THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 24, 1995 TAG: 9510240318
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Newport News Shipbuilding has joined with a large shipyard in Mississippi and two other companies to bid on the Navy's next generation of amphibious assault ships.
The alliance was announced Monday by Litton Industries Inc., parent of Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., which will be the team's prime contractor.
The move should make the team members more competitive for the shipbuilding program, expected to be one of the Navy's largest in the next decade.
The Navy plans to build 12 of the amphibious assault ships during the next 15 years for an estimated $5 billion.
The Newport News/Ingalls group will compete with an alliance led by the New Orleans shipyard Avondale Industries Inc. to build the ships, known as LPD-17s. Ingalls and Avondale have built most of the Navy's modern amphibious warships.
By teaming up with Ingalls, Newport News becomes the partner of the yard that has built the Tarawa-class and Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, the centerpieces of the Navy's amphibious forces.
If the Ingalls team wins the work, Newport News would build and outfit the aft, or back, section of the ship. The work would help sustain jobs at the giant Peninsula yard well into the next century. The shipyard is the state's largest private employer with about 19,000 workers.
Aft sections built in Newport News would be barged to Ingalls' shipyard and put together with front sections assembled there.
``Ingalls and Newport News are uniquely experienced for this method of partnership production,'' said Gerald J. St. Pe, Ingalls president.
Lockheed Martin Corp. would provide the two shipyards with ship and combat systems integration on the LPD-17. Lockheed produces the Navy's AEGIS shipboard weapons control system.
The fourth partner is National Steel and Shipbuilding Corp., a San Diego shipbuilder, that would consult on the construction of the vessels and support LPD-17s that join the Pacific fleet.
``The strengths of each of the team members contributes to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts,'' said Mike Hatfield, Newport News Shipbuilding's vice president of communications.
The Navy is expected to solicit bids for the vessel design and construction by mid-1996 and award a contract by Sept. 30, 1996, the end of the next federal fiscal year.
The program had been scheduled to be started in 1998, but Congress opted to fund it this year.
The Navy wants the LPD-17 to be a multimission vessel serving as a platform for aircraft and other vehicles and a Marine Corps troop transport with self-defense capabilities exceeding past amphibious warships.
The Navy has encouraged cooperation among the nation's shipbuilders as a means of preserving shipbuilding capacity. It hopes to preserve as many yards as possible in an era of defense downsizing by spreading what work it is offering among as many as possible.
In August, Avondale Industries announced that Bath Iron Works Corp., a shipyard in Bath, Maine, and Hughes Aircraft had joined it to bid on the LPD-17. by CNB