U.S. Navy Wants Modular Ship Construction

Shipbuilders that want to obtain or retain U.S. Navy work should look to the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program for inspiration, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus says.

“You have to build with open architecture,” Mabus told a group of defense writers in Washington on April 27. “You have to build modular ships like the LCS, so you don’t have to change the hull when technology changes.”

To make that strategy successful, Mabus acknowledges, the Navy also has to change its shipbuilding ways. “We owe the industry more stable designs,” he says, adding the service can no longer design as it builds. “We owe them more mature technologies.”

When technology does change, the Navy must hold off until the next ship design or next block of ships instead of insisting the contractors shoehorn the enhancements on the vessels under construction, according to Mabus. Finally, he says, the Navy owes contractors transparency about the number of ships it wants and the money it plans to pay for them.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), U.S. Government Accountability Office and Congressional Research Service all have questioned the service’s shipbuilding plan.

The Navy, they say, cannot buy all the ships it says it needs in the upcoming decades with the funding that is likely to be available.

Further, CBO points out that while Navy officials continue to sell Congress on an overall fleet size of 313 in the early part of this century, the shipbuilding and buying plan really calls for a dozen or so more vessels — which could be even harder to afford. CBO counts support ships and other vessels that the Navy does not include in its 313 number.

And while 313 is the stated fleet goal, Mabus acknowledges the current plan should give the Navy about 325 ships by the 2020s.

As the Navy keeps a lid on technology insertions and provides better cost and ship-fleet figures to contractors, shipbuilders in turn owe the Navy a reduction in the cost and hours it takes to build the ships, Mabus says. And contractors need to up the ante they are willing to spend in their yards. “They should make the investments in infrastructure and the workforce so the hours will come down,” he says.