Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I support the continuing resolution. One of the many reasons is that the Navy's urgent request for authority for the littoral combat ship, (LCS),--program is included. The original LCS acquisition plan in 2005 would have had the Navy buying both types of LCS vessels for some time while the Navy evaluated the capabilities of each vessel. At some time in the future, the Navy would have had the option to down select to building one type of vessel. But in any case, the Navy would have been operating some number of each type of LCS vessel in the fleet, which means that the Navy would have been dealing with two shipyards, two supply chains, two training pipelines, etc. Last year, after the bids came in too high, the Navy decided upon a winner-take-all acquisition strategy to procure the fiscal year 2010 vessels under a fixed-price contract, with fixed- price options for two ships per year for the next 4 years. This revised strategy included obtaining the data rights for the winning ship design and competing for a second source for the winning design starting in fiscal year 2012. Again, the Navy made this course correction because the Navy leadership determined that the original acquisition strategy was unaffordable. Earlier this year, the Navy released the solicitation under that revised strategy and has been in discussion with the two contractor teams and evaluating those proposals since that time.…”