WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Herb Kohl today made a strong case for Marinette Marine’s shipbuilding bid with Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus at hearing in the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.  Marinette Marine, part of a team with Lockheed Martin, is competing with General Dynamics and Alabama-based Australian shipbuilder Austal for the contract to build a new class of small warship the Navy is developing, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).  The contract could mean thousands of new jobs and years of shipbuilding work for Marinette Marine and northeastern Wisconsin.  The Navy is expected to reach a decision on the contract in a matter of weeks.  Kohl serves on the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee which held its annual oversight hearing on the Navy’s budget this morning.

Austal and it allies claim that Marinette Marine’s LCS, which is made of steel, will be more expensive for the Navy to operate over the long term than its LCS, which is made of aluminum.  Austal claims that its design would be more cost effective in fuel and maintenance.

Kohl shot holes in Austal’s claims that the Marinette Marine LCS would cost the Navy more to operate.  He pointed out that Austal’s LCS has a radically new design which makes it difficult to estimate operating costs with certainty.  Kohl also emphasized that a Marinette Marine-built LCS is already deployed in the Caribbean to stem drug trade and is generating real time data that the Navy can use to calculate with great accuracy its costs to operate.

“Mr. Secretary, there are a lot of concerns being raised about the total ownership costs of the two competing LCS designs.  And that’s fair since we all want taxpayer dollars to be spent wisely,” Kohl said, but noted that, “One of the concerns as well has been the experimental nature of the Austal ship design and use of aluminum as a building material.  Aluminum is not traditional for Navy ships, it wears differently, and melts at lower temperatures.”

In addition to raising safety concerns, Kohl asked the Secretary, “Aren’t aluminum ships more expensive to fix because not all shipyards have welders, or enough welders, trained to work on aluminum?  Compared to steel construction, how much experience does the Navy have estimating the maintenance costs – over decades – of aluminum ships”

At a time when many Navy ships cost at least $1 billion each, the Navy has been trying to build a smaller, more flexible vessel that can work closer to shore.  Ultimately, the LCS will likely be less than half that price.  The Navy wants to buy 55 LCSs over the next decades.  The Navy needs the LCS in order to meet its goal of having 300 ships in the fleet so it can quickly protect U.S. interests around the world.