Navy to cancel new destroyer program and buy older model

The Navy plans to cancel its DDG-1000 destroyer program after the first two ships are built and instead buy older but more affordable surface combatants, lawmakers said Wednesday.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and Pentagon procurement chief John Young, a longtime supporter of the DDG-1000, signed off on the plan during a meeting with Navy leaders Tuesday, sources said.

Under the new acquisition strategy, the Navy would use the money once planned for the five remaining DDG-1000s to buy between eight and 11 DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class destroyers, whose production line has been dormant for years.

Navy Secretary Donald Winter and Adm. Gary Roughead, the Navy chief of staff, have been briefing their plan on Capitol Hill, where it is expected to draw mixed reviews from key lawmakers and could figure in the re-election prospects of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. Members of the Maine and Mississippi delegations, whose states are home to the shipyards that build the Navy's destroyers, have long been divided over the issue.

At the urging of House Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor, D-Miss., the House-passed version of the fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill rejected the Navy's $2.5 billion request to build the third DDG-1000 and instead included $400 million in advanced procurement for either the DDG-1000 or the DDG-51. Taylor, whose district includes Northrop Grumman's Pascagoula shipyard, has long said he would prefer the Navy buy the older destroyers.

Collins has fought for the continuation of the DDG-1000 program and immediately voiced her opposition to the Navy's decision. Bath Iron Works in Maine also builds DDG-1000s and split production of DDG-51s with Pascagoula.

"Compared with the DDG-51 program, which the Navy is considering continuing, the DDG-1000 program provides far more work and about three times the amount of money for BIW per ship," Collins said. "Bath's share of the DDG-1000 it now has under contract is $1.4 billion, while the shipyard's share of the most recent DDG-51 it now has under construction amounts to only about $500 million." Collins met Wednesday with Bath Iron Works President Dugan Shipway, who flew to Washington upon hearing of the Navy's new plan.

"I have pledged to work with him and everyone at BIW to fight for a plan to lessen the potentially devastating consequences of this decision on BIW," said Collins, who is in a tough re-election fight with Democratic Rep. Tom Allen. If the Navy buys nine DDG-51s over the next six years, she added, Bath Iron Works would have to work on "virtually all of them" to maintain its workload and prevent job losses, she added.

Roughead's support for the DDG-1000 program has long been considered lackluster. "On balance, the procurement cost of a single DDG-51 is significantly less than that of a DDG-1000 and the life-cycle costs of the two classes are similar," Roughead wrote in a May 7 letter to Senate Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. But support for the program has remained high at the senior echelons of the Pentagon, particularly within Young's office. In a July 2 letter to Taylor, Young, a former Navy official, said that restarting production on the DDG-51s would "pose a risk to the shipbuilding budget and inject additional cost." The Navy would not provide a comment on its decision at the time this story was published.