Just when you thought that the way forward for the LCS bidders was getting clearer, US Congress timelines in conjunction with the USN may complicate the matter again.
Teams led by Lockheed Martin and Austal USA have each received contracts to build two LCS of their own designs.
Lockheed Martin has now launched the second of its contracted ships, USS Fort Worth (LCS-3, seen here), which will later join its stablemate USS Freedom (LCS-1).
Austal USA’s trimaran USS Independence (LCS-2) was launched in April 2008 and Austal has under construction the USS Coronado (LCS-4) due to be delivered in early 2012.
Plans were to invite the two teams to bid for a 10-ship program and Austal submitted its best and final offer to the US Navy on 13 July for a 10-vessel LCS contract.
However the USN changed its plans.
Instead of picking just one of the two shipyards competing to build the next 10 ships, the Navy said the bids had come in low enough that it now wants to buy 20 vessels - 10 from each yard.
As the Pentagon seeks to improve its procurement practices, Navy officials say they have a rare chance to buy the 20 ships for what they had expected to eventually pay for 19.
But there is a potential snag.
While lawmakers seem likely to support the change, Congress has to authorise it by December 14 or the bids expire.
If Congress acts by the deadline, the vessels will be built by Austal USA, a unit of an Australian company that has a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, and Lockheed Martin, which has teamed up with a shipyard in Marinette, Wis.
If lawmakers do not approve the change, the Navy will go ahead and award a single contract for 10 ships.
Citing confidentiality of the bids, Navy officials would not say how much each ship would cost.
But they said the price would be lower than previous estimates of US$480 million a ship, or more than twice the projections in 2001, when the Navy began designing the ships for littoral combat, or near-shore operations.
Austal and Lockheed Martin make strikingly different versions of the ships, so to judge the new approach, Congress needs data on how much it would cost to run separate training and maintenance operations over the life of the vessels.
The ships are highly automated, with 75-person crews and equipment modules that can be swapped for different missions, like sweeping for mines or gathering intelligence.
The Lockheed Martin ship has a steel hull, while the slim Austral model is an aluminium trimaran, a three-hulled vessel unlike any previous Navy design.
Each shipyard is now building its second vessel, and over the long term the USN hopes to buy 55 of the ships.