Moving higher to 2.50, page-169

A contract can come as early as 2022 according to the news link below

ps: I would apprepricate with members share their findings rather than say read this website where there are dozens of similar articles.

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/navy-league/2021/09/13/austal-ahead-of-schedule-in-yard-upgrades-but-still-awaiting-ships-to-build/

WASHINGTON —The Austal USA shipyard in Alabama is ahead of schedule in revamping itsfacilities to build steel ships in addition to aluminum ships, but ongoingquestions about U.S. Navy shipbuilding plans have left the yard uncertain aboutwhat steel work could come its way in the near term.

Thecompany is investing about $200 million to improve and expand its shipyard andto grow its ship repair business, Larry Ryder, Austal USA’s vice president ofbusiness development and external affairs, told Defense News last month. Abouthalf of that is meant to convert half the production lines at the shipyard towork with steel rather than aluminum, which was used to build Austal’sIndependence-variant littoral combat ships and its expeditionary fasttransports (EPFs).Ryder said the yard is ahead of schedule on making the modifications, ahead ofa planned April 2022 kickoff of the steel shipyard capability. The challengenow: finding a steel ship contract to bid on.

“Asfar as the workforce, you know, we need to get some awards,” Ryder said duringan interview at the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space conference.

Thecompany is looking at the Navy’s new light amphibious warship, next-generationlogistics ship and T-AGOS ocean surveillance ship programs, as well as the U.S.Coast Guard’s offshore patrol cutter – though securing status as the Navy’sfollow yard for the frigate program, building duplicates of Fincantieri’sConstellation-class frigate, would be the biggest prize for Austal.Ryder called these a “whole series of new programs that we believe are right inour wheelhouse in terms of the size of the program, the need for serialproduction,” but it remains unclear when the Navy will move to select a frigatefollow yard or kick off the other programs — and with work winding down on theLCS program and the duration of the EPF program unclear, Austal isn’t surewhere its next contract is coming from.

“Wedo have some near-term challenges in our manning profile. We’re working hard toensure we keep our workforce — we’ve got a great workforce — but, you know, ifthere’s no ships in the ‘22 budget, then we’ll have a downsizing. We’re tryinghard to avoid that; we’ve never had to do it. ... We’re optimistic that thingswill work out in the in the budget process and we’ll be able to keep our folksonboard and in transition to a more stable production on the on the steel sideas the Navy settles in on these programs,” he said.

Rydersaid the company has looked at how many work hours each ship might representand therefore how much work the yard would want to ideally take on in the nextcouple years — as well as how complex each ship program is and where theworkforce’s talents could best be applied — but he said at this point Austalneeds anything to keep the yard going until it can secure a more stable backlogof work.

Todaythe last five Independence LCSs are nearing the end of construction anddelivery to the Navy, and three EPFs are on contract: hulls 13, 14 and 15.Austal has added enhanced medical capabilities into the Flight II ships,starting with EPF-14; has inserted modifications to the flight deck to makethem V-22-compatible, starting with EPF-13; and is building EPF-13 withmachinery control systems to allow for autonomous operations of hull,mechanical and electrical systems.In the Navy’s fiscal 2022 budget request, the service asked for eight ships,only one of which Austal could potentially compete for: the T-AGOS oceansurveillance ship. The House Armed Services Committee added two EPFs in itsrecent markup of its FY22 defense authorization bill, which would be hulls 16and 17. But it’s unclear how those adds will fare when the committee negotiateswith its Senate counterparts and when the defense appropriators negotiate afinal spending bill. The Senate Armed Services Committee included one EPF inits bill, while House appropriators did not add any funding in for EPFs inFY22.

Whenit comes to continuing aluminum ship production, Ryder said Austal hopes theEPF line will continue for some time — perhaps until the Navy transitions to aLarge Unmanned Surface Vessel that could spin out of the autonomous EPF effort,or perhaps until the Navy decides to buy some small hospital ships to replaceComfort and Mercy — something Austal has designed as an aluminum catamaran evenlarger than its EPF.

“Asfar as the future, we think there’s still a growing need for EPF: it’s aflexible, relatively inexpensive platform that can fill a lot of gaps at arelatively low cost to the Navy, so that … the more expensive ships are free todo [more complex] missions. As far as the future of [EPF] 16, we saw theshipbuilding plan from December had six [hulls] across the [five-year FutureYears Defense Program], and then the budget submission didn’t have any.”

Basedon what House and Senate Armed Services committees have done so far, “we’reoptimistic we’ll get EPF-16 in this year’s budget, we think it fills a validneed and it’s certainly there as far as performance on the contract.” When it comes to transitioning to a medical ship, “we see the medical ship …fills a critical need for the Navy, but it’s not one the Navy’s looking atright now” in their budgets, Ryder said.

Asfor kicking off the steel ship production line, the frigate program would beAustal’s top choice, but last month a Navy program official declined to say whenthe Navy might look to select a second yard.

“There’sbeen a lot of discussion from the last administration into the currentadministration about when we’re going to go — it’s predecisional in the Navy,”frigate program manager Capt. Kevin Smith told Defense News during an Aug. 2briefing at Sea Air Space.

“Rightnow we do have in our contract [with builder Fincantieri] a technical datapackage that we can exercise that option all the way up to the tenth ship. Soour intent is that, at some point, based on the profile, we can exercise thatTDP and work with candidate yards that would be interested and then startbuilding up on a second source and then doing a competition in the future. …The timing of that is still predecisional,” he explained. “I know it’s not easy, but if you want industry ready to be your follow yard,when is that going to be? And obviously it’s not a unilateral decision by theNavy, they’ve got Congress that has a vote, but that’s a big program forseveral yards, and the uncertainty of whether that’s going to happen in ‘23,‘24, what the build profile is going to be, are all big planning inputs forindustry,” Ryder said during the interview with Defense News the day after thefrigate briefing.

Rydersaid the Coast Guard offshore patrol cutter program or the T-AGOS would also befine options for Austal. The light amphibious warship (LAW) and thenext-generation logistics ship are less complex and wouldn’t take bestadvantage of the workforce’s skillset, he said, but Austal is preparing bidsfor them anyway.

“Ithink [frigate, OPC and T-AGOS] are the programs where we can really bring thegreatest value in terms of building the more complex ships that need the higherlevel of program management and serial production. I really believe we’re thelowest-risk yard for those programs in terms of delivering on schedule and oncost. They’re the biggest, the most complex of that group. But with that said,you know, we’re ready to build LAW, we’re ready to build next-gen log ship.They’re different. They’re smaller. They’re a little less complex, but ourworkforce is able to build just about anything.”

TheNavy wants to buy one T-AGOS surveillance ship in FY22, which would buy Austalsome time if it were to win the single-ship contract. LAW is now likely tostart in FY23, after a one-year delay to theprogram due to limited funding, and could lead to serial production of a couple dozen ships. The next-generation logistics ship also appears set to begin inFY23.

TheCoast Guard had previously awarded its OPC program to Eastern Shipbuilding in2016, but the Florida yard suffered severe damage in 2018 from HurricaneMichael and fell well behind schedule. The Coast Guard in late 2019 announcedit would re-compete the cutter program, leaving just the first four of 25 hullsfor Eastern. The service has said it would award a contract for the next11 ships in early 2022.