New Ships Mean New Bidding explains how some unusual companies are bidding on contracts to make a new brand of warship, the Littoral Combat Ship:
The Pentagon has been seeking bids for a new generation of small, fast-moving ships that can get far closer to enemy shorelines than the bulk of the boats that make up the U.S. Navy. And the competition for these vessels, known as Littoral Combat Ships, is turning out to be almost as revolutionary as the ships being proposed.For years, Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics Corp. have pretty much had a lock on the military-shipbuilding market, providing the Navy with aircraft carriers, missile-toting destroyers and submarines. But in an effort to attract new ideas and expand its supplier base, the Navy, starting in April, has sought proposals from ship makers better known for luxury cruisers, ferries and tug boats.
While these newcomers, such as Bollinger Shipyards Inc. and Norway’s Umoe Mandal don’t have much experience in the often-arcane world of Pentagon bidding, they are teaming up with nonshipbuilding defense contractors who do, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co., respectively.
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The LCS competitors have proposed some unconventional alternatives such as a large boat that would glide just above the water like a hydrofoil and what is known as a trimaran, essentially a catamaran with three hulls instead of two. No matter what their method of movement, though, all the vessels have to be capable of sailing at more than 50 knots and cost about $200 million each, not including special mission systems. By comparison, a naval destroyer costs about $1 billion and at full speed moves at about 30 knots.
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Rather than the hundreds needed to operate a destroyer, the Navy envisions each new vessel will have around two dozen sailors to operate it. It also will weigh a lot less — Raytheon’s submission comes in at 1,850 tons, for example, compared with a destroyer that weighs about 9,200 tons. And they will be capable of traveling more than 2,500 miles — even in rough seas — unlike earlier versions.