[UPDATED with shock trials] The strangest-looking ship in the Navy is conducting two crucial tests. A broad, triple-hulled “trimaran” design likened to a villain’s vessel from Star Trek, the Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship completed its Initial Operational Test & Evaluation on June 3rd. What’s more, the Navy Sea Systems Command announced yesterday, the USS Coronado (LCS 4) wrapped… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The upgraded frigate variant of the Littoral Combat Ship isn’t much of an improvement over the controversial original, the Government Accountability Office says, because the Navy was too focused on keeping costs down and production lines humming. But even if you agree with GAO, given how much pressure the Navy is under to grow the… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: After a decade of dithering, the White House and Congress have finally come close to agreeing that America must build a new icebreaker. One congressional subcommittee, the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, has actually come up with the $1 billion needed to build it in less than a decade. But the money wasn’t put in… Keep reading →

UPDATED with Carter statement, Electric Boat clarifications, Hill comment ELECTRIC BOAT, GROTON, CT: Shipbuilders are fixing the biggest problem on one of the Pentagon’s top priorities, the Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet. As Defense Secretary Ashton Carter toured the Groton shipyard and talked up the importance of submarines, Electric Boat officials told reporters they’re fixing faulty welds… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: The Navy wants to start building the upgraded “frigate” version of its controversial Littoral Combat Ship a year earlier, the frigate program manager said. The fixed-price, winner-take-all competition will “tentatively” happen in 2018 instead of 2019. To make that earlier date, Capt. Dan Brintzinghoffer said at the Sea-Air-Space conference here, the Navy will… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Tucked into the corners of the House’s huge draft defense bill are the seeds of a new way of warfare. It’s an approach aimed at adversaries armed with lots of long-range missiles, such as Russia and China. If the Pentagon takes the money and suggestions in the House Armed Services Committee’s draft National Defense… Keep reading →

UPDATED from Hill staff briefing CAPITOL HILL: The House seapower subcommittee continued its crusade for more warships, adding vessels and relentlessly rejecting reductions in its draft portion of the annual defense policy bill. The full committee will mark up all draft language for the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act next week. As we’d predicted, the bill… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: With the House Armed Services Committee marking up its annual defense bill next week, the outspoken chairman of HASC’s seapower subcommittee told Breaking Defense he wants to undo last year’s budget deal — which he opposed and which drops Pentagon spending in 2017 — to get more dollars for defense. That’s political heavy lifting, I told Forbes. House speaker… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Despite tight budgets at the Pentagon, the Navy wants to speed-up several shipbuilding programs — amphibious warships, destroyers, and submarines — and Congress seems inclined to give them the money. That’s testimony both to the perennial political popularity of shipbuilding, which employs a lot of voters, and to the rising strategic anxiety over… Keep reading →

The Navy’s plan for building new nuclear missile submarines — the $80 billion Ohio Replacement Program — tips the balance between the nations’ sub-builders in favor of New England-based Electric Boat. Yes, the “Submarine Unified Build Strategy” carefully allocates work between EB, owned by General Dynamics, and Virginia’s Newport News Shipbuilding, owned by Huntington-Ingalls. Yes,… Keep reading →