Repair bill for Navy's troubled ($1.8 billion dollar) San Antonio swells to $39M

[unhappycamper]

A Sea Hawk helicopter takes off from the amphibious transport dock ship San Antonio during counter-piracy operations in and around the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea in late January 2009.


Repair bill for Navy's troubled San Antonio swells to $39M
By Corinne Reilly
The Virginian-Pilot
© October 2, 2010

The latest round of repairs aboard the Norfolk-based amphibious ship San Antonio will run the Navy at least $39 million, far more than the $7 million officials originally estimated, the service said Friday.

The San Antonio, commissioned in 2005, has been under continuous repair since December.

The work initially was slated to wrap up by May. That's now been pushed back to spring 2011, when the ship is scheduled for sea trials, said Chris Johnson, a spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington.

"The reason we've lengthened that time is that we want to make sure we're finding all the root causes behind the problems before we send her back out to sea again," Johnson said. "We want to be sure we get this right."

In its short life, the $1.8 billion, 25,000-ton San Antonio has been called in for several major fixes, most significantly for engine problems. It's the first of five in its class to take to the sea. Serious defects also have been found with the others. The most recent delays were first reported by Navy Times.

[msongs]

1. umm the manufacturer should be paying for all these fixes, not taxpayers nt