COOPERATIVE DESTROYERS

Let someone else point out the irony of two shipyards afraid to fight for a winner-take-all contract from the Department of Defense. The fact that the nation has but two shipyards to build large surface ships is reason enough for Congress to recognize the risk of such a contest and head it off. A Senate resolution last week did that, but now the Navy needs to pay attention.

Earlier this year, the Navy announced it would end a teaming arrangement between Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., and Bath Iron Works in Maine for the DD(X) destroyer production contracts. At one time, the Navy envisioned as many as 30 of these new destroyers, built under a complex competition between both yards that ensured both survived. Now there may be as few as eight of the DD(X), with one yard offered all the work.

Amid the recent budget debate in the Senate, Mississippi Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran and Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe did what their home-state shipyards do: they teamed up. They passed an amendment called a sense of the Senate that states “it is ill-advised for the Department of Defense to pursue a winner-take-all strategy for the acquisition of destroyers” and that the money in the budget resolution assumes DoD will not acquire ships through this strategy.

Neither yard likes the winner-take-all competition for various reasons; for Bath, which now depends entirely on military contracts, specifically destroyers, a loss could close it. And it is telling that while the single-yard idea from the Navy was done to save money, there is no dollar figure that says what those savings would be.

Further, the senators argue it is the competition that saves money while reducing the vulnerability of the nation’s shipbuilding in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld supported at least the first point Feb. 17, when he said, “There’s no doubt that competition is healthy and creates an environment that produces the best product at the best price and it’s a good thing.”

The senators and others who have an interest in seeing the competition strategy stamped out could make life uncomfortable for the Navy in Congress, so politics counts every bit as much as security and cost. For Maine, the issue is fairly simple: If BIW does not survive the state suffers a significant blow to its economy. That’s incentive enough for the state’s congressional delegation.