Building Lcs News

Mobile, Ala. shipbuilder Austal USA hosted a ceremony to celebrate the opening of its new facility which adds steel shipbuilding capability to the company’s well-established aluminum shipbuilding expertise.“We are so excited to see our plans to add steel to our capabilities come to fruition,” said Austal USA President Rusty Murdaugh. “The addition of steel capability is a game changer as it opens up our capability to support the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard and other customers with high-quality ships.

Following the drawdown at the end of the Cold War, the Navy finds itself trying to build up again. The expansion of Russian and Chinese naval power has changed the calculus. While there will always be a debate about the final number of ships to build, we can all agree on one thing: the Navy must get bigger and the demand signal is to start building now,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, in testimony before Congress regarding the sea service’s 2019 budget request.

Navy, Industry partner for research; sharing costs, risks, and rewards to reduce total ownership costs . America’s shipyards are fierce competitors, but they can also be close collaborators. The National Shipbuilding Research Program (NSRP) is a cooperative effort for American shipbuilders and the U.S. Navy, with the aim of improving efficiency and economy to reduce the cost of Navy ship construction and repair in American shipyards. According to the Navy’s NSRP program manager Connie Bowling of the Naval Sea Systems Command…

A Lockheed Martin-led industry team completed Builder's Sea Trials for Fort Worth, the nation's third littoral combat ship. The trials – a coordinated effort between the U.S. Navy and the Lockheed Martin team including Marinette Marine Corporation (MMC) – were conducted in the waters of Green Bay and Lake Michigan. They included operational testing of the vessel's propulsion, communications, navigation and mission systems, as well as all support systems. "Successful completion of Builder's Sea Trials means we are on track for the Navy's Acceptance Trials, putting us a big step closer to getting the Navy the ships it needs," said Joe North, vice president of littoral ship systems for Lockheed Martin's Mission Systems and Sensors business.

The U.S. Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship will be commissioned in ceremonies at , on Nov. 8, 2008. LCS 1, christened Freedom, is the first of a new class of high-speed, modular and reconfigurable focused-mission ships. LCS is designed to counter threats including mines, quiet diesel submarines and fast, armed surface craft in the littoral or coastal regions of the world. Built by Lockheed Martin at Marinette Marine of , , Freedom recently completed builder's trials on , where the ship's diesel and gas turbine propulsion plant was tested along with communications, navigation and mission systems. The Navy is building two different designs for LCS, each designed and built by different industry teams. The 378-ft. Freedom is a semi-planing monohull.

The Navy announced it is awarding a $197.6 million contract option to a team lead by Lockheed Martin for construction of the third Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). LCS 3 will be the second built by the Lockheed Martin team. The contract was announced on June 26, 2006. “This contract award is a testament to the strong resolve of both the Navy and industry to get these highly capable ships into the water as quickly as possible,” said Rear Adm. Charles Hamilton, the Navy’s Program Executive Officer for Ships. “LCS will introduce unprecedented speed, agility and flexibility into the littoral battlespace. The Lockheed Martin team will begin construction of LCS 3 in January 2007 at Bollinger Shipyards in Lockport, La., and ship delivery is planned for 2009.

The multi-billion contract to build a new family of Navy ships took one giant step last month with the awarding of development contracts to three industry teams. The fight to win the contract to design and build the family of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) is sure to be fierce, as the deal to build up to 60 of the vessels will help feed the corporate coffers of the successful team for decades to come. LCS is indicative of the Navy's transformation from a deepwater fleet leftover from the Cold War threat of only one other credible super power, to the reality of today's multi-faceted threat environment: small, hard to find and diverse groups around the globe.