Navy discloses LCS mine-sub cost spike - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Navy discloses LCS mine-sub cost spike

The total cost of a Navy remotely piloted submarine has grown so much that top service officials notified Congress this week that it could end up more than 85 percent above original estimates, the Navy said Friday.

Navy officials say the Remote Mine-hunting System, which includes an unmanned submarine, costs about $22.4 million per copy, a spike of 85.3 percent over the original estimate, said Navy spokesman Cmdr. Victor Chen.

The mini-sub, the Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle, by itself could cost $12.7 million per copy, or almost 52 percent more than the original estimate.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’s office told Congress about the cost increase on Thursday, Chen said, as required by a law that mandates the Pentagon notify lawmakers about such spikes. The rule, known as Nunn-McCurdy after the law that created it, means Congress must review the program in question, although very few Nunn-McCurdy breaches result in Congress or the Pentagon canceling projects.

Officials said the increase in cost for the RMS was caused by the Navy’s decision to delete the unmanned sub from the anti-submarine mission packages designed for littoral combat ships. The RMS will remain a part of the mine countermeasure mission modules. The revised goal of buying 54 such mini-subs, instead of 108, caused the unit costs to increase, Chen said.

Engineers also discovered the RMMV had reliability problems in tests, which forced the Navy to spend more to resolve them, Chen said. He declined to say more about the reliability problems — as in, how many hours the Navy required an sub to operate, as opposed to the number it actually did — because service officials are reviewing those requirements. The sub did meet eight of nine major goals.

The Navy initially experimented with fielding RMS gear aboard its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, six of which were modified with a door on their starboard sides to launch and recover the mine subs. But destroyers will no longer carry them, so the Navy’s review is to see what changes are needed to adapt the subs exclusively to LCS, Chen said.

Technicians are also determining what will take the place of the RMS in the LCS anti-submarine mission modules.