Reporter's Notebook

The fresh-water Navy

MILWAUKEE — Although we missed the party,  Rob and I saw the remnants of yesterday’s commissioning ceremony from an overlook above Veterans Park a few hours ago. The white tent and folding chairs were still set up, although the Freedom’s pier, along with the rest of this city, are deserted on this cold, overcast November evening. The Freedom has been in Milwaukee for about a week, and according to the local news coverage, the warship has made quite a splash. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a piece about the ship’s novel technologies, and a local TV station had a nice round-up about the ship and a local crew member. Bringing a ship like the Freedom to a town without a big Navy presence is a way for the brass to get the Navy brand in front of an audience that might not normally think about it. Rear Adm. Vic Guillory, the director of Surface Warfare for the Navy Staff, even had a guest column about the Freedom in the Sheboygan Press.

LCS looks different here than it does from Washington. Naturally, Wisconsinites are more concerned about the potential economic benefits of additional Freedom-class ships than they are about, say, the Navy’s branch away from large, multi-mission surface combatants. If the Navy decides to go with the Lockheed Martin-monohull configuration for the bulk of its planned 55-ship LCS fleet, it would mean millions of dollars and thousand of jobs for the shipyard at Marinette, Wis. And it could mean that the Navy creates a new “fleet concentration area” 2,000 miles away from the ocean.

How likely is that?

For all the controversy that has attended the Freedom and its brother-by-another-mother, the Independence (that mother being General Dynamics), it appears the ships will continue to have a future in the Obama administration. A defense policy whitepaper from the Obama campaign cited LCS explicitly as a Rumsfeld-era “transformational” program Obama is willing to keep. Sort of:

 “Obama endorses the concept of the Littoral Combat Ship, with its modular design to meet changing needs.”
“However, the process to build the ship was flawed, and indicative of a broader failure in the Navy’s acquisition process. As part of its overall defense reforms, the Obama administration will prioritize fixing the naval acquisitions system. He will also work to maintain the shipbuilding design and industrial bases, and support increased [research and development] for naval forces.”

So the president-elect likes the concept for LCS, inherited from former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark, of the pickup truck-warship, swapping out gear to perform specialized missions. But he opposes the program as it has been executed so far, with its cost overruns and delays. Obama wasn’t the only presidential candidate to single out LCS as an example of what not to do. His Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, also dropped a dime on the Navy in a debate earlier this year. McCain’s proposal to fix LCS and other acquisitions problems was issuing only fixed-price contacts to Pentagon vendors, but few Beltway wise guys believe that would work. Obama hasn’t offered any details yet on how he’d back up his pledge to fix Navy shipbuilding, but when they appear, you can be sure we’ll have them in Navy Times.
One other thing: Obama’s stated support for Navy R&D will likely dovetail with requests from the Marine Corps for a new set of LCS accessories designed to take on Marine Corps missions. How long will it all take to come together? That’s what they’re wondering here and up in Marinette.