Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background and Issues for Congress

The Littoral Combat Ship LCS is a relatively inexpensive Navy surface combatant equipped with modular plug-and-fight mission packages for countering mines, small boats, and dieselelectric submarines, particularly in littoral i.e., near-shore waters. Navy plans call for fielding a total force of 52 LCSs. Sixteen LCSs have been funded from FY2005 through FY2013. The Navy s proposed FY2014 budget requested 1,793.0 million for four more LCSs LCSs 17 through 20, or an average of about 448 million per ship. Two very different LCS designs are being built. One was developed by an industry team led by Lockheed the other was developed by an industry team that was led by General Dynamics. The Lockheed design is built at the Marinette Marine shipyard at Marinette, WI the General Dynamics design is built at the Austal USA shipyard at Mobile, AL. LCSs 1, 3, 5, and so on are Marinette Marine-built ships LCSs 2, 4, 6, and so on are Austal-built ships. The 20 LCSs procured or scheduled for procurement in FY2010-FY2015 LCSs 5 through 24 are being procured under a pair of 10-ship, fixed-price incentive FPI block buy contracts that the Navy awarded to Lockheed and Austal USA on December 29, 2010. The LCS program has become controversial due to past cost growth, design and construction issues with the lead ships built to each design, concerns over the ships ability to withstand battle damage, and concerns over whether the ships are sufficiently armed and would be able to perform their stated missions effectively. Some observers, citing one or more of these issues, have proposed truncating the LCS program to either 24 ships i.e., stopping procurement after procuring all the ships covered under the two block buy contracts or to some other number well short of 52. Other observers have proposed down selecting to a single LCS design i.e., continuing production of only one of the two designs after the 24th ship.