I want to join Senator McCain in welcoming Director Gilmore, Secretary Stackley, Admiral Rowden and Mr. Francis to the Committee this morning to testify on various aspects of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program.   We are grateful to each of you for your service.       

The Navy’s fundamental architecture for the LCS program separates changes in the mission package from changes that would disrupt the ship design and ship construction.  In the past, when there were problems with developing the right combat capability on a ship, this almost inevitably caused problems in the construction program.  What the LCS architecture means is that changes inside the mission packages should not translate into changes to the ship construction schedule. 

However, since the mission packages and vessels are divorced from each other, we are now experiencing a new set of difficulties.  While the shipbuilders had problems with cost and schedule earlier in the program, that has not been the big issue since the Navy conducted the competition for fixed price contracts in 2010.  The shipbuilders and shipyard workers have been performing well under those contracts since then, so well in fact that we now have built, or are in the process of building, 26 of the LCS vessels, when not a single one of the three types of mission modules has passed full operational testing.  Since LCS combat capability largely resides in the mission packages, the Navy will have to operate LCS vessels for several more years in relatively benign circumstances, waiting on combat capability to complete testing. 

Chairman McCain and I wrote to Admiral Richardson, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), and Secretary Stackley about the LCS program in September in which we raised a number of concerns. 

We asked that the Navy consider reducing the planned operational availability of LCSs to a sustainable level, or see if the Navy can support normal deployment availability before expanding availability to 50% under a blue/gold crewing concept. 

The CNO responded that the Navy is going to continue to plan for 50% availability with the blue/gold crew concept because that’s what the Navy needs to support the Optimized Fleet Response Plan.  

I believe that some of the problems we are experiencing now with LCS vessels is because we got too far in front of ourselves by trying to deploy ships before they were ready to deploy, which in turn reduced testing resources and focus.   Saying that we will attain the 50% deployment availability goal for LCS because that is what we need to make the Optimized Fleet Response Plan achievable rings a little hollow with me.  It sounds a lot like previous assurances that there would be no problem in shifting from the original LCS blue/gold crewing concept to a “3-crews-for-every-two-ships” concept which has now been found wanting.   Now we are back to trying to make the blue/gold concept work. 

In our letter, the Chairman and I also asked that the Navy establish a land-based LCS propulsion and machinery control test site because the Navy is not providing sufficient in-house LCS engineering technical support for the LCS program.

The CNO responded that the Navy will consider a land-based propulsion and machinery control test site at some later date, but not now.

I am willing, for the moment, to let the Navy play out this string of trying to try to enhance support for the deployed LCS without such a facility, but I am concerned that LCS fleet material support will suffer without such a facility when such support is available for all other Navy combatants. 

The Chairman and I also asked that the Navy conduct a bottom-up review of the manpower requirements for each LCS to revalidate the quantity and quality of manpower requirements to determine if sufficient personnel are assigned to perform all watchstanding, warfighting, damage control, force protection, maintenance, and other duties.

The CNO responded that the Navy’s LCS review team had already assessed manpower requirements.

I would just say that I am skeptical that the LCS review team would have had sufficient time to do much more than decide how to allocate the 70 sailors for which berthing space would be available.   Such an allocation process would not constitute the manpower requirements review that I had in mind.    

Finally, the Chairman and I suggested that the Navy should to start planning now to procure and begin deliveries of a new small surface combatant as soon as possible in the 2020s. 

The CNO responded that the Navy will address the future small surface combatant at some later date, after the Navy has completed analysis of the future fleet requirements. 

I understand that CNO Richardson needs time to review overall future fleet requirements.  However, I believe that when the Navy begins a program for a follow-on small surface combatant, it should avoid repeating what we did with the LCS program, where we were in such a hurry to field the ship, we did not take the time to go through important parts of the acquisition process, such as deciding what our requirements are, deciding how much we are willing to pay to achieve those requirements, and programming ahead of time for the manpower and logistics programs that would be needed to support the program.  If the Navy waits too long, we may face similar urgency in the schedule. 

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.  I look forward to hearing the testimony of our witnesses today.