Free Republic

The U.S. Navy’s plan to award lucrative shallow-water warship contracts to shipyards in both Mobile and Wisconsin cleared an important hurdle Thursday, military analysts said, when U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor introduced legislation to approve the purchases. Analysts said the bill, which has been sent to the House Armed Services Committee, gives the dual-buy plan a clearer path to congressional approval before the Dec. 14 deadline imposed by the Navy. If Congress signs off, Mobile’s Austal USA and a team led by Lockheed Martin Corp. will each get contracts to build 10 littoral combat ships, estimated to be worth about $5...

The U.S. Navy's close-lipped effort to pick a winning design for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program is generating more rumors than Lindsay Lohan's love-life. Maybe it's the approaching mid-term elections or maybe it's the lack of official information about how the selection process is progressing, but interested parties seem to be working overtime to formulate fanciful conspiracy theories about what's going on. The competition pits two second-tier shipyards teamed with giant defense contractors against each other for the right to produce dozens of unconventional warships that are the only new class of surface combatants to survive recent course changes...

The Surface Navy Association holds its annual conference this week here in the Washington, DC area. This year’s topic: hybrid warfare at sea. We’ll be eager to hear where the surface folks come down on what should be one of the biggest questions going forward as the fleet looks at hybrid fights in littoral waters: whether to build a large number of smallish multipurpose fast-​​attack craft or to continue to build the planned 55 or so hugely expensive Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) that is probably the wrong ship for the littorals. We’ll also have a chance to hear from the...