New LCS prices to be revealed

[unhappycamper]

New LCS prices to be revealed
By Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Oct 7, 2009 5:22:36 EDT

Contract prices for the Navy’s two most recent Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) will be made public soon — perhaps before the end of October. “That’s my goal,” a key admiral told reporters Tuesday.

Rear Adm. Bill Landay, the Navy’s Program Executive Officer for Ships, said figuring the prices for the ships is a “convoluted process” because some of the materials used for the ships were purchased under earlier ship contracts that were then canceled.

Price has become a major factor in the LCS program, which aims to buy a total of 55 small, fast and modular warships. Two companies, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, are offering competing designs, and in 2010 the Navy plans to choose one of the designs as the basis for the class.

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Last spring, each company received an order to build a second ship — the Fort Worth (LCS 3) from Lockheed, and the Coronado (LCS 4) from GD. But the prices for those ships were kept secret — a restriction, Navy officials said, laid on by Pentagon rules governing the acquisition of ships from competing sources.

~snip~

A cheap price was one of the major attributes of the LCS program when the first construction contracts were awarded in 2004. Then, each ship was to cost $220 million, a relatively low cost for a U.S. Navy surface warship. But each of the first two ships suffered severe cost growth due to a variety of factors. Documents submitted with the 2010 Navy budget request put the current price tag for the Freedom at $637 million, while the still-incomplete Independence is listed at $704 million.


Rest of budget-busting pork-barrel article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/10/defense_lcs_costs_100709w/