Senators Push For Two-Shipyard Destroyer Strategy

Defense Daily 03/04/05
author: Ann Roosevelt

Senators from Maine to Mississippi have joined together to call President Bush to stick with the two-shipyard strategy for building the Navy's next generation DD(X) destroyer.

The current strategy in the FY 2006 budget request is to build the ships in the Northrop Grumman [NOC] Ingalls Pascagoula, Miss., yard, and in the General Dynamics [GD] Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath Maine, senators detailed in their March 1 letter.

The March 1 letter follows on the heels of a Feb. 24 letter from Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine, who wrote that long-term plans for the Navy's ships should be based on national security and not short-term fiscal constraints (Defense Daily, Feb. 25). Both senators signed this most recent letter.

"The revised strategy being explored by the Department of Defense is to conduct a winner-take-all competition in 2005 between the two shipyards," this latest letter explains.

The practical effect of such a change would be to delay the program, "possibly resulting in the layoff of several thousand highly skilled employees and significantly increasing the cost of ongoing programs at both facilities," senators wrote in their March 1 letter.

In the past 15 years, the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base has already had a 75 percent reduction in employment due to low production. "Instability in the DD(X) program at this time could further exacerbate the permanent exodus of skilled men and women from the last remaining shipyards that produce our naval fleet," the letter said.