Austal Submits Final Multi-Vessel LCS Proposal to US Navy

Austal has sub­mit­ted its best and final offer to the US Navy today for a 10-ves­sel Lit­toral Com­bat Ship (LCS) con­tract.

Lit­toral Com­bat Ship (LCS) Source: Austal Click to enlarge

If Austal is award­ed the con­tract, 2,000 more jobs will be cre­at­ed at the company’s Mobile, Alaba­ma ship­yard, adding to Austal’s cur­rent US work­force of 1,500.

The LCS pro­gram began in 2002 with the US Navy’s pur­suit of a new class of up to 55 ships for mul­ti-mis­sion sup­port. The LCS is envi­sioned to be a ver­sa­tile, net­worked, agile, sur­face com­bat­ant capa­ble of defeat­ing anti-access and asym­met­ric threats in the littorals. 

In Octo­ber 2005, Austal, as a part of the Gen­er­al Dynam­ics LCS team, was one of two bid­ders award­ed a land­mark con­struc­tion con­tract for one of two LCS Flight 0 ships, USS Inde­pen­dence (LCS 2), fol­lowed by a con­tract to build a sec­ond Inde­pen­dence-class LCS Flight 0 ship, Coro­n­a­do (LCS 4), in May 2009. Austal is now the prime con­trac­tor bid­ding for the 10-ship pro­gram plus five addi­tion­al sets of Select­ed Ship Sys­tem Equip­ment for the sec­ond source shipbuilder. 

While Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Bath Iron Works remains the prime con­trac­tor on Coro­n­a­do (LCS 4), Austal and Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Bath Iron Works revoked their cur­rent team­ing arrange­ment in Feb­ru­ary 2010 to allow Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Bath Iron Works to com­pete for the pro­posed “sec­ond source” com­pe­ti­tion for the win­ning design. The deliv­ered Final Revised Pro­pos­al con­sist­ed of almost 70,000 pages and a deci­sion is expect­ed by the Navy some­time in August. 

Austal has worked close­ly with their sup­pli­ers, their team­mate Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Advanced Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, the State of Alaba­ma, and local city and coun­ty author­i­ties to devel­op a very com­pet­i­tive offer­ing. The Austal LCS Team deliv­ers proven design and con­struc­tion exper­tise of com­mer­cial­ly derived high-speed com­bat ves­sels in the Unit­ed States and the inte­gra­tion of mil­i­tary com­put­ing envi­ron­ments for weapons, sen­sors, and communications. 

Regard­ing the pro­pos­al sub­mit­ted by the Austal LCS team, Austal USA Pres­i­dent and COO, Joe Rel­la com­ment­ed, “Austal USA has come a long way from first arriv­ing in Mobile, the sil­i­con val­ley of ship­build­ing, ten years ago. By lever­ag­ing the ship­build­ing expe­ri­ence gained in Aus­tralia, the lessons learned from the LCS and Joint High Speed Ves­sel pro­grams, our invest­ment in facil­i­ties, com­bined with the best ship­builders in the world, we have cre­at­ed the crit­i­cal mass nec­es­sary to pro­vide the low­est risk and best val­ued solu­tion as prime con­trac­tor for this pro­gram. With­out a doubt, we offer the most inno­v­a­tive, effi­cient, and capa­ble ves­sel to the Navy.” 

Austal would like to thank May­or Sam Jones, the Mobile City Coun­cil, and the Mobile Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers for their efforts in pro­vid­ing com­mit­ments for infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment. Gov­er­nor Riley and the Alaba­ma State Devel­op­ment Office and the Alaba­ma Indus­tri­al Devel­op­ment Train­ing organ­i­sa­tions played a major role in pro­vid­ing both infra­struc­ture and extra­or­di­nary assis­tance going for­ward. US fed­er­al law­mak­ers Sen­a­tors Ses­sions and Shel­by and Con­gress­man Jo Bon­ner have pro­vid­ed their sup­port in both the autho­ri­sa­tion and appro­pri­a­tion process­es for the vital LCS pro­gram, and their assis­tance to con­vince the US Navy to make capa­bil­i­ty a cri­te­ria in the competition. 

Final­ly Austal’s part­ner, Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Advanced Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, will con­tin­ue to make a major con­tri­bu­tion in deliv­er­ing the non-pro­pri­etary open-archi­tec­ture com­put­ing envi­ron­ment that forms the back­bone of this flex­i­ble mis­sion LCS. 

Austal’s ship­yard in Mobile, Alaba­ma, has proven that is has the nec­es­sary infra­struc­ture, process­es, and skilled work­force in place to design, con­struct, deliv­er and ser­vice 100-metre-plus high-speed ships in the Unit­ed States. Austal USA’s first 127-metre tri­maran LCS, USS Inde­pen­dence (LCS 2), recent­ly sailed away from Austal’s ship­yard to join the fleet at its cur­rent loca­tion in Nor­folk, Virginia. 

Austal has under con­struc­tion the sec­ond Flight 0 Inde­pen­dence Class LCS, Coro­n­a­do (LCS 4) and the first of three con­tract­ed 103-metre Joint High Speed Ves­sels, Spear­head (JHSV 1), part of a joint con­tract between the US Army and US Navy. 

Con­tact: Austal
Phone: 61 8 9410 1111
Fax: 61 8 9410 2564
Email: pubrel@austal.com