DATE: Friday, October 24, 1997              TAG: 9710240649

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   62 lines

CARRIER PRE-PAY PROGRAM BACK AFLOAT 1998 DEFENSE BILL MIGHT ALLOW MORE MONEY FOR THE NEWPORT NEWS SHIPYARD'S CVN-77

On hold since Congress agreed to provide only a fraction of the money it would require, Newport News Shipbuilding's plan to get a $345 million early start on construction of a new aircraft carrier was revived Thursday.

House and Senate negotiators on the 1998 defense authorization bill, an annual measure that provides congressional oversight on military programs, recommended that the Pentagon be allowed to reshuffle its budget to add up to $295 million to the $50 million Congress already has approved for the carrier.

Supporters of the project cautioned that finding additional funds within the $262 billion defense budget will be difficult, and that other issues could yet derail the massive authorization bill.

``This thing ain't out of the woods yet,'' said Rep. Norman Sisisky, a Democrat who represents the 4th district and has an office in Portsmouth.

Still, the Navy's top admiral phoned one Virginia lawmaker to promise that the search for carrier cash - assuming the authorization bill is finally approved - will be exhaustive.

U.S. Sen. John W. Warner said he and Adm. Jay L. Johnson, the chief of naval operations, agreed to work together to identify potential sources of money for the ship. ``We're both old sailors. . . . We'll take the helm and do the best we can,'' Warner said.

Though construction of the ship is not scheduled to begin until 2002, Newport News Shipbuilding said a $345 million appropriation in 1998 would let it shave up to $600 million off the carrier's final pricetag. The early investment would allow it to avoid the expense of laying off, then re-hiring, thousands of workers now laboring on another carrier, the yard said.

But when Congress appropriated only $50 million for the ``smart buy'' initiative, Johnson ordered Navy officials to scour their budget for more and pressed Defense Secretary William S. Cohen to do likewise throughout the Pentagon. That effort picked up a powerful ally earlier this week, as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott wrote Cohen in support of smart buy.

Another area congressman, Newport News Republican Herbert H. Bateman, said he'll be doing his own review of the overall defense budget to locate as many millions as he can for the carrier.

``We'll tailor the suit to fit the cloth,'' Bateman said, suggesting that if the $345 million Newport News wants is unavailable, the yard may find a way to go ahead with a scaled-down initiative that will produce some savings on the ship's final cost.

The ship, now designated only as CVN-77, is to be the 10th and last in the Nimitz class of nuclear-powered flattops. The ship's price is projected at about $5 billion, but the conferees said that with the smart buy program in place, the cost should be capped at $4.6 billion.

The carrier is to be commissioned around 2008.

While smart buy apparently gained a new life in the revised authorization bill, Sisisky and other members warned that the conferees' plan to let the Pentagon evenly divide contracts to repair tanks, airplanes, ships and other equipment between government and civilian-owned facilities is likely to spark a particularly contentious debate.

Government yards, such as Norfolk Naval Shipyard, now are guaranteed at least 60 percent of that depot-level repair work. The Pentagon wants to shift more of the contracts to private firms, contending they could save money, but lawmakers from districts that include government depots say those facilities actually are more efficient than their civilian competitors.

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