a realistic proposal for affordable construction. They now have.

I would not be here today requesting this House pass this legislation if I was not highly confident that this is the right thing to do, and that this action will not come back to be an issue that my friend and colleague from Missouri will need to deal with in the next Congress as he takes the gavel of the Seapower subcommittee.

I will also be the first to admit that the timing for this new acquisition proposal from the Navy is flawed. Normally, this is not the kind of decision that we would consider at the end of a Congress. However, the Navy has bids in hand from the two contractors that will expire this month if not acted upon. Unfortunately, time is of the essence.

For my colleagues, the bottom line is this: The Navy has budgeted approximately $12 billion dollars for 19 ships over the next 5 years. This new strategy would buy 20 ships for approximately $9.8 billion dollars, a savings of over $2 billion from the budget, with the additional benefit of getting an extra ship. I believe this is a good deal and we should take it.

I would like to state for the record that this affordable strategy for the purchase of this class of ships would not have been possible without the tireless work of our Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, the Honorable Sean Stackley. He was the official responsible for the strategy which forced the contractors to offer affordable bids, at a firm fixed price, to build these ships. I congratulate him on the effort. If the Department of Defense could just get 100 Sean Stackleys working over there, we would have far fewer issues with cost overruns and program delays on weapons and equipment our warfighters need.

I urge my colleagues to agree to this resolution.

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I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. TAYLOR. Madam Speaker, first let me again thank future Chairman AKIN, former Chairman BARTLETT.

I believe it was CNO Vernon Clark who first proposed this program. The idea was to build a ship under the speed of light, an inexpensive ship. That obviously didn't happen, and we learned some very painful mistakes as a Congress, and I hope those of you who remain on the committee will remember those painful mistakes. We can make mistakes doing things too rapidly. We made a lot of mistakes in this program.

But the thing I want to most compliment the Armed Services Committee for, and particularly the Seapower Committee, was, when we recognized those mistakes, we admitted them and we went as far as to threaten to cancel the program if it wasn't corrected. I think those threats and, again, the phenomenal work of Secretary Stackley and Secretary Mabus in holding the vendors' feet to the fire, the economic circumstances of our Nation where people need work, the fact that the Navy needs the ships, that the frigates that these ships will replace are getting to the end of their useful life, and, again, the willingness of all the members on both sides of the aisle to hold these vendors accountable was the key element in turning this program around.

So, again, I want to thank future Chairman AKIN, former Chairman BARTLETT, Mr. Wittman, Mr. Kagen, Mr. Bonner, Mr. Stupak, Ms. Baldwin, and Mr. Conaway for being cosponsors of this measure.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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