Lawmakers push back on Navy ship cancellation
WASHINGTON--New England lawmakers today are launching a counter-offensive against the Navy’s decision to scrap a $20 billion destroyer program that is important to Waltham-based Raytheon Co. and the Bath Iron Works in Maine. The legislators are threatening to hold up other funds for shipbuilding next year if the service does not provide a better explanation.
Led by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, several lawmakers from Massachusetts and Maine plan to tell Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in a letter that they remain unconvinced of the Navy's rationale to forego the Zumwalt-class destroyer -- which has skyrocketed in cost and experienced engineering delays -- and instead buy more older-model warships.
"A shift of this magnitude in the Navy’s shipbuilding plan requires a full review and analysis through the proper departmental channels and processes, including congressional oversight," the lawmakers write, according to a draft of the letter obtained by the Globe. "To do otherwise would undermine the Navy’s shipbuilding plan in Congress and could result in the Congress providing no funding for new surface combatants in" fiscal year 2009.
The Navy has not confirmed that it is cancelling the project. But lawmakers yesterday said they were told by naval officials that the ship's spiraling cost would set back other plans to expand the nation's fleet, and that the vessel is not well-suited to increasingly advanced anti-ship missiles.
The Navy has already committed an estimated $11 billion to the Zumwalt program, also called the DDG-1000, and the lawmakers expressed concern that the investment to date in the first two ships in the class and a complex new suite of advanced combat systems could be lost.
They said they were surprised at the decision, relayed to them earlier this week by top service officials, given the Navy's recent testimony that the Zumwalt program's technologies are key to the future of the fleet and need "to take root, grow, and stabilize."
But the lawmakers are also clearly concerned about the potential impact of the Navy's decision on Raytheon's standing as a major defense company and the future of the workforce at the Bath shipyard, which is building one of the two Zumwalt destroyers already authorized by Congress.
Bath would likely also be awarded contracts to build the additional the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class destroyers that they Navy is proposing as an alternative to the Zumwalt fleet, but would still take a financial hit, executives and analysts believe.
Meanwhile, a Raytheon rival, Lockheed Martin, designs the combat system on the Arleigh Burke class ships.
(By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff)
