AUGUSTA – The Navy calls it the “Surface Combatant 21” family of ships. But, for Bath Iron Works, one of Maine’s key employers, it is the future.

“There is no question it is the future,” said U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The Navy describes them as a family of ships, and they are related, but at the same time, in many ways they are different. What is important is that these are the ships that will keep workers working at BIW.”

The problem is that a construction schedule for the new ships has not been determined yet, and there is concern that work on the current class of ships being built at BIW will end before contracts on the new ships are in place to keep the shipyard’s 6,700 workers employed.

Any gap in shipbuilding at the state’s largest employer with its $280 million annual payroll could have a serious impact on the state’s economy.

New construction funding for the DDG-51 or “Burke” class of destroyers is scheduled to end in 2005, with the last of those ships to be completed in 2008.

The key ship in the new family, described in Navy documents as “the centerpiece to transforming the 21st Century Navy,” is the DD(X). That is the latest name for a new class of destroyers first proposed over a decade ago and designed to replace the DDG-51 class. The lead ship will be built by a group led by Ingalls Shipyard of Mississippi. BIW will share in the construction of future ships, but won’t get any of the work until after the lead ship is built.

“I am confident the work will be there,” Collins said recently, “but there is always a concern because we are talking about such long lead times on these ships.”

In the meantime, BIW is hoping to win a contract to build a related ship to tide the shipyard over until the DD(X) work arrives.

“On a faster track for us is the LCS,” said Tom Bowler, BIW vice president for programs. “We are competing to build one of the three designs that are in competition for the LCS program.”

The Littoral Combat Ship, or LCS, while considered by the Navy to be part of the new family of ships, will differ significantly from the much larger DD(X). While the new destroyer will displace nearly 15,000 tons and be about 600 feet long, the LCS will displace a fraction of its larger cousin and be less than half the length.

“It also is on a faster track, ahead of the DD(X), in terms of when we expect it will first be built,” Collins said. “And that is very, very important for BIW.”

The gap between completion of existing contracts and the start of work on the new ship types “is very troubling,” Collins said. “We think the LCS can fill the gap until the DD(X) construction gets under way there, but you have to be concerned.”

Bowler agrees. He said history shows that the first ship in every class takes longer to build than expected. When BIW built the first DDG-51, it was 18 months behind schedule. Other recent lead warships have been even further behind schedule.

“We have to be looking out to the future,” he said. “There is such a long lead time in shipbuilding.”

No one is sure when the contract for the lead ship of the LCS will be awarded. What is certain is the economic impact any delay in construction could have on the state.

“BIW is very important to Maine’s economy,” said state economist Laurie LaChance. “It has workers and sub-contractors from every county in the state. The impact ripples throughout all of Maine.”

Collins agreed.

“I think all of us in the [congressional] delegation are aware of the impact BIW has all over the state,” she said.

Bowler said BIW is well placed to compete for construction of new generation of warships. He said the staff at the yard is ready to take on the technological challenges posed by the new ships, called revolutionary by the Navy’s admiral in charge of developing them, Rear Adm. Charles Hamilton.

At a briefing last month Hamilton cited the merging of the ship’s propulsion system with its electrical generators as a key example of how different the new ships will be.

“In the integrated power system we’re marrying those propulsion and electrical distribution systems together. That will be a fundamental revolution in the way we think about applying power,” he said. “Where does that take us? That can take us to rail guns. That can take us to directed energy weapons.”

The admiral cautioned that the Star Trek analogy of futuristic systems on the ships does have limits. He said reducing the ability of radar to detect the ships is a major goal, but will not match the achievements of the science fiction television show.

He said the new system would be designed, “not to induct your Klingon cloaking device because that violates the laws of physics, but to put yourself in a position where it’s harder to pick you out of the clutter than some other target.”

The new technologies also will allow the new ships to have significantly smaller crew sizes than current warships.

“That reduces operating costs and operating costs are a major concern,” Collins said.

The senator said she hopes the lessons learned from employing new technologies in the DD(X) and the LCS will help extend the lives of the current ships in the fleet. She said the Navy faces a serious problem today in having enough ships to handle all of the various demands placed on it.

“I believe we need even more ships than the Navy is planning for,” she said.

More ships also would mean more work for BIW.