In Press: Talking tankers with the Mobile Press-Register

Had a nice chat about the T-AO(X) program with the Mobile Press-Register’s Jeff Amy last week, and the story dropped yesterday.  Read it here.

It’s a good article–making the best of a tough editorial assignment.  Basically, the reporter was put to work assembling this story because some Gulf Coast folks hope that the money saved on the LCS program will support the T-AO(X) program that will, in turn, support Avondale, thus keeping the shipyard open.

Got that?

Well, the reporter turned to shipbuilding maven Tim Colton and I for some narrative-busting:

First, there is no guarantee that any Pentagon savings will go back to the Pentagon, let alone be sent to support additional shipbuilding programs.  Second, there’s not much hope the T-AO(X) contract will be complete by the time Avondale gets shuttered (despite the speed-up, the next-gen oiler program is just getting started).  Third, there’s just no way NASSCO can loose this without Congress getting in the way, somehow.   And that’s not going to happen.

I sense that the Navy is holding the T-AO(X) program as a sort of bait for the desperate Louisiana Congressional delegation–in some kind of “you guys better support ALL the Navy’s ventures, and, if you do, MAYBE the Avondale yard will get to bid on a few tankers” bargain.  Certainly, the mere prospect  gets the Navy a lot of free help in Congress.

But the Louisiana Congressional delegation needs to make peace with the idea of shuttering their shipyard.  Tankers are not going to be built in the Gulf.  The contract will not go to a troubled, high-risk yard.  Why?  Well, if the T-AO(X) program runs into trouble, then so will the LCS program AND the JHSV program.  As I have written before, there’s too much riding on the T-AO(X)–if the Navy fails to get oilers out there, then there is no way the Navy will be able to support the vigorous fielding of all the smallish craft they want.

So, in the end, I think the Avondale yard is set to close.  It’s already hemorrhaging people, and there just isn’t any reason to keep the place going.  It’d take either a miracle or a whole lot of money, two things that, these days, are in rather short supply.

Outside of the Avondale issue, the reporter did touch upon an interesting tidbit–the strange dark horse ship constructor Cleveland Ship LLC–wants to build tankers to operate on a contract basis:

Avondale does have a history with oilers, having built 16 of the current ship class before Northrop bought the shipyard. And at least one company that is looking to build replacement oilers — upstart Cleveland Ship LLC — wants to built the next generation of the ships at the yard near New Orleans.

“I’m still interested,” Ed Bartlett, the chairman and chief executive, said Friday.

Cleveland Ship doesn’t now own a shipyard. It has offered to buy all of Northrop’s shipbuilding operations, including those in Pascagoula and Newport News, Va., but Northrop has moved ahead with its own plans for a spin-off instead of a sale.

Bartlett said he’s still interested in building ships at Avondale, and said he’s had talks with Louisiana officials. He said Cleveland Ship might not need to control the yard to build ships there.

Instead of just selling ships, Bartlett’s plan focuses on building fuel-efficient oilers that would provide services to the Navy on a contract basis. He says that between burning less fuel and efficiencies from building ships more like the private sector, he can save the Navy billions over the decades-long life of the ships. The Cleveland Ship plan was among a group of oiler proposals submitted to the Navy in December, Bartlett said.

Tagged as: In Press, Northrop Grumman, T-AO(X)