Marinette-built littoral ships may be pulled from service
Defense bill lowers need for speedy warships
USS Freedom, a warship commissioned in Milwaukee less than 12 years ago, could be pulled from service in 2021 as the U.S. Navy evaluates its fleet and budget in the face of changing global threats.
The military publication Defense News says it obtained a memo from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget outlining a Navy proposal to decommission Freedom, built in Marinette, and three other littoral combat ships next year.
The proposal was “part of an overall plan to shrink the size of the (Navy) force to deal with a flat budget. The ships all have between 12 and 17 years of planned hull life remaining,” Defense News said.
Navy and White House officials would not answer Milwaukee Journal Sentinel questions about the recent report that came as the Department of Defense has scaled back acquisitions of the small, speedy warships built in Marinette and Mobile, Alabama. The project has created thousands of jobs at the shipyards and their suppliers.
Originally, the Navy said it wanted more than 50 of the vessels — designed for battles in shallow, coastal waters — but the defense bill signed by President Donald Trump in December limits the number to 35, which is three more than the Navy has said it wants.
The decision to curtail the littoral combat ship program and perhaps decommission the first four vessels —
USS Freedom, Independence, Fort Worth and Coronado — comes as the United States faces increased risks of open-ocean warfare with China and Russia.
That’s not a fight the LCS was designed for, according to defense industry analysts.
“LCS became what it was intended to be, but meanwhile the world has changed,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a policy research group in Arlington, Virginia, that studies military matters.
“At the beginning of the last decade, when littoral combat ships were conceived, the U.S. was mainly focused on low-end threats such as terrorists and pirates. Today, the national defense strategy is about China and Russia. China, in particular, is building dozens of surface combatant ships and submarines,” Thompson said.
The Navy has set its sights on acquiring frigates, a bigger and more combatcapable warship. Fincantieri Marinette Marine, which has been building LCS vessels in Marinette for more than a decade, is competing with three shipbuilders in Alabama, Mississippi and Maine to win frigate orders that, over time, could easily top $10 billion.
The winner of that deal is expected to be announced this summer.
“This is a huge competition for the Marinette region. The plan now calls for one frigate to be awarded this year, and then immediately it goes to two ships a year after that,” said Richard Hunt, president of the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard and a retired Navy vice admiral.
Thursday, Marinette delivered its 10th littoral combat ship, the future USS St. Louis, to the Navy. LCS has come in two versions: the Freedom-class built in Marinette, and the Independence-class built at the Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Alabama.
Since its inception more than 15 years ago, the littoral program has been dogged by criticisms ranging from cost overruns to the ships lacking firepower and survivability for naval warfare.
Even as the designs evolved and improved, critics complained it wasn’t enough to warrant additional ships. In 2016, the Pentagon’s office of Operational Test and Evaluation said neither the Freedom nor Independence variants were suitable for high-intensity combat.
Originally, the $360 million warships were meant to have interchangeable mission modules that would allow them to fulfill various roles such as anti-submarine warfare, battling other ships and searching for underwater mines.
The Navy’s goal was to be able to swap out the modules in 72 hours, so the ships could quickly respond to changing threats in a combat environment. But that proved more difficult than expected, with years of delays in the design and implementation.
“It was an interesting idea that just didn’t work in the real world, given the money needed for the modules, the technical challenges and the skill sets needed for the crews,” said Dakota Wood, a retired Marine Corps officer and defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Critics said the first littoral combat ships, especially, were lacking in firepower and armor, making them vulnerable should they come up against larger enemy warships or have to fend off longrange missile attacks.
The first ships produced also had mechanical problems.
In December 2015, USS Milwaukee broke down at sea and had to be towed more than 40 miles to a Navy base near Norfolk, Virginia. Not long after, USS Fort Worth had a major mechanical failure in Singapore.
USS Freedom experienced setbacks including a failed gas turbine, problems with the jet-propulsion system and a leak in the port-shaft seal that caused flooding. The Navy spent millions of dollars, under a post-delivery agreement, to correct defects and complete the construction of USS Fort Worth.
The Navy dismissed the issues as ordinary for any new type of ship and continued to defend the need for small, speedy vessels capable of reaching places that bigger warships could not easily approach.
There’s still a place for LCS in the fleet, according to Thompson.
“In Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America, it will usually be more cost effective to defend America’s interests using fast and flexible warships, like the littoral combat ship, rather than sending high-end vessels,” he said.
But instead of continuing to upgrade and retrofit the first four ships in the fleet — Freedom and Forth Worth built in Marinette, and Independence and Coronado in Mobile — the Navy might be figuring it’s better to put that money toward the newer designs or the frigates.
Freedom and Fort Worth still have an important role in testing and integration of technologies for the rest of the LCS fleet and could be outfitted for deployment in the future, according to Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor for the ships built in Marinette.
“LCS is a ship that is designed to grow and evolve as technology changes,” the company said in a statement to the Journal Sentinel, adding that computers are receiving upgrades and naval strike missiles are being installed to meet changing global threats.
The LCS program in Marinette is scheduled to wind down in the next five years. But, in addition to the U.S. Navy ships, there’s work coming from the construction of four ships that Saudi Arabia recently ordered at a cost of nearly $2 billion.
“The Saudi LCS is well tailored to the Persian Gulf and the surrounding waters. Those ships will be a little more capable (than the U.S. version), but the more important point is that Saudi Arabia’s enemies don’t begin to have the kind of firepower that Russia or China has,” Thompson said.
Thousands of jobs are at stake with the Navy’s decision on which shipyard wins the frigates contract.
If Marinette gets it, there would be almost no gap between the LCS program, the Saudi ships and ramping up for frigate production.
“It would go back-to-back on, frankly, a pretty tight schedule,” Hunt said.
If Marinette doesn’t win the contract, there could be a gaping hole left in the shipyard’s employment.
“It would have an impact, very detrimental I think, on the workforce,” Hunt said.
There’s stiff competition for the frigate deal, valued at roughly $900 million per ship, from Austal USA, of Alabama; Huntington Ingalls, of Mississippi; and Bath Iron Works, of Maine. The winning contractor could have work lasting a decade or more, from engineering to final production.
The government might want more than one shipyard for the project.
While Navy shipbuilding is not supposed to be a “jobs program,” analysts say the military is wary of relying too heavily on any one contractor at the expense of others.
“Marinette has three things going for it,” Thompson said. “First, with the LCS, it has developed an affordable warship. Second, it has a very good workforce culture. Third, Trump needs Wisconsin in order to get reelected. That’s not a bad place to start in terms of competing for a frigate.”
LCS is one of the largest shipbuilding programs in the history of Marinette Marine, which has built ships in northeast Wisconsin since the 1940s. The company was acquired by Italian yachtmaker Fincantieri in 2009, and its proposed frigate design is based on an Italian warship — but with more than 95% American-made materials and components.
Fincantieri says it spent more than $70 million to upgrade the shipyard for the LCS program and says it’s ready to expand the facility again for the frigates.
“We are working with the assumption that we are going to win this,” Hunt said.
Hundreds of businesses across Wisconsin and Michigan have benefited from the LCS program, directly or indirectly, as it’s created an economic boom through supply contracts. Suppliers in more than 35 states have provided thousands of items for the warships, from bolts and fasteners to enormous watertight doors and engines.
Marinette’s shipyard, nearly always seeking welders, electricians and others in the skilled trades, has contracted with Northeast Wisconsin Technical College to provide specialized worker training.
“We have doubled the number of our instructors supporting their project, and we are running a second shift at our training center,” said Meridith Jaeger, the college’s dean of corporate training and economic development.
Driving through Marinette, a city of 11,000 people, the impact of the LCS program is evident in out-of-state license plates of workers who have come to the area from across the country.
“Housing is probably our biggest challenge, and of course parking is an issue if they add another thousand jobs,” said Mayor Steve Genisot.
Still, it’s a challenge nearly any community would savor.
“There’s not a day goes by that we aren’t working on it,” the mayor said.