Statements of the Bleeding Obvious

[ORAC]

The USN has cancelled construction of Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) 3 (http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2007/04/cost-growth-leads-to-stopwork-on-team-lockheed-lcs3-construction-updated/index.php), which was being built by Lockheed Martin. The fate of LCS 1 remains in the balance.

LM are one of those companies who have expanded into nearly every market as a "Prime Systems Integrator". In the case of shipbuilding, even though they have no background in ship building, and own no shipyards.

As a result of this fiasco, Merrill Lynch analyst Ron Epstein uttered these sage words, which can be taken both as a statement of the bleeding obvious - and as sound advice to those awarding contracts blindly to companies such as BAe, Boeing etc because of their size...

"We believe the termination points to a potential weakness in the system integrator model and suggests that domain expertise is of vital importance,”


In the meantime construction of the Northrop Grumman DDG-1000 (http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2007/04/dead-aim-or-dead-end-the-usas-ddg1000-zumwalt-class-program/index.php)class destroyer - at $3 billion each, continues, with everyone hoping they don't tend to capsize in a following sea (http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2007/04/defense-news-will-ddg1000-destroyers-be-unstable/index.php).... :ouch:

[threepointonefour]

Aviation ??

[Two's in]

ORAC,
I can't let you give all the credit to the Navy. Same contractor involved in the US Coast Guard's effort and they are currently screwing up a $25Bn (that's billion) Program to refit and re-equip their fleet. Apparently big cracks opening up are a bad thing on a ship...
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070326/26coastguard.htm?s_cid=rss:site1

[ORAC]

Aviation ?? Lockheed Martin have been known to take an occasional interest in that field, as have Northrop....

[threepointonefour]

Lockheed Martin have been known to take an occasional interest in that field....

Tenuous link given that the subject is shipbuilding.

[GreenKnight121]

"LM are one of those companies who have expanded into nearly every market as a "Prime Systems Integrator". In the case of shipbuilding, even though they have no background in ship building, and own no shipyards."



Ok, Lockheed Shipbuilding built LSDs 41-43 for the USN in the 1980s; LPDs (amphibious personnel transport, dock) 9-15 back in the 1960s-early 70s; 5 Knox FFs in the same time period; and 3 Brooke FFGs & 2 Garcia FFs in the early 1960s... and General Dynamics Shipbuilding (merged with Lockheed in the 1980s) built all of the Ohio SSBNS & Seawolf SSNs, and half of the Los Angeles and Virginia SSNs from the 1970s-current, and LSDs 37-40 in the late 1960s-70s.


So there IS just a tad of shipbuilding experience there, you know.
As well as shipyards that they do now own, and have owned for decades!


Which makes the current problems all the more embarrassing and problematic.

They really should be handling the design & build a lot better... but so should Northrop-Grumman... as they bought the Avondale and Litton-Ingalls shipyards... which have between them built most of the guided missile destroyers and cruisers of the USN (along with many of its LSD/LPD/LPH ships) for the last 40 years, and are still building them today.

[Pegasus#]

General Dynamics Shipbuilding is owned by that company, and never "merged with Lockheed in the 1980s". IIRC Lockmart acquired GD Fort Worth (i.e. the F-16 factory) but not the whole of GD

[Wader2]

awarding contracts blindly to companies such as BAe, Boeing etc because of their size...

"We believe the termination points to a potential weakness in the system integrator model and suggests that domain expertise is of vital importance,”

Er I believe we use BAE and have the odd Boeing System. The read across should be fairly clear as BAE has been known to act as a system integrator have they not?

[tucumseh]

"We believe the termination points to a potential weakness in the system integrator model and suggests that domain expertise is of vital importance,”


I'd say this is accurate, if only because MoD/Ministers disagree!!

[XV277]

Relevant in that LM have fingers in many UK defence aviation pies, not least as Prime Contractor on the Navy Merlin.
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/products/byorganisation.html

[rarelyathome]

A statement of the bleedin' obvious it may be but it is a fine example of management yukspeak:yuk: