Transcripts For CSPAN Hearing Focuses On The Navys Use Of Li

In a program chosen for affordability that the gao has reported has doubled in cost with a potential for future overruns. Like so many major programs that preceded it though cs failure predictably from an inability to stabilize requirements and roofs date cost estimates and unreliable assessments of technical and integration risks race made worse by repeatedly buying ships ignition packages before proving they are affected and can be operate together. What is so disturbing is that these problems were not unforeseen. In 2002, the navy first requested congress authorize funding for the lcs program. After reading the plan that two Armed Services committees said quote lcs has not been vetted through the pentagons top requirements. The second article of the joint requirements oversight counsel the Navy Strategy for the lcs does not clearly identify the plan and funding for development in the valuation of Mission Packages upon which the operational capabilities of lcs will depend. Despite such serious concerns it will not come as a surprise to many members of this committee, to the congress that approved funding for lcs and in with the navy awarded the first lcs construction contract in 2004, it did so without welldefined requirements, stable design realistic cost estimates are a clear understanding of the capability gaps the ship was needed to fill. Taxpayers have paid a heavy price for these mistakes. The lcs was initially expected to cost 220 million per ship. The cost of each ship has more than doubled to 478 million and we are not through yet. The lcs needed combat capability and countermeasures were supposed to be delivered in 2008. That capability is still not operational nor is it expected to be until 2020. 12 years late, 12 years late. Today 26 ships in the lcs fleet have either been delivered or are under construction or are in contract. In other words taxpayers have already paid for 65 of the planned lcs inventory. Lcs combat capability supposed to come from three Mission Packages countermeasures, service war for an antiwarfare. Taxpayers invested more than 12 billion to procure an lcs fund and another 2 billion in these three Mission Packages yet for all this investment all three of these Mission Packages are years delayed. Practically none of the systems having reached initial operational capability. So far the lcs has fielded only the most basic capabilities a 30millimeter gun with a range of two miles and ability the ability to launch and recover helicopters and small boats. The Service Package was five years late. The mind packages 12 years late to the antisubmarine packages nine years late. The navy failed to meet its own commitment to deploy lcs frames with these Mission Packages in part because for some reason navy leaders prioritize deployed ships with no capability over completing necessary Mission Package testing. In other words the text areas have paid for and are still paying for 26 ships that have demonstrated next to no combat capability. This is unacceptable. And this committee wants to know secretary stackley who is responsible and who has been held accountable . Id like to be the first to say congress belongs on the list of those responsible. We could intervene more forcefully and demanded more from the department of defense and the navy. We did not. As long as im chairman of this committee will. Mission packages are not the only problem. Keeping the lcs underway has also been challenging. Despite eight years ago in 2008 the navy continues to discover quote first of class problems. 16 since 2008. We continue to discover quote first class problems. Since 2013, five of the eight lcs deliveries have experienced significant engineering casualties resulting in lengthy periods. Amazingly despite nearly no proven lcs combat capability and persistent debilitating engineering issues in design and operation the navy is charging ahead with an ambitious plan to keep most ships deployed half the time station around the world far from support facilities in the United States. In contrast most Navy Destroyers are planned to be deployed for the United States far less than 25 of their service lives. The rush to put warships forward in singapore by 2018 without proven combat capability and to maintain a deployment tempo more than twice that of destroyers is a recipe for more wasted taxpayer dollars. Although the lcs will deliver some capability the nation still need to capable Small Surface combatant that addresses the lcs s critical shortfalls including the ability to attack surface ships with multiple missile salvos defend noncombatant ships from nearby noncombatant ships from air missile threats conduct Long Duration Missions Including submarines without frequent fueling an exhibit robust survivability characteristics. The recently concluded lcs review was long overdue and it yielded from missing initiatives. I am concerned of several critical assumptions of the program are not challenged including excessive operational availability goals and sufficient inhouse Technical Support were lcs unexamined manpower requirements and transitioning to a new Small Surface combatant. Forcelli the department defenses curtailing the lcs program and down selecting to a single shared design. Given the cost overruns Mission Package testing testing and thef engineering failures reducing the size of this program is a necessary first step and im prepared to go even further by taking a hard look at any further procurement of ships until all of Mission Packages free to ioc. Lcs the navy to explain to this committee the american taxpayers why it makes sense to continue pouring money into a ship program that is repeatedly failed to live up to its promises. The lcs continues to experience new problems but it is not a new program. Thats why the departments leaders must not delay in reconciling their aspirations with the lcs. Demanding accountability in reducing the size of this program. Thank you mr. Chairman today want to join the chairman and welcoming director gilmour and secretary stackley and mr. Mr. Francis to the committee this point to testify on the Littoral Combat ship lcs program and we are thankful for your service. A fundamental architecture separates changes in the Mission Package from changes that would disrupt the ship design and construction. In the past where there were problems in the combat capability on a ship it was almost inevitably causing problems in the Construction Program that changes inside the Mission Package should not translate into a ships potential. However since the Mission Package and that her divorce from each other we have now discovered a new set of problems. While the shipbuilders had problems earlier that is not being a big issue. The shipbuilders and ship workers performed well under this contract since then so we have built 26 of the vessels was not a one of a Single Mission modules has passed all Operational Testing. Theyll see combat capabilities largely resides in the Mission Package in the navy will have to operate the lcs vessels for several more years and a relatively benign circumstances waiting on combat capability to complete testing. Chairman mckay and i wrote to the chief of Naval Operations about the lcs program in september which raised a number of concerns. We asked that the navy consider reducing the planned operational availability of the lcs to a sustainable level received the navy can support deployment availability before expanding availability to 50 under a blue gold concept to the cno responded to the navy is going to continue to planned for availability with the blue gold concept because thats what the navy needs to support the optimized fleet Response Plan. I believe some of the problems theyre experiencing with lcs vessel is because we got too far in front of ourselves by trying to deploy ships before they were ready which in turn reduce test. Saying that we will attain a will attain the 50 deployment availability goal for lcs because that is what we need makes the optimized Response Plan achievable rings hollow with me. Sounds a lot like previous assurances that they would be no problem in shifting from the original alfie is lou gold content to a a3 cruise for every to ship concept which has now been found wanting and now we are back trying to make the blue gold concept work it in her letter to chairman i asked the navy to establish a land based propulsion machinery control test site because the navy is not providing sufficient inhouse engineering capable support for the lcs program to the cno responded that the navy will consider landbased control test site at some later date but not now. Im willing for the moment to work with the navy to play out this to try to enhance support but im concerned that lcs fleet Material Support will suffer without such a facility when such support is available for other navy combatants. The chairman and i will ask the committee for review of the manpower requirements of the lcs to validate or revalidate the quantity and quality of manpower apartments to determine if additional personnel are assigned to perform damage control force protection maintenance and other duties. The cno responded the navy celsius reteam have assessed the requirements that i would just say im skeptical that the lcs would have had sufficient time to do much more than decide how to allocate which space would be available. Such an allocation process would not constitute the manpower requirements that i had in mind. Finally the chairman i suggested maybe should start planning now to pick your begin delivery to a new small combatant as soon as possible in 2020. The cno responded the navy will address the future Small Surface combatant at some later date after the navy has completed analysis of the future fleet requirement. And stand cno riches and a time to review overall requirements however i believe in the navy begins a program for follow on Small Surface combatant that should have weight repeating what we did with the lcs program where we are in such a hurry we did not take the time to go through important parts of acquisition process such as deciding what the requirements are deciding how much theyre willing to pay to achieve those requirements and programming at a time for the manpower in the programs we needed to support the program. If the navy which allow we may face similar urgency. Thank you mr. Chairman eyelet forward this hearing. C we begin with you director gilmour. Welcome dr. Gilmore. I apologize, thank you mr. Chairman senator reed members of the committee. As you pointed out mr. Chairman although the first lcs was commissioned in 2008 the lcs program is not demonstrated effective Warfighting Capability in its originally provisioned missions by the navy requirements. Surface warfare lancaster measures or mcm and antisubmarine warfare. Increment Service Worker Mission Packages on lcs see france as in my stability in the ship defending itself against small forms of fast although not against threat represented numbers of attacks attacks. Abilities support Maritime Security operations such as launching and recovering boats and interdiction operations. However when was yielded as part of the next increment of the Surface Warfare package its capability should improve and it will be important to solve the problem testing with that have enabled us to discover so many of the problems. In a june report based on the ti concluded the lcs deploying the countermeasures package would not be operationally suitable if called upon to that testing demonstrates the lcs package did not achieve a sustained area clearance rate of a legacy systems nor can they package the use to reduce requirements for clearance rate even under ideal conditions achieving 1 2 of those requirements which are fraction of the navys forward plans. The ship as well as line countermeasure systems are not reliable and all the systems not just a remote system and the multimission vehicle have been recently canceled that significant shortfalls in performance. With the equipment. No matter what equipment is loaded for this seat frame components impose significant constraints for example, to be fully Mission Capable 24 of the test period they both fall short of the unreliability requirements have the engineers your chance to compete that 30 day mission that is a requirement without critical failure of a sub system necessary for wartime operation. They also revealed significant deficiencies now the navy is developing plans to take actions to correct these problems with the severity until theyre fully corrected. In closing i want to emphasize the importance of realistic testing only through testing of the eMission Packages on and aboard the ship that the significant problems and shortfalls i discussed revealed. In fact, accounting review team emphasize the reliance on the shore based testing provided a false sense of system maturity. Similarly only with realistic testing was the inaccuracies of those tactics. Therefore my strongest in most important recommendation to you and to the navy to find and execute of the Mission Packages and lcs as we go forward. Mr. Chairman Ranking Members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to appear today to address our program. With this somewhat like to make a brief Opening Statement and have my full testimony enter into the record. Eight Index Service antisubmarine areas with the overall balance structure is a replacement for three Legacy Service ships about onethird the size of the thrifty was class destroyer designed for missions that the destroyer is not equipped police or could not be performed by the small combat ship for its ability is. It has greatly reduced procurement cost in manpower in fact, the procurement cost is one third and also the man by our requirements lcs was built with highspeed ability damage control and combat systems including a 57 million member surfacetoair missiles in the new horizon missile that the navy is adding for longrange service targets. In addition it carries the missions planned for each ships deployment this Service Warfare Mission Package a. M. Adds an armed helicopter and a vehicle for surveillance and surfacetosurface missiles the other package has sonar that operates in sonar with the helicopter with sonar and torpedoes the counter mission has Unmanned Service and unmanned water vehicles with sensors and systems to detect and neutralize underwater mines. The four cornerstones id like to summarize the is the Shipbuilding Program as the committee is aware the program was initiated with unrealistic cost and schedule estimates within incomplete decide an extraordinary budget overruns were result subsequently was restructured damp production placed on hold to verify design quality in weakness and authorization to approve the design changes was up that the fourstar level would. The oversight at the shipyard was decrease the Acquisition Strategy to compete while longterm contracts under fixed prices mendez the industry made significant investment to improve productivity and quality. As a result the cost has greatly improves that the current ships are the of living at how often m performance has stayed within the budget and the quality of each ship has improved as if measured by the inspection survey. And performance continues to improve. We have implemented some plum similar rules across all shipbuilding although we could not get out front of all programs to design production and testing has strolled into place. And second, the eMission Packages the strategy is to incrementally introduce systems as the package when it is mature and ready for deployment. Lcs has the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles the 30 mm gun system and now the harpoon device assault and we are currently integrating the hellfire missile and support of testing and as a result year entracte to complete in 2018. And next Mission Package is the antisubmarine package it has been demonstrated to greatly exceed that of any other sensor system afloat. We are in the process to build us a developmental model before replying to see in 2018. Their relative Success Stories benefit from the lcs package approach as the navy develop systems it is important to leverage the modular design and be able to do so in rapid fashion once they are richer. We are headlong into challenges to develop these capabilities that our central to what is arguably one of the most were funding gaps of the Counter Measures the requirements of lcs are to identify those that are specifically exceeding without putting the ship for the sailor into a the minefield the cm warfare package helps with the helicopter carrying the laser mine detection system and the airborne neutralization system to destroy th