THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 12, 1996 TAG: 9607120453
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 41 lines
Metro Machine Corp. of Norfolk and Newport News Shipbuilding are among six teams of shipbuilding firms that will compete for the right to build the Navy's proposed ``arsenal ship,'' a vessel seen by naval planners as key to the service's future ability to project force ashore.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that each of the groups will receive $1 million this year to spend on a six-month project developing initial plans for the ship. The Navy and the Defense Department's advanced research agency will choose from among the proposals early in 1997 and allow two of the teams to develop detailed designs.
Metro Machine is leading one of the teams, in partnership with Rockwell International/Collins International of Seal Beach, Calif., Trinity Marine Group of Gulfport, Miss., Composite Ships of Arlington, and Marinex International Inc. of Hoboken, N.J.
Newport News is part of a team led by Lockheed-Martin Corp. and including the Ingalls Shipbuilding division of Litton Industries. Other teams competing for the work are led by Bath Iron Works, a division of General Dynamics; Hughes Aircraft; and Northrop Grumman Corp.
The Navy wants the ship to be cheap, simple to operate and lethal. With 500 missile tubes and enough storage space to permit several reloadings, it would be the most heavily-armed warship in history.
But the ship is to have a crew of no more than 50, relying on automated systems to do many jobs now performed by sailors. Its missiles would be fired and guided by computers, radars and crews aboard other ships, in planes or ashore.
The cost of the initial vessel is supposed to be limited to $520 million, roughly 10 percent of the cost of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Subsequent ships in the line - the Navy envisions a fleet of perhaps six arsenal ships - could be even cheaper.
The arsenal ship would carry a mix of Tomahawk land attack, anti-aircraft and anti-missile missiles and would ride low in the water so as to reduce its signature on enemy radars. The Navy also is interested in having it constructed with a three-layered hull, reducing its vulnerability to mines and torpedoes. by CNB