WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Herb Kohl made another pitch for Marinette Marine's pending combat ship bid in a call to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus this afternoon.  Marinette Marine, part of a team with Lockheed Martin, is competing with 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.  In the most recent of a series of meetings on behalf of Marinette Marine, Kohl's office learned that the Navy is in the final stages of decision-making on the contract.  

"We have no doubt that the Navy would be well served by going with the Marinette team, which is doing outstanding work and would produce a first-rate fleet.  We're working to convey our strong conviction to the people who will be making the decisions about the contract," Kohl said.  

While the conversation was private, Kohl said he made the following points:  

·        Marinette Marine's first LCS is performing well in the Pacific in operations with other Navy ships.  And before that it did effective anti-drug work in the Gulf of Mexico.  

·        The second LCS being built by Marinette is running ahead of schedule and under budget.  

·        There is a major capital investment going on at the shipyard.  The parent company, Italian ship-builder Fincantieri, plans to make $100 million in changes to the yard – which will only make future construction less expensive and increase capacity.  

Kohl also pressed the case with Secretary Mabus during a March 13th Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee oversight hearing on the Navy's budget.  Kohl outlined the merits of Marinette Marine's long history of quality work and their substantial investments to upgrade the shipyard.  At the hearing, Kohl 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 was already deployed in the Caribbean to stem drug trade and was generating real time data that the Navy can use to calculate with great accuracy its costs to operate.  

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.   

Kohl has met several times with officials from Marinette Marine and Fincantieri, along with representatives from Lockheed Martin, this year to make a strong case to the Navy as officials near a decision on the shipbuilding contract.