Despite Obama’s cutbacks, Navy says it still needs Alabama-built combat ships

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Wednesday, the U.S. Navy released more information to support its claim that it will require more Alabama-built littoral combat ships (LCS) despite proposed cuts from the Obama Administration. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has suggested narrowing the size of the fleet to only 40 ships and to down-select to one contractor, but the Navy insists on maintaining a 52 ship requirement.

“That number is still 52…I don’t see that number changing as we work through our next forces structure assessment,” said Vice Admiral Joseph Mulloy to the Senate Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee.

The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is a class of vessels used in operations close to shore (the littoral zone). They have been compared to corvettes, built to swiftly move in fights with other vessels, as well as to hunt and destroy enemy submarines and mines.

Many of them are being built by 4,000 Alabamians at Austal USA in Mobile.

Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley added “I would say that our requirement for 52 small surface combatants is unchanged.”

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“Our budget as we’ve built it for 2017 supported the 52 plan just as it was presented in 2016 to Congress, and then…in the budget process the final decision was made that we would truncate the program to 40,” Stackley said.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) noted the Navy’s five-year shipbuilding plan called for a reduction in ships built through fiscal 2021 to 38, down from 48 in last year’s plan. Stackley also noted the reduction in his written testimony, calling it a shift “most notably impacting our small surface combatants.”

Alabama’s U.S. senators have frequently defended the ship-building program from attempts by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain to scale it back.

“[It’s] one of the most dramatic changes in shipbuilding I’ve seen in a number of years here in the Congress,” Sessions said.

The LCS’s saving grace may be that Obama — and by default, Secretary Carter — is term limited and will be leaving office early next year.