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The U.S. Navy has suspended funding for the production of a line of San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks due to rising program costs and delays at the shipyard. This was stated by a high-ranking officer of the naval service.
The pause for the reassessment of the LPD-17 Flight II line began a year ago at the direction of the Office of the US Secretary of Defense. This was recently stated by the head of the Department of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Gilday, at the annual McAleese conference.
— Admiral Mike Gilday said about LPD-30, LPD-31 and LPD-32, respectively.
The pause with the purchase of amphibious ships is due to the fact that the Navy wants to evaluate the warships and investigate the requirements, which will be completed in the third quarter of fiscal year 2023.
The Navy has not yet paid for LPD-32, for which Congress has allocated funding for 2023. However, after calls from the Marine Corps for pre-financing purchases for the LPD-33, lawmakers decided to continue this line and allocated another $250 million for pre-procurement of components for this ship in the financing and policy bills for fiscal year 2023.
But the Navy did not include the ship in its five-year budget forecast released Monday. The Navy can purchase LPD-33 in fiscal year 2025 if it follows industry guidelines to order ships every two years to maintain a stable workforce and supply chain.
Gilday said.
But the Marines have a different opinion. At the same conference, the commander of the USMC, General David Berger, defended the LPD-17 Flight II line and said that the strategy of acquiring large batches is a way to reduce the budget. The commandant claimed that Ingalls Shipbuilding HII is approaching the point where they can see cost savings, and that at the moment the increase in the cost of buying new LPD is due to inflation.
Both Berger and Gilday advocated block purchases to achieve cost savings, and Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro supported this view, advocating for potential multi-year procurement strategies. Only in the USA itself they do not believe that if several ships are ordered from a contractor today, the prices for their construction will not increase tomorrow - during the term of the contract. Accordingly, agencies will again have to ask for funds from Congress.
