Taylor Vexed By Reports of DDG-51 Acquisition Weighted Toward GD

Defense Daily, Oct 24, 2008

By Emelie Rutherford

Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) said he is "troubled" about reports the Navy has weighed granting more of the work on a potential new batch of DDG-51 destroyers to General Dynamics' [GD] Bath Iron Works (BIW) in Maine than to Northrop Grumman's [NOC] Ingalls shipyard in Mississippi.

"I find it troubling that the Navy is contemplating such a drastic action without consultation with Congress," Taylor, the chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee, wrote in a letter to Navy Secretary Donald Winter that the service received yesterday.

The Navy reportedly has looked into granting sole-source contracts to BIW for six of the eight destroyers it hopes to buy in the coming six years, leaving two of the combatants for the Ingalls shipyard in Taylor's district.

Taylor wrote to Winter that the two surface-combatant yards have been in competition for DDG-51 contracts for 20 years, and have "managed workload and workforce in that healthy competition to the benefit of the nation."

"Why would the Navy decide to discard that very successful acquisition model for a sole source option?" Taylor wrote, calling for the Navy to "fully justify the case to Congress and the public" in congressional hearings.

Navy spokesman Lt. Clayton Doss said yesterday that the Navy's Program Objective Memorandum 2010, the forthcoming six-year budget plan in which the destroyer plans will be detailed, is still under review by the Office of the Secretary Defense and won't be public until it is sent to Congress early next year.

"I can tell you we have not finalized the acquisition strategy for the DDG-51s proposed from FY '10 through FY '15," Doss said.

Taylor reminds Winter in his letter that it has been the position of the Seapower subcommittee, with the full committee's leaders' backing, "that the nation needs competition in shipbuilding acquisition programs." He wrote that to sustain that competition, it's in the government's interest to ensure the industrial base is sustained in multiple shipyards.

"I fail to see how a sole-source award to a single shipyard achieves that sustainment," the congressman writes.

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TICKER(S): General Dynamics' [GD]: Northrop Grumman's [NOC]: