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Navy asserts LCS set for summer delivery

The Navy’s first Littoral Combat Ship remains on track for delivery this summer, service and shipbuilder officials said, belying a blogger’s claim that the ship will be a year late.

“We’re on track for trials beginning in May. We’re on track for a summer 2008 delivery,” said Diana Massing, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin.

“LCS 1 starts builder’s trials next month and is scheduled to deliver in August 2008,” declared Lt. Cmdr. John Schofield, a Navy spokesman.

The statements contradict a claim by Internet blogger Tim Colton that the Freedom (LCS 1) “will now probably not be delivered before the spring of 2009, if then and if ever.”

Colton referred to “a mass gathering of incompetent people” this week at Marinette, Wis., where the ship is under construction by Marinette Marine.

The ship, Colton said, suffers from “endless test failures, mostly involving this simple ship’s ludicrously complicated engineering plant.”

The Freedom has a new power plant layout featuring two Rolls-Royce MT30 gas turbines and two Fairbanks Morse Colt-Pielstick diesels. This is the first MT30 gas turbine installation for the Navy, which has previously relied on General Electric LM2500 gas turbines to power its warships.

Massing declined to comment on any specific issues with the power plant tests.

“We’re methodically testing this power plant because it is unique,” Massing said. “Because we’re still in a competition, I can’t discuss specific issues.”

Lockheed, she declared, remains “confident in our propulsion plant. We’re confident in our ship and excited to get out to trials in the spring.”

The Freedom is about 82 percent complete, Allison Stiller, the Navy’s top shipbuilding official, told the Senate on April 8. “She’ll go to builders’ trials here in May.”

General Dynamics, Lockheed’s competitor in the LCS program, also is moving ahead with its ship, the Independence (LCS 2). Stiller said the ship is about 68 percent complete, and Austal USA, the ship’s builder, is planning to put the Independence in the water next Saturday at its Mobile, Ala., shipyard. Delivery is expected in December, Stiller said.

The LCS program has suffered from severe cost overruns, concurrent design-and-build scheduling and overoptimistic cost estimates and scheduling. The Navy plans to compare the Freedom and Independence and choose a common design in 2010. A total of 55 LCS ships are planned.